Good Day Google+ - The Simple Things in Life Make me Happy

Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Good Day Google+. It's Friday, the sun is shining, I'm in Florida and life is good. It's good to be on Google, it's good to have these live streaming Hangouts on Air that we call YouTube shows and to have people watching, friends in the audience, and leave comments, ask questions, whatever you like to do. Enjoy the day. I hope you brought a beverage with you or a sandwich or whatever and just enjoy the time with us. Chatting with our friends, making new friends, networking with people that you might like to do business with. But let me stop right here and say hi to everyone, and then we're going to move on with our first person on the panel. So right now, going across, I'm going to say hi to Tara. Tara Kelly, how you doing?

I'm doing fabulous. How are you doing?

I'm loving it. It's a great day. And you are in North Carolina?

I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina.

North Carolina. Well, I'm hoping the weather is treating you a little bit better today.

Awesome. Yeah, 66 today, can't beat it.

I heard it was getting insane in Maryland and it was snowing again this morning on the radio. So they said they had 3 inches. It's just like nuts.

Crazy.

I know. Again, validating why I moved to Florida. Fair enough. Oh my God, I love the background there with the little lamps. Now, are those decorative or do you ever drag them out when the power goes off?

They're actually antique lamps that we got from my father-in-law. Yeah, we do a lot of antique stuff around this house, so we love it.

Gotta love it. Alright, we'll come back and talk to you in a little while.

Awesome.

Say hi to Bess, Bess Auer. How you doing, Bess? I'm so happy you could make it to my show today, and you are one of my local friends, and I'm so happy to have met you.

I am so happy. You know, the first time I met you in person was when you walked in downtown Credo when I was doing my open office hours.. And it was like this rock star walked in. So awesome. I loved meeting you. And we've gotten to do some things since then. You see my kitchen behind where we just filmed an episode of BlogTalkTV. So that'll be coming out in the next few weeks. So anyway, happy to be here. I have my doors open. Sorry, sorry, Tara. I'm like almost sweating right now. I'm gonna have to turn the air conditioning on.

You know, it is— it has been a little warm this week. And we do have the air on pretty much all the time. And it seems like we didn't get a spring spring this year. It's been like almost right to summer. So is Fred around? I miss Fred.

Fred, actually Fred is right here chewing on stuff. My Great Dane chewing on stuff.

He is such a sweet baby.

Fred's here.

Of course Juan, I'm sure, is around somewhere getting into trouble.

Right here.

There's the other one. Oh, this sweet baby. Oh, I do miss having a dog in the house. I was speaking a little to Juan in Spanish because you did say he was from Texas. I told him I was from Texas too.

Excellent.

Anyway, all right, we'll come back to you. Let's move over to Jeannie. How you doing, Jeannie?

Hi, good morning from Northern California.

Northern California, so your weather can go either way. How you doing today?

Yeah, it's a little— it's a typical Northern California day, spring day. It's a little overcast but not too cold, and it's pretty beautiful out here, so we got nothing to complain about.

That's good. It is spring today. Today's the first day of spring.

First day of spring. Great to be here with you all.

Oh, I'm so happy to have you, and we're going to talk to you. And I did get your package, and I have the mask on my traveling microphone. I actually had it in a show the other day, and it causes questions. I love it. So then people say, "What's that?" and I can explain it to them.

Yeah, it's supposed to be fun.

So now we're going to move over to Joy Stewart, and Joy is going to do a cooking demo for us. And Joy, where are you?

Actually, I'm also in Northern California. Where are you, Jean?

I'm in Marin, in Nevada, right outside of San Francisco. Where are you?

South of San Francisco. I'm in the South Bay. Do you know Sunnyvale?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Great.

Absolutely.

So I'll come on over and have lunch. How about that?

Alright! We're having about the same weather as you are today, even though it can vary sometimes, even among the South Bay from town to town.

Very cool.

Well, I'm really excited to be here. This is my very first time on Chef Dennis Littley's show, and I'm excited to be making Welsh rarebit for you guys. This is something I haven't yet put on the blog, but I'm planning to put the recipe up soon so that if you'd like to cook along, you're welcome to.

Joy, you may want to turn the lower third off while you're doing the demo, so, because it's kind of blocking the bowl and everything, if that's possible.

Absolutely. Let's turn it off. There we go. Okay, so are we ready to get started?

We're ready.

Alright, so you're actually going to start by making a roux, so Put a big knob of butter in the pan. I'm using 3 tablespoons, equal parts butter and flour. My flour, rather, has just a little bit of the spice that I'm gonna use in the rarebit in there, just a tiny bit of cayenne powder. Can you guys see how there's a little color in the flour there?

Mm-hmm.

Yep, okay. So that's— I wanted to toast the spices a little bit, and I wanted to control how much goes in there instead of trying to shake it in on the fly, cayenne can be super spicy if you don't really have a high spice tolerance, and I really just want a little kick for this.

Yeah, cayenne can get out of control really quick if you're not careful.

