Wauk Wednesday: 200th Style

It's my 200th post!

I cannot believe that I have written so many posts. What started as something I did maybe twice a month has become something I really love and do twice or more a week. I love sharing my experiences with you and I love the feedback that I have received from my readers.

I have attended Online Blogger Conventions and even attended one in Salt Lake City to help me boost my blog. I have made some great friends all over the US because of my blog and I have learned from fellow bloggers what to do and what not to do. And my local foodie blogger friends are really what helped me get the courage to keep at it and see where my blog would take me.

One of the things that I am really striving for is sticking to a schedule and focusing on my community. And how do I do that? With my stomach of course. If you haven't noticed, I love to cook and eat :)

I have featured a lot of area establishments on my blog and a lot of it focuses around my love of craft beer.

If you search my blog for Waukesha or Beer, you will notice a lot of posts relate to those and most recently, I have attended many beer dinners at Bernie's Tap Room. These are wonderfully run events that pair craft beer with craft food by their amazing chef.

I even attended a KBS tasting at Bernie's last week Monday. The tap room was lucky enough to score a barrel of Founder's Kentucky Bourbon Stout (KBS) and offered it up to the public to come in and try it.

My friends and I stopped in before a get-together to try this rare beer. It was $10 a glass and has an alcohol content of 11.5%. A pint would have put me on my butt! But the smaller sample was delicious. You could taste the alcohol in it, but it wasn't overpowering. The beer is a great conversational beer that you can relax and chit-chat and Bernie's is a great place to do that.

And now for the moment we have all been waiting for.....ok well I have been thrilled since I found out about this. One lucky (local) reader is going to be able to experience a Bernie's Tap Room beer dinner for free thanks to the generosity of my friends at the Tap Room. There will be a beer dinner coming up later this month and one at the end of June. You must live in the area to be eligible to win as we cannot ship one of these meals - you have to experience it first hand. 

Contest Now Closed:
To enter, just leave a comment below telling me what beer and food makes a good pairing to you. One entry per reader please. I will pick a winner at random next week Wednesday, May 15, so get your entry in before midnight on May 14. Please leave your email address if it's not linked to your profile that you comment from so I can get in touch with the winner easily.  

Thanks for coming on this blogging journey with me and I hope you continue to enjoy my posts. Yay for 200!!!!

Pin-It Tuesday: Crockpot Mac N Cheese

I have had a craving for mac n cheese for quite some time. Not the Kraft or Easy Mac variety, but good, wholesome homemade mac n cheese. So of course, I looked to my Pinterest boards and found a crockpot version from Six Sisters' Stuff, who ran the Build Your Blog Conference I attended in Salt Lake City.

Because of their awesome reputation, I knew this was going to taste great and went for it.

I gathered all my ingredients and recently read grating the cheese instead of buying shredded in a bag actually makes the cheese melt better. I bought a Wisconsin cheese from Star-Dairy and shredded it all on my mom's new grater.

 I then melted the cheese with butter and turned it into a great sauce.

While the sauce is melting together, I boiled the noodles. Cook them for a few minutes less than the box says. I used whole wheat noodles for the fiber. 

 Look at that cheese sauce - delicious!

I then added the noodles and the rest of the ingredients to the crockpot. And then I added my secret ingredient, (well secret to my family), chili powder for a little bite.

 Then basically after a few stirs, the crockpot will do the rest of the work for me for two hours.

 And then the final product - creamy, gooey, heavenly-scented mac n cheese! I could have added a bit more chili powder as it wasn't too apparent, but I didn't want to overdo it.

We served this up with bun-ess turkey burgers to get some protein. It was a great meal on a cold January day. It had a creaminess that the box varities just can't provide. And it was so simple. You must try this recipe!

Build Your Blog Conference

I'm really excited to be traveling for my first blogging convention. Salt Lake City - here I come for the Build Your Blog Conference on February. 16

I have never been to Salt Lake City and a friend of mine, Tiffany, wanted to travel more this year, so we decided to make a long weekend out of it and head out for Thursday - Monday.

I'm nervous and anxious but most of all excited to attend this event and really figure out things on my blog.

The schedule was just released for the event recently and I couldn't be more excited for the topics. But unfortunately some of them are at the same time and going solo means I have some tough decisions to make in the next two weeks before it starts.

The breakout seminars are all sooooooo good, with great bloggers running the sessions. I hope to be able to partner with someone or a few someones to be able to cover as much ground as possible. But if I go it alone, I know that I will leave the conference with so much more information to boost my blog, that I will have zero complaints.

The biggest thing I hope to accomplish out of this conference is a complete media kit on my blog. I hope to make my blog more appealing to the local community and increase my readership in the local area. 

Tiffany and I will have half a day Thursday, most of Friday, Saturday evening and all day Sunday to enjoy some fun things in the Salt Lake City/Sandy area. I bought a Groupon for a sushi place in Salt Lake City and am so excited to use it. (Yep I signed up for Groupon & Living Social alerts for SLC so that I can see if any other awesome deals come across during the time we are there.)

If anyone has traveled to SLC or heard of great things to check out while we are there, please share. I'm sure eating at some great places will be a part of it, but doing something outdoorsy will be great too - maybe a hiking area or a good walking tour of a city.