Iowa Blogger Meet-Up

What a busy, fun weekend it was! For the past few months I've been working a little bit with Ally from Ally's Sweet and Savory Eats to plan this little meet-up we held on Saturday. Ally's goal was to gather as many Iowa food and lifestyle bloggers we could in one location and have a fun day together. Well she sure accomplished her goal, we had 17 bloggers in attendance, with many more that couldn't join us that day and we sure had a blast.

New Pioneer Food Co-Op graciously opened their doors to us and let us spend our morning in their store. They even moved part of their bakery production so that we would have a small room to ourselves. 

We filled the tables with swag bags in addition to what New Pi gifted us with. Each bag had two beautiful holiday issues from Taste of Home magazine, a coupon for a free bag of King Arthur flour, fresh baked cookies from Ally, homemade granola from myself (recipe this week!) and amazing popcorn from my new favorite store in town, Here's Whats Poppin'.  Plus a few other goodies. 

We enjoyed a detailed tour of the co-op, look at those gorgeous veggies! I learned so much, they really do work hard to bring the very best to their customers and they can take pride in selling products from local farms.

They had an awesome deli which we were able to enjoy for lunch. I grabbed a garlic chicken and bacon wrap, it was delish!

We also were given many samples as we made our rounds on the tour. I really liked the kale salad and this quinoa salad above. 

After we finished up lunch, we made our way to the downtown area of Iowa City. Molly's Cupcakes also opened their doors to us and gave us a great discount on one of their cupcakes. I was still stuffed from lunch so I took mine to go, I choose their peach cobbler cupcake which in fact won on Cupcake Wars! By the time I got it home, it wasn't looking so pretty so unfortunately I don't have a pic for you. I will say, it was amazing! As another cake and cupcake baker, it was seriously good. I only wish I would have grabbed another one.

We sat at Molly's for awhile enjoying conversation with one another. We also walked around to nearby shops to browse.

Later we made our way over to The Brown Bottle for an early dinner and to finish off our day. 

I honestly didn't think I could fit anymore food in my stomach so I went light for dinner and had their bruschetta. It was so good!

I think I can speak for everyone when I say we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and had a great day together! I made some great new friends and can't wait until we do it again next year!