It really can. Oh, I've honestly almost ruined breakfast potatoes that way. So Welsh rarebit is actually a dish that's been around for a really long time. If you were to think of a dish that's similar to Welsh rarebit, you might think of fondue. The difference, a couple of differences, one of the main differences is that fondue is typically made with Swiss cheese and this is made with cheddar cheese.

Oh yeah.

So we're gonna put in some really lovely, I have some Kerrygold cheddar. I like to use either Irish or English cheddar for this because after all it's a typically British dish. In fact, that's where it came from, so.

Early childhood memories of that. I think my father used to make that. That was one of the dishes that he could, that he would make. My father didn't cook a lot, but when he did, it was always an event. Welsh rarebit was a wonderful thing. Yeah, I used to call it rabbit as a kid. Now I'm still calling it— used to call it rabbit.

That's not incorrect, actually. It's more commonly called rabbit. It's just that I guess the recipe authors don't want to confuse people, so they'll say rarebit just so that people know that it's not that it is a vegetarian dish. There's no rabbit in there.

No rabbit.

Yeah, yeah, plenty of people call it rabbit. It's really more commonly called rabbit, especially where it's from.

No bunnies were harmed in the making.

No bunnies. You're just gonna add your flour, whisk to get it smooth, continue cooking until the flour cooks a bit. I actually try to make a Slightly darker roux for this because I just love the flavor. Kind of a New Orleans nod. I don't know why, I just love New Orleans food.

I think that's an important step. A lot of people forget that they need to cook that. I remember when I first learned, they told me it should smell a little bit like bread baking. The flour cooked, because a lot of people put the flour in, don't allow it to cook. It's basically raw.

Mm-hmm.

Those nice flavors.

You do, absolutely you do. And raw flour, you can actually taste it, which is, you know, a little unfortunate. So, yeah, it's starting to smell really nice, and it's a slight kind of a golden color.

And—

oh, thank you very much, kitchen assistant. I have my coffee.

Excellent.

Mm.

So the next step is actually to add the liquidy stuff. So I like a little mustard in there. I really think that's great. I add a half tablespoon of mustard, ground Dijon mustard, but you can also add a teaspoon of mustard powder. Now mustard powder is actually pretty spicy, so you want to go easy on the cayenne if you're going to add mustard powder, and you definitely want to add only a teaspoon. So we're going to start with the beer.

I've never heard of this dish, so, and I like to eat, so it's really fun to see something new.

Cool.

And learn something new from you.

So this can actually— thank you. So this can actually go either as a fondue, in which case you want to make it a little looser, or it can go as like a spread. And actually that's very traditional, is you would allow it to kind of set and then spread it on toast and then put the toast under the broiler until it gets bubbly, and it's, oh my God, amazing.

It's really good. That sounds wonderful. I used to use it over toast, pour it over toast, and eat it that way. I remember that. Mm-hmm.

That sounds even better. Yeah. And you know, for entertaining, it's really a great little fondue thing, you know? It's an unexpected flavor for your fondue. And because fondue can be an acquired taste, it might make some converts.

That's true.

So what I was doing there, I put a little Lea Perrins Worcestershire sauce in there. It does, you do want to have a little tiny bit of a smoky flavor. Now it's still a little, not quite as loose as I want, so I'm going to add another 1/4 cup of beer. I just kind of eyeball this. I'm going to end up, you know, testing it a little more thoroughly for the blog.

Are you using any special kind of beer for that, or?

For this one it's an India Pale Ale. I would recommend something that's medium like this, you know, a Pale Ale or something in the same category. Yeah, that's a really good question. So now we have this really lovely slurry. You can see a little mustard in there, and you can smell a little bit of smokiness from the Worcestershire sauce. And then just pinch by pinch, I like to put it in.

I love cheese.

Yeah, me too.

I'm supposed to be milk casein intolerant, but I had talks about that, and they believe that possibly Kerrygold grass-fed cheese is okay.

Well, you're in luck. This is what I'm using.

There's one I wish we had smell-o-vision.

Not the Apple version.

The Apple version is called iSmell, and they still haven't worked the bugs out of it.

That could be really wonderful for foodies like us. Speaking of which, I know there's some of my fellow foodies in the audience from our other Google+ group, and I'd just like to say hello.

Welcome.

I'm really excited to have you guys here.

Yeah, Aslan Bloor's in the house. Jasmina Raskovic. And Candy is in the house. Mark, clearly. Jamal is here. Yeah. Elaine Niederbring is here. Dave Pipe. Kate Bauer, Kristen, or Kirsten Mattis is here. Yeah, so we have a full house and then some other people hanging in there. And always a few zippers that don't leave comments, so it's okay.

So as I incorporate the cheese, it starts to get this really lovely shiny, smooth kind of consistency. And when it's shiny and all incorporated, go ahead and pour it into some kind of a dish to reserve it, like a Tupperware.

This is really a very simple dish to make.

