The official first 2012 meet up of the Cleveland Chapter of the Ohio Blogging Association is in the books! On Wednesday, January 18th, bloggers from around Cleveland met at Whole Foods Market Cedar Center to kick back, enjoy some food and beverage and get to know one another a little better. The blogroll for the evening included:
- Alice from Reiki Awakening
- Alicia from Poise in Parma (that’s me!) & husband Hans
- Amanda from Clue into Cleveland & her husband Scott
- Andy from the Ohio Beef Council
- Crystal from Eat Drink Cleveland – her recap of the evening is here!
- Dave from Health Insurance Issues with Dave and Again? Really?
- Jeff from My Future Past
- Jen from Why CLE?
- Jill from Thrifty Volunteer
- Julie from ROJ Running
- Julie from Wearing Mascara
- Kristian from Adventures of a trapped 300 pound man and Ohio Festivals
- Kimberly from SMITTEN…in cleveland
- Lane from Lane Baldwin Photography
- Nidhi from NIDHIZZLE
- Raizel from OmStone Aromas
- Reanna from Big Shot Dot The I
- Sarah from Cooker Girl
- Scott from The Chubby Cook
- Stephanie from Hungry in Cleveland
- Stuart from @sos_jr
- Tony from tonyramos.com
The Whole Foods team had quite the evening planned as the OBA celebrated its one year anniversary of our first official meetup in January 2011. Lisa and her crew were ready to lead us through a pizza throwdown!
Each blogger received one of these forms:
Encouraged to be creative, we selected our toppings for our own individual pizzas. While there was a full list of your traditional toppings, we could think outside the box, within reason – no lobster or truffles people, especially you food bloggers!! Once complete, our forms were whisked away to the Whole Foods prepared foods kitchen:
…where their fabulous team members…
…handcrafted each of our orders. Each pizza took no more than four minutes to cook in their oven!
As we awaited our creations, bloggers, tweeters and blog supporters chatted it up while enjoying their choice of white wine, red wine and Southern Tier Brewing Company beer.
Who’s the redhead that keeps crashing these meetups? Geez…
As bloggers took their turns with their respective announcements, our pizzas began to arrive…
…and everyone dug in! Before I knew it, bloggers were sharing each other’s pizzas, so it was a wonderful way to try an array of combinations. Kristian took home the “most creative” award with his apple and honey pizza.
Personally I felt like the big winner with my GLUTEN FREE pizza!
I got the inside scoop that if you give Whole Foods enough of a heads up, they can make a pizza using their gluten-free dough that they sell at the store. I kept my combo simple: red sauce, parmesan, arugula and tomatoes. So so good, I may have had a piece once I got home later that night. 10PM snack FTW!
In actuality, everyone went home a winner as Whole Foods provided each blogger with a growler and a $1 coupon off our first growler fill at the store!
Seriously, does it get any better than the combination of pizza and beer? I think not.
Many many thanks to Lisa and her entire team at Whole Foods Market Cedar Center for their hospitality and tasty pizza creations! We’re already planning to head back to the University Heights location for the January 2013 meetup! Something to look forward to!!!
Want to join us in February? Check out the event page on Facebook for our OBA February Cleveland Blogger Wine Tasting with Miss WineOH for all the details. Hope to see you on Tuesday, February 21st!!
mmm your pizza looks delish! blogger meet ups are so fun!
That sounds like it was a good time. I had the lame task of meeting with a new car insurance agent that night. But glad everyone had fun!!
SO glad I made it to the event in spite of everything conspiring against me that night! Fun as always. Glad you got a pic of the famous pizza a la Kristian. I was too busy scarfing it down…
Great post and an awesome event! Looking forward to the next one.
Haha…I gave Kristian the “best pizza” award in my post too. And coming home with my growler filled for CLEguy was definitely a win. Thanks for organizing!
[...] Poise in Parma (read her recap here) [...]
Such a fun (and tasty) night! Really wish I had some of Kristian’s pizza too.
I’m putting apples and honey on all my pizzas from now on! Wonderful to finally get to meet everyone.
A pizza throwdown?! How fun. When we make pizza at home, we ALWAYS get WF dough. It is my favorite. Those pizzas all look incredible. What a great event–I wonder if I could convince my WF to do something similar
that looks so much better than last year with the stupid raw food demo…. miss you all!
This looked like a great time! I just RSVP’d for the February meet up. I look forward to meeting you all in person! Thanks!
looks like an awesome time! I’m sorry we didn’t end up making it…we got tickets to go see Hair at playhouse square
[...] of “2011″). As always, Alicia did an exceptional job of coordinating the event and has a great recap up on Poise in Parma. The event was held at Whole Foods Cedar Center. The wine and beer were plentiful as well as the [...]
I can’t wait to join you in Febrary! Looks like another fun one.
I am totally going to see if my WF does something like this!
sounded like a great time. I was bummed I couldn’t make it–damn you Art Museum! The growler thing was awesome of WF!
Looks like I missed a good meet up. Let’s not tell Ryan that I missed the meet up where they were giving away free growlers with the $1 coupon off
[...] 2011, we featured a raw foods demo. In 2012, we held a build-you-own-pizza throw down. Whole Foods Community Manager Lisa and I racked our brains on how to out-do ourselves from the [...]