Betty Crocker

I was driving down to St. George for the marathon when I got a call from the Betty Crocker people wanting to know if would consider coming out for a couple of days to meet everyone and to shoot a short video for their website. I said I would think about it but in the back of my mind I thought there was no way I was going to go. I had just left my kids to go run the marathon and didn't want to leave them again. I didn't know if I even had to option to leave them again because I had no idea who would watch the kids.



The Betty Crocker wall...

I don't like leaving my kids. I feel guilty. I take my role as a mom very seriously and don't want to feel like I am always trying to get rid of my kids. And it's not like I'm trying to be the next Rachael Ray. I blog about food because I love food. Then I talked to John and he said he thought it was an opportunity I shouldn't pass by and said I should try to work it out so I could go. So I did. And I'm glad I did. And I didn't feel that guilty because I hardly got any sleep and was wasted from going nonstop for two days.

I couldn't resist...Ooh hoo.

The first day we checked into our hotels and went straight to a trendy restaurant with a couple of the head people at Platefull which is a division of General Mills that sponsors the ads on my site and who I do some freelance work for over at Tablespoon writing blogs. I got to see the behind the scenes of the whole place. They employees all joke that General Mills is a little cult. They don't want you to have to leave the building (which is huge) so they have a hair salon, nail salon, doctor, post office, restaurants, grocery store, and gym all in their building. Later that night they took us into the city to a nice restaurant. Yum. I love that on the itinerary they scheduled in eating every couple of hours.   




My favorite part was the taste testing panel that they let us sit on. The people there don't actually swallow anything. They have a spit cup that they spit into after they taste. I ate everything.

The two other bloggers that were invited with me...Sarah and Mandy. Mandy I immediately clicked with. She just won $25,000 in the Real Women of Philidelphia contest with Paula Deen and is touring with Paula right now.

Day 2 we woke up early to get ready to shoot the video. They told us to come with washed hair and clean faces in our pajamas. I don't want to sound ungrateful but I HATED my hair and makeup. They painted on Groucho Marx eyebrows and gave me prom hair. I look like I did in high school. I snuck into the bathroom and tried to rub my eyebrows off. When I came back they looked at me and like a 2 year old who pulls her hair bow out I was scolded and reapplied with even darker Groucho Marx eyebrows. I guess they look better on camera. Uh. Okay. 

In my comfy clothes...they told me not to change because it would be a shoulders up picture...haha.

Next I had two hours with the Betty Crocker food stylists. We made one of my recipes and they gave me a 101 on what they do. Of course their camera cost a billion dollars and makes anything look good. It was my favorite part and I sucked all the information I could out of them. To take a picture of one brownie they made 9 pans of brownies. Crazy!

 I like this picture because Chuck is looking at me like I'm crazy.

The last thing we did was shoot the video. My video is supposed to air on Betty Crocker in February. When they asked me to do it on romantic dinners I didn't want to tell them that for romantic dinners we usually go out to eat. Videos are not my thing. I was nervous and stuttered. The producers were the same people that do Survivor so they said that they could make me look good. They just did a video with Tommy Lee and they said if they could make a babbling idiot like him look good, they could make me look good. I just wanted to know if they could edit out my Groucho Marx eyebrows.:)

After 2 1/2 hours of shooting for 1 1/2 minute video I was exhausted and sweating and had to literally run to catch my flight home.

It was an eye opening experience and I'm glad John pushed me to go...