How do you prepare for a lunch and an afternoon with strangers in person but you know them virtually? Will it be a quick luncheon for may be couple of hours with tall promises that we will keep in touch and meet regularly, but heart-in-heart you know that in all probability you will never meet them again? Well, these were some of the questions / thoughts that I was pondering on the morning of 16th February 2008, the day when the Bay Area Food bloggers decided to meet and eat, as said by The Cooker. In fact, what to cook was the easy part for me, thanks to Shankari - the organizer of the meet who sadly couldn’t make it. Well there was just one very simple rule for this event (similar to the very many blog events :)); the dish should be selected from one of the fellow Bay Area blogger.

Vegetable Biryani
I have been thinking of making a vegetable biryani for a while (inspired by my husband’s brother-in-law, who makes this awesome biryani and that is for another post) and when I saw a recipe for the same at Chez Mythreyee’s, I knew the dish that I was going to make. I pretty much followed her recipe to make the biryani, except that I tried to do a dum biryani, so layered it and cooked it in the oven for about 1/2 hour. I wouldn’t say I was too happy with the result of the “dum” - I think it would have been better if I had just stuck to the original recipe. Lesson learnt :)

Coming back to the afternoon itself, it felt as though we were back in time, in a college hostel - room full of girls chatting and laughing at each others’ jokes, having a ball of a time. There was not a single moment of silence or the awkard inhibition while meeting someone (let alone a group of folks) for the first time - it was an afternoon of mingling with like-minded folks who resonated with each other unbelievably. We were supposed to meet at 12:30, eat, chat a bit and leave - we even planned games to be ice-breakers. We didn’t need any of those, and ended up spending the whole afternoon together. We have also come up with great ideas for our subsequent meets - picnics, restaurant visits and what not! Being foodies, the list is endless.

Thanks Cooker, for opening your house for us and it was awesome meeting each and every one of you. I never imagined that meeting you all would be so wonderful - in fact, I was a bit of a sceptic when it came to signing up for the meet. Am I glad or what, for taking part! We also decided that we would do a relay of sorts when we write about the meet. After the first and second leg by The cooker and Sreelu respectively, I will pass on the baton to The Taste Tinkerer.