It's wonderfully simple. That's one of the things I love about it. And you know what's really cool about it is People really haven't heard too much about it. Very few people have heard about it. So I'm going to show you guys, if you can see, it's really smooth and lovely, and it should have kind of that consistency. You can make it looser if you want, and that will make a better fondue. I recommend maybe adding a little half-and-half or milk at this point to make it a little looser. But, oh gosh, okay, so this is actually ready, but of course I forgot something, so I will be right back.

Dennis Littley, does the computer have like a scratch and sniff or anything?

I wish.

Right? It looks amazing.

Alright, so. By the way, I absolutely love these. They go in the oven, not super high temperatures, they're Pyrex. They actually have little rubber lids, and they came in several sizes. I love those. Sorry, I don't know if that's— I didn't mean to endorse a product on your show, Dennis.

That's okay. I have no problem with shouting out good brands of products.

These are really just awesome, and they came in several sizes. I even have rectangular ones, a tiny one and a larger one. I don't have any other Tupperware that goes into the oven, so that's pretty cool.

Actually, Tupperware is not too far from me. Tupperware, where your company headquarters is, I never knew that was in Florida.

Oh really? Oh, very interesting. Okay, so actually this might be an easier way to show you guys what loveliness I've created here. Easy too. So it's clear. Now you can see that it's still pretty warm because it's steaming the sides of the bowl. Then you would grab your toast, spread some on. Of course, I didn't remember to toast the bread beforehand, so going to eat it like this.

That would be wonderful. I can imagine that.

So that's actually it. I mean, it's so ridiculously easy to make Welsh rarebit at home. It's a vegetarian dish. If you have a cheese lover, you really will impress them.

Wow. Very good. Well, thank you so much, Joy. That was wonderful.

Absolutely.

Thanks a lot for having me again.

Now, I hope you enjoyed the conversation. We are getting a little bit of an echo. I don't know if everyone can hear it. So I'm not sure if that's— I don't know if that's you or what, but—

It might be my mic.

I'm going to turn it down a little.

Okay, while you get set up, we're going to move on and talk to someone else. And the rest of you, if you do continue to have that, if you can just mute yourselves while you're not talking, that might alleviate some of that echo too. Okay, so let's hand it over to Tara. And Tara, you're going to talk to us about what you're doing, and you have some exciting stuff going on.

I do have a little bit of everything. I started a food blog about 5 years ago, so that's kind of like where I started in the, in the social media world, in the website world. But in the last 4 months, I have put out 2 romance novels that include recipes. So I have basically merged my food blog and my romance writing together. And I'm having a blast. I actually just released my first, my second romance book this week, and there are 6 recipes in there that have wood smoking recipes and some pastry recipes in there too. The recipes always are made by the characters in the books, so this book that I just brought out actually takes place at a café. Convenient to where you can put fun recipes that way too. How did you decide you wanted to be a romance novelist? I am a romance junkie at heart. I have been reading romance novels forever, since I was probably 15, maybe too early when I started reading them, but I love them. And I used to write poems, and I actually wrote a children's book in high school. Just for some reason in my brain, I didn't think I could write a book. So I just didn't do anything with it. I just kind of let it sit and knew that I enjoyed kind of privately. But the last couple years, somehow my brain decided that wasn't the way it was going to be. And I had— I woke up from a dream one day. And I had this idea. And I sat down and I wrote the idea down. And my husband said, I kind of want to know more. So, and I just went from that, and, and actually a second dream happened, and that's where both my books are from dreams. And, but now they're just evolving into more. I have a series, it's the Winters Family series, and it was going to be a 6-part series, and it's, I don't know when it'll end now because I have all these characters that are just so much fun, and I'm, and I love writing them. So we'll see where it ends, but yeah.

Where does it take place?

It actually takes place in Wilmington, North Carolina, but the second book, Alex is Alex Winters from the Winters family, is a chef, and he got a job in Boise, Idaho. I tend to pick places where I've lived, and I lived in Boise for a short period of time. They always say to do things that you're familiar with, write about things that you're familiar with. So that's why I chose Boise for the second book. But I'm currently writing the third one right now, and we will be heading back to Wilmington for the next book.

Very cool. And I love the titles. You want to tell us what the first book was called and the second one?

Catch Me is the first one, and it's Drew and Isabel, and it's just two people who— one who's as hot firefighter, and women always, you know, feel that, you know, he's hunky. And so, you know, he'll, he'll just take this blonde, gorgeous, little skinny woman. And Isabel is a plus-size woman who's just absolutely stunning, and he falls for her. And it's two people who maybe for some people you wouldn't imagine, but they connected and they and he catches her at the most unexpected time. So, and then the second one is called Need You, totally different story in some ways because you're going into a tragedy with one of the main characters and how she has to learn to realize that she can love again and that she needs someone to help her love again. So, need you.

Okay, I was taking the need you another way, but that's okay.

Well, I mean, hey, however anybody takes it is cool. Nothing wrong with that.

I love the covers. How did you come up with the people for the covers?

