Last weekend, I had the pleasure of spending my time with Betty and Meg for their very first table sharing workshop up in an idyllic New Hampshire town called Tamworth. We got to enjoy the beautiful scenery, forage for mushrooms, and make sourdough bread with all the other lovely people who made the trip—Stephanie, Zoe, Sara, Jess, Robin, Liz, and Katie (miss you guys already!). I can't begin to describe how much fun it was being in such a creative environment and talking shop for hours and hours until we turned in for the night.

For me, spending time with the food blogging/photography community has always been this self contained microcosm of my real life. I have to make a dedicated effort to go all in for a few days, to put my "real life" on hold while I get to enjoy face to face, the people who I normally only talk to online. I want that to change though, and going to events like this gives me the kick in the butt I need to better merge my workaday life with my blogging life.

I spent a week up in Portland, Maine. It was a long overdue vacation that kept getting pushed back due to work obligations and other such life events. It was a splendidly charming town that lived up to every expectation I had. We stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast and took full advantage of the "bed" and "breakfast" part of it all. We walked from one end of Portland to the other on more than one occasion and rarely had a disappointing meal.

It's a really beautiful walking city with some very interesting architecture. The houses up there are so old timey and Victorian looking that Phillip and I kept joking about them being inhabited by Civil War ghosts. It didn't help that the weather was pretty dreary for most of our trip, with wind chimes (which hung on an inordinately large number of houses there) often clinging and clanging due to the strong wind....not that I believe in ghosts, you know.

Most importantly, we ate a lot of seafood, really good seafood. Oh. My. God. The oysters up there are so fresh and so amazing. We went to a place called Eventide that had the most delicious oysters and lobster stew. We went to Central Provisions and had boquerones, tuna crudo, and shrimp a la plancha, among other things, and they blew my friggin mind. Our second full day there, we drove an hour outside of town to go to a lobster place right on the coast only to realize they had closed for the season, their last weekend of service being one week before we got there! So instead of eating lobster rolls, we drove back to Portland and in my zeal to get fresh lobster during this trip (since I was in Maine after all), I reserved two spots on a lobstering boat the next day so we could see the action, after which we went to Portland Lobster Company and finally got the lobstah meal we had been craving.

Outside of seafood, there is this french bistro that we fell in love with. Is it dumb that we were in Portland for six days and both our first and last meal in town was there? Great food, great drinks, unpretentious atmosphere. Plus they had sweetbreads and beef tongue. So much yum. We also had a rough time with some Nashville hot chicken, and ate some great pasta from a little italian place just down the block from our bed and breakfast. It was a great trip, but we were happy to come home to our kitties.