I honestly just find them. You can find— you have to buy them, but you can find stock photos. Where I did, where I found them, found them, found them. I just kind of search and figure out who speaks to me. And for Need You, the second book, which I have, I don't know if it will show up very well. Does it show up?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. They spoke to me right away. That's Alex and Alyssa, and they're actually in a kitchen is where they're at. And it was just because Alyssa is blonde and Alex is that size, you know, style hair and everything. But my cover art is actually from Patty Wonder. She is from East— she owns Easton Place Design Studios, and she's fantastic. And I— on my website, TaraKelley.com, you'll be able to find her link on the side of my website.. But she does all kinds of web design, and she is my, my amazing person that I go to for all my covers.

Wonderful.

And will continue.

Great, great. Well, I'm so glad you could be on.

I really appreciate you having me on. I, you know, I'm excited to be able to share my books with you all. You know, it's this new passion that I started, and I'm excited to be able to let you see, be a part of my passion with me.

Well, good.

We'll be looking forward to having you come on for those as well.

I would love that.

All right, well, let's move on. Let's move on. Let her unmute. There we go.

There we go. Now I'm unmuted.

Okay, so guys, if you're watching, I'm getting some kind of horrendous, horrendous echo. I'm not quite sure where it's gone. Tell us about what you do and some of the fun you've been having in Florida. I know we met down here for the first time, like you said, and I remember— actually, I remember meeting you at East End Market when I went for one of your mini Florida BlogCons.

That's right.

And I'm sitting there tweeting away, doing my due diligence, because I know when you go to an event you want to tweet and you want to do work about it. And I'm going, I hear, is Chef Dennis in the house? And I look up and there I am on the big screen.

Yeah, that was at our forum. So for those of you that don't know me, I started off doing a blogger conference called the Florida Blogger and Social Media Conference, and it started 5 years ago. This will be our 5th year. It's grown into one of the largest one-day blogging conferences in the Southeast.. And we just basically get a bunch of people together and share new ideas and new ways to make money, new ways to grow community, and just have as much fun as we can. And so that then turned into GottaGetBlogging.com, which is kind of an online community where we continue that learning throughout the year. And the forum is one of our smaller conferences that we have every January or February or where we then get a chance to, it's more intimate, you get a chance to really do some hands-on workshops. So a little bit smaller and more intimate. So that's what we're doing right now. We have a call for speakers right now for this year's big conference. So if you want to speak, FLBlogCon.com, fill out that apply to speak. I know Dennis Littley, you may be speaking from where again?

Los Angeles.

From Los Angeles, we're going to try and hang out you in. I think that would be very, very cool to have that done.

I think so, and it would actually almost show them how to do what we're doing at the same time and just get someone to kind of MC it from that end, have me come on on my end and have it on the screen. I think that would be really cool and then go over how to be a YouTube show host.

Yeah, I love it. And so I think that's a definite, so definitely plan on doing that for sure.

Well, I did put my application in, I don't know if you saw.

Now, I haven't looked at the applications, I kind of scan the numbers and I think we're up to about 45 or 50 people already applying. So we always have tons that apply, which is good because you can throw out some of them because they have no application whatsoever. They're just professional speakers looking for a place to speak, so we can get rid of those right away because because they think, look what the conference was about. But the rest make it very hard to kind of choose and narrow it down. But definitely want to have you, so we're going to make that happen.

Thank you. Yeah, and that is— I'm so sorry I can't be there because Full Sail is such a beautiful facility. I loved going there last year, and I really got probably the most out of that conference other than, you know, the ShiftCon one, which is a completely different kind of conference. I got so much out of yours that I could use as a blogger, and even your mini conference the other day with the video editing and all the different things you covered. There really is a lot of good information. I love what you do because it's not just aimed at food bloggers or a specific thing. It's aimed at all bloggers, which is really cool.

We figure that best practices in blogging or social media are best practices no matter what topic you blog about or no matter what genre you're in. And one of the things that we really stress to our speakers when they are chosen or selected to speak is we want every single session to be packed with takeaways. So that way when somebody walks away, they have a list of actionable items they can apply immediately. We don't want this to be kind of a philosophy type of conference. We want this to be a get stuff done conference. And improve your blogging skills. I'm glad to hear that you got something out of it.

Oh yeah, and the biggest thing was the networking that was involved. So many people that I met and so many companies that actually want to work with you. It's like you vet them before you turn them loose on us. A lot of conferences that I've gone to in the past, they just say, "Here's some money, let me come in and take over your show." It doesn't work that way with you.

Well, you know, the fact that we're so hyperlocal, we advertise ourselves as, even though we have bloggers that do attend from out of state, we really try and focus on by Floridians for Floridians. We try to feature companies that do business here in Florida or have originated here in Florida, and so we're looking for the long-term community building there rather than just a one-shot. So it does us no good to have a sponsor in there that doesn't benefit our community.

A lot of people don't think that way. It's always like, oh, here— because you need money to run a conference. Oh, yeah. It's not like they're taking money to line their pockets. That's not at all what I'm implying. But they take the easy route to paying for all these things that are going on, which is incredibly expensive. You just got to really think about what you're doing, what value your people coming are going to get, and do it from that. Like I said, you did a really good job. It was a nice conference. I enjoyed it. I got to meet a lot of great people there. That's always the best part for me because you can learn a lot of this stuff almost anywhere, but it's when you get the time to talk and make new friends, make new connections, because that's where your business is going to come from.

We've actually polled every year, should we go bigger? We've pull our attendees because we have been encouraged sometimes by sponsors, sometimes by other people to turn this into one of those mega conferences like a BlogHer. And with that question, every time we ask that of our attendees, the answer is no. We like being able to see the same people each year. We like being able to see the friendships that we've made and come back to it time and time again. So that's a big plus for us, the network working in that. Like I said, we just consider ourselves community builders. And this year, because it's the 5th year, because we're back at Full Sail for a 3rd year, we wanted to switch it up a little bit. We don't want to lose any of the goodness that we have, but we're trying to do something special for the keynote, the opening keynote this year. We're calling it an un-keynote. And it will be, if it works out, fingers crossed that we can make it happen, really a transformative experience without it being a regular keynote. So you will miss it, so I'll have to fill you in afterwards about it.

Are you going to tape the sessions?

We're actually considering— so whenever you live stream a conference, and as you know from Florida Swim Network, my other business, that's what we do is live streaming, there's all sorts of legalities that come in. We have to vet all the speakers, so if Dennis Littley was presenting and we had your slideshow in the background and you had some copyright images in there, we would be the ones held responsible for showing those as the live streamer. So there's a lot of kind of things you have to work out ahead of time and vet. We hope to live stream at least the main venue this year and sell some virtual tickets for it. But we have to cooperate with Full Sail because they also would be held liable as the conference kind of venue. So a lot more goes into that than just throwing up a camera and live streaming. But we do have it in the plans this year, and if that happens, they will be taped and saved for you.

Good, good, excellent. Yeah, because I know there's going to be something I'm going to want to see, and I'm feeling bad about missing that. But last year, ShiftCon was a life changer for me. I went there just to speak about Google and came away with a whole new attitude and a whole new respect for my life and for food and for everything that was going on. That's why I'm going back again. Hopefully, I can keep making some good, healthy changes and live longer so I can go to more conferences.

September is a busy time of year for us. It works out best for Florida. Summertime, nobody's really here because everybody goes up north to get a break. If we're too close to August, kids are going back to school and so families are busy. So September has tended to be our sweet spot, but we also contend with, I guess, ShiftCon, the Type A Moms conference goes on, so we do have some competition, but it works best for us to have it then.

Oh yeah, and it is a local conference too, so I'm sure there are not as many going to that as would I mean, you really draw the community together, and that's really what you're aiming for anyway. And talking about that, you started something quite unique last year, and I know it's still in the growing stages, but Got2Get Blogging. Yes. What were your thoughts about that? Why did you do that?

So it kind of came out of discussion of people wanting us to take the conference much bigger because we had a lot of people out of the area that wanted to learn some of the same stuff that maybe they couldn't attend. So we thought, maybe if we could put basically everything they would learn at a conference like this online. So we created gotablogging.com. You can join for $9 a month and we're continually adding videos. I think we've got like 60 how-to videos. We're constantly putting blogs on there. You get a weekly newsletter. I'm actually working on it today. Has kind of shifted into the latest products. I talked about Meerkat on there a week or two ago. I've got a really cool app that I'm going to be talking about today in that newsletter. It's a paywall for your email. So I don't know how you use it right now. I'm like, how could I use this? How could I make money from my email list? But anyway, so things like that, if you're a member of got2getblogging.com, we also have a directory that anybody can join. So if you go there, it's free and easy to add your blog. We have a lot of PR people that say, you know, we need some food bloggers, can you find them for us? It's easy for us just to send them to our directory. So make sure you're registered there. And then we're also attempting to maybe move into the sponsored social space with our Gotta Get Blogging Elite. Because we have all these great local voices, we would love to be able to offer some local companies affordable way to work with that team of bloggers. So we got a lot going on. It's always evolving though as we get feedback from our members.

Well, that's important that you listen to the feedback, but I really am excited about what you're doing. And you know, you've got some pretty important messages that you always do share with us. And we were talking the other day about not working for free.

Yes.

And how important it is to get something. And then you brought up a very good point about whether maybe it's not actual dollar dollars but it's social media dollars.

Yeah, that social media cash to me personally as a blogger can be just as important if not more important than being paid, compensated, physical cash. Simply, you know, if somebody's got, like nonprofits are great at this, they will blast when I write about nonprofits to all of their followers and that gets me new followers to then allows me to sell advertising on my site. So that social media cash is— a great way to be compensated as a blogger.

Very good. I think it is, and a lot of bloggers forget that part of it, or they think they only have to take cash. We need to be compensated, and when you start asking people for it, sometimes they think they're going to get offended, or they do get offended, or they do just like, "Oh, I don't pay for that." My first question to them is like, are you working for free?

It's exactly, they forget that, you know, if I were a newspaper journalist, I most likely would be receiving some type of salary. So, you know, whatever I wrote about would be fine. But as a blogger, we don't get salary. What we make our money from is that content and being able to monetize that in whatever way possible. So it's unreasonable unusual for people to think about us doing that for free without some type of compensation. But like I said, the retweets, the posting to their Facebook pages, spreading word about me and my brand is a fair compensation in many situations.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for that. And Tara, we have a question. And I'm getting— I'm getting—

I have no idea why. I'm like pushing my electronics away from me.

I don't know if your headphones aren't working or—

Let me just take them off. Does that work better?

Yeah, that's better. Okay, so let me— there's a question for you here, Kazem. Where's the best place to get your books?

Oh, I actually wanted to— I was going to ask if I could share this with you too. Yeah. I actually have all my books on Amazon.com. So you can— yep, you just go to Amazon and you plug in Tara Kelly and you're gonna find both my books there.

Can you leave a link for us in the comments stream later so people know where to go get you?

Is that right? Yeah. Can I do it right now?

I don't know if I can. Oh, please. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. And here's from Kate Bauer. Tara Kelly, I'm down in the southeast Idaho Falls. I've lived here for about 9 years and it's beautiful. The Tetons are the best.

It's a gorgeous area.

I love it.

Okay, yes, so we're getting some nice comments from everyone, and if you have any questions for our panel, please feel free to leave them there. So let's move on over now to Jeanine. Jeanine, how you doing?

I'm great.

Hey. Thank you for having me.

Hi.

Hi. Tell us a little bit about what you do.

Yes, so I started a company called Spa Heroes, and it's really focused— you know, we're talking a lot about food today— about what you put on your skin. And my background is I was a longtime spa director in hospitality, and I actually started out in food and beverage, but ended up in spa and wellness and health, and that really was my passion. What I discovered through, you know, working with a lot of products and services and customers is that there's so many chemicals that we put on our skin, particularly in spa services and in skincare. And when I was running my spa, I just got really interested in ingredients and finding— what I would find were that there were really effective products that I call hero products that are made without toxic chemicals. And so I started my company to really simplify skincare, to help people discover skincare products that really work and then that use the very best ingredients. And we deliver, you know, the way that we, we help people discover products is through a monthly hero product. It's really sort of about toning the noise down on beauty and skincare and really simplifying it, helping to educate people on what ingredients— what ingredients are really good for you and what ingredients are not so good for you, and helping to introduce products that are great for your skin that really work well and are safe to use.

How do you find these products or how do you decide what you're going to use?

Yeah, absolutely. So I have a whole community of spa experts that's part of the process of Spa Heroes, and we actually evaluate every product that gets submitted. So either I'll find a product that I think is amazing and I'll connect with the company, and or I have companies submitting products for evaluation. We have a whole list of ingredients that we don't allow in our products, so that actually narrows the products that we can work with by a lot. From the products that are submitted, we really— when I talk to a company, I ask them what's their hero product, what is the product that has a really strong following, that their customers customers can't live without, that they come back for time and time again. That's the one that, you know, a line will have usually a few hero products that are their top sellers. What I discovered through all my years in the spa industry is that if I could communicate the attributes of a hero product and if somebody, you know, understands why they're using that product, then they'll be more interested in learning more. A lot of times, I think, when we're looking for skincare products, we feel overwhelmed by so many products. And so that is, you know, that's typically what we see happening is when somebody finds something they like, then they want to learn more about that brand, they want to learn more about that company. And I like to I just think there's a lot of good people making good products out there, and I want to tell those stories through this process of discovery.

You say there's a whole list of things that you don't want to include. Are a lot of those the carcinogens that we find in so many products?

Yeah. I actually developed a little pocket guide. It's a free pocket guide for anybody that is downloadable on our site. You go and you enter your email, and I really wanted to just simplify ingredient information because it's very complicated. Even for me that I've been in the industry for a long time, really remembering the names and knowing what to look for on labels, it's overwhelming and it's time-consuming. I created this little guide that has the most— I call them villain ingredients and superpower ingredients. Superpower ingredients are healthy ingredients that are are good for your skin. Villain ingredients are toxic ingredients that— and we list what their health concerns are. Either they're carcinogens, hormone disruptors, they're immunotoxic, they're neurotoxic. So we really try to simplify this information so you can actually take this guide into your bathroom, go to your skincare cabinet, Turn over your products, read the labels, and look for those ingredients. It's about really taking small steps, as with anything, starting with the products that you most commonly use and working from there.

Trying to find products that are not only good for you but safe. It's a shame that when you have to stop. I hadn't a clue of this before I went to ShiftCon, was how many products a woman uses compared to a man. There's so many more healthcare and beauty products and cosmetics. They shouldn't have to worry about what they're putting on their skin is killing them.

Yeah.

In our country, the FDA basically doesn't regulate ingredients, so something needs to be proven to be toxic before it is banned. There's only 11 cosmetic ingredients banned in the US, and there's over 1,300 banned in the European Union. Canada has a long list, and Japan has a long list. The European Union has the longest list. Our products don't contain any of the ingredients that are banned in the EU. Really, what the Pocket Guide does is it outlines the most commonly used, most toxic ingredients that you would find in your skincare.

That's really scary, 11. It just goes to show you with what we do, what lobbyists can do when money is spent, how little the government really cares about our health. It's more a game of just— nobody's denying anyone making money, but at the expense of someone's health. This is insane. It just really is.

Yeah, well, it's just that a lot of the chemicals are just a shortcut to what's available in nature, and so that is what Spa Heroes is hoping to do, is to really highlight companies that are not taking the shortcut. And I think the term, you know, the term hero product really came from the idea of it being a top seller, being a really effective product. But for me, it's a lot more than that. It's a product that really delivers results in a safe with safe ingredients. It's got a lot more meaning to it with what we're doing.

I think you're opening a lot of eyes, too, because say I don't understand a lot about it, or I know I should be using them. I don't know where to get them. I don't know what to look for. I start getting your products, and right now you're encouraging me through the use of that, that I see it works well. It has nice effects. It smells good. It feels good. You're making me want to go look for more products that are similar, more products from that company. You're helping. It's those little steps that help put people on the right path.

Right, absolutely.

Great. You're going to leave some info for us in the comment tracker later, and we'll come back to you right before we go. I want to come back to Joy because Joy, you did a really great job with your demo. I was just wondering if you wanted to talk to us a little bit about your blog.

I didn't Thank you very much. Well, first, silly little aside, Bess, I saw your dog pass by the couch. That's so cute. Mine has not been leaving me alone. If you guys notice me looking down a little bit, that's because he smelled the cheese. And he was very excited. So mine's small and light. Looks like yours is large and dark. A little Chihuahua mix. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I really enjoy cooking for you guys. This is a dish I haven't made in a while, but it's just super easy and it's a really great thing to have in the house as a snack. My blog is The Joyous Kitchen. I've been blogging for about 3 years and blogging regularly for about 2 years. It was a slow start, but once I really got into it— my husband takes all the pictures. He's a really awesome photographer. And I actually got interested in cooking because being the oldest of 4 kids, I would help my mom out in the kitchen all the time. So I've been cooking for decades now, and I worked in catering for about 7 years, and I was always kind of giving people advice about, you know, what could make their recipe better, or, you know, what they could do with the ingredients they had. So I thought, well, I thought, well, let's channel that energy, that instinct, and start blogging. It's been really great. I've had a lot of great response. I've been working really hard on social media to try to promote it. Google+ has been amazing for that, actually.

It is a really good place to share, and I think it's only going to get better. People were talking about the death of Google, but I think the separation is only going to benefit it.

Yeah, and I'm also starting to plan a cookbook. Don't have a publisher yet, but ideally it would be seasonal recipes. Jean can attest, we get some amazing, amazing produce in Northern California. We are really lucky that way. Yeah, I mean, even out of season, they're just grown really well in hothouses. And just the other day I used me some Swiss chard. It's not really in season yet, you know, so it was really just great to be able to have that available, you know. I talk to my produce guy at the supermarket regularly and I asked him to get me some parsnips. He said, "No problem." Definitely not parsnip season. But I do really enjoy seasonal cooking. I think it's really important to make the most of the ingredients when they're in season and when you can. My recipes tend toward vegetarian because I actually was I was raised vegetarian for the better part of 20 years. I just really, really love vegetables. They're really awesome.

Vegetables are something that we don't eat enough of as the people. We're so protein-oriented, and that's been taking over the plate, and we need to start thinking back in the direction of vegetables.

It's true, and you know what's really amazing about vegetables is just like a really good cut of meat, you can dress up a vegetable very simply and really make it sing. I love roasting vegetables. It's really an awesome way to do it.

Roasting is the best, and it makes you eat vegetables that you normally wouldn't eat because they taste good.

That's true, especially carrots. I mean, I know a lot of people who won't eat cooked carrots, but they will eat roasted carrots.

It's great. My wife won't eat it roasted or cooked in any way, but she'll eat it in waffles. I've tried that. She just picks around things, but I've gotten her to eat a lot of other vegetables.

My last entry was something for the cheese lovers. I made some cauliflower gratin. That was really smothered in a nice cheese sauce. If she likes cheese, that might be a way to sneak some cauliflower in.

Cauliflower she will eat. Roasted, it's pretty good.

Oh yeah, yeah. Actually, I pre-roasted it in brown butter because I didn't want my cheese sauce to separate in the oven. That's one of those things where it can happen in just a minute, you know, and it's a shame about a lovely cheese sauce, especially when you're using Gruyère because it's not the cheapest cheese on earth.

Sure, yeah, Gruyère can cost you a little bit more.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, thanks for some—

Oh, sorry.

No, what were you gonna say?

Oh, I was just going to say, I actually, Tara, I also am a little bit of a writer. I don't know if you've heard of National Novel Writers Month.

National what was it again?

National Novel Writers Month.

I haven't. Is that like NaNoMo? Is that kind of— is that—

Yeah, NaNoWriMo. Yeah, that's what it is. If you've ever heard of NaNoWriMo, yeah. So I actually did that for November, and I really thought that was It's cool that you said you should try to write about places that you've been, you know, because I lived in New York for a really long time. Now I'm in California, obviously, but I lived in New York for a really long time, so when I did my project for NaNoWriMo, 50,000 words in 30 days, it was a novel about New York.

Good for you. Yeah, write about what you know. Absolutely.

Very cool. There's a writer in all of us struggling to get out, I think, sometimes. I still have a book that I need to write, I just haven't gotten to it. Well, let's go down the panel real quick and see if you have any calls to action or anything you'd like to share with us before we sign off. The hour has been flying by. So let's start with Tara. Tara, anything you'd like to share with us right now?

I just wanted to say that because I have 2 sites and all these social medias, you can go to my Google+ page and I literally put all my links for my CafeTara blog my food blog. I put all my links there so you can catch all my recipes. I share probably a couple recipes, 1 to 2 recipes a week on Cafe Tara Blog along with writing my books. So I just wanted to make sure to share that with many links that we have for social media to keep up with it all. It is all on my Google+ page, and then you can follow my Tara Kelly there also. And stop and say hi on any of the social medias. All my books are always going to be available on Amazon, and my third book I'm writing right now will be out in June.

Very cool. Boy, that's coming out really quick then.

Yeah, absolutely. It'll be seafood recipes this time.

I know I have to get a copy of your first one for Lisa to read because she loves novels that involve food, too.

Very good. The first one has some fun homemade bread recipes. The second one has wood smoking meat fun, and then the next one will be seafood. I try to mix it all up.

Very cool. Very cool. Thank you so much for being on today, too. We can find you on all the other social media, I assume, too— Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm at LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. Twitter, Facebook, yeah, all of it.

Very cool. Well, thank you so much. So let's move on over to Bess. Bess, thank you so much for being on today. I'm so glad you finally got on my show.

Absolutely, after you've been on my show even though it hasn't aired yet. The only call to action I would have would be to list your blog in our blogging directory. I might be able to send some PR your your way. Just go to GottaGetBlogging.com and click to add your blog. I must say that hanging out with some food bloggers has made me quite hungry, so I know I'm heading for lunch after this.

I know. I go to make my little miserable piece of chicken and spinach for lunch today. That's been my meal, and I've got 2 more weeks of that. Oh my goodness. So far so good. 500 calories a day for about 10 days now.

Wow, I'd be starving.

Yeah, I do get that occasionally. The funny thing is that would be 500 calories was sometimes a beverage. Thank you for coming on. I really appreciate your time. I'm glad you could join us. You're still livestreaming us on Meerkat?

I am.

I'm on Meerkat, which is one of the new apps that we discovered that I've sent out about. It's only about 3 weeks old, it's in beta. So yes, I've been streaming the whole thing off my phone right here. It's been on and I think we got like 9 people watching right now, but there you go.

That's pretty cool. Very good. So thank you so much for all that and for being on. And Joy, I want to thank you for coming on with us today.

My pleasure.

Want people to visit your blog? Anything else you'd like to leave us with?

I'd like people to visit my blog, and if there are any cookbook publishers out there, I'm looking for a publisher. My blog is The Joyous Kitchen, so it's joyouskitchen.blogspot.com.

Very cool, and thanks so much for being on with us.

Thanks again for having me.

Jeannie, thank you for being on today and sharing your wealth of knowledge about your beauty products from Spa Heroes?

Yeah, I wanted to show the little mask that you were talking about. Oh, please do. So every month we deliver a hero product, and it's actually got a little superhero mask right on it. So it's a surprise every month. It's a— we send out a box to your door with a full-size face body, hair, or sun care product. And it's like I said, it's a hero product. It's the freshest, best, safest products that we can find. And I have a discount code to get $10 off your first delivery if you're interested in subscribing to Spa Heroes and giving it a— and trying it out. And the code is HEROLOVE. So that's That's the discount code. It's $39 a month, but with the discount code, it's $10 off. Love to share safe skincare with as many people as possible.

Dr. Pompa: Great. Can you pop that code in the comments section for us so people can come back to that? Does that—? Dr.

Maureen: The link to the pocket guide, I posted that. Dr.

Pompa: Great. Very cool. A lot of people will watch this later and replay and come back to it, so then they can find that there. They'll know to go back back and look for it. Start enjoying your products. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you so much to the wonderful audience I have today. It's always a good day on Google+ when you can connect with your friends. Enjoy your day. It's spring. Get out and enjoy spring and have a wonderful weekend. Bye-bye. Thanks, Dennis.

Thank you.

Bye.