Recording and Notes from the February 11 Meeting
On Wintering Hacks, Substack as a Late Night Dinner Party Conversation and More
Today’s meeting in the Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific time zone, brought together a lovely group of members calling in from UK, Portugal, Poland and Croatia. I want to thank Lizzie Wingfield Sanaa Boutayeb Naïm Bruce from The Lemon Grove Amela Marin Alison Krupnick Melissa Norman Mark Thomas for making the conversation — on what is yet another cold and wet day in Portugal where I am based — cozy and warm.
Speaking of cozy and warm, we talked about the hacks that make winter bearable and cozy. Soup, candles, pellet stoves, cake and exercise were mentioned, among other things (though some of us more into cake than exercise).
We also talked about what we love about Substack, and Alison, who, if I am not mistaken, has been on Substack longer than most of the participants on the call, said the best moments on Substack felt like a great conversation that you’d have in a kitchen of a dinner party at 2 am. We all loved that image and agreed that connections and interesting conversations with people from all corners of the globe have made our Substack experience meaningful and time well spent.
We also talked about how notes work, and I have found this useful article from Claire Venus ✨ here: 3 Easy steps to Substack Notes (some of the content may be paywalled) that people may wish to check out.
The next meeting for the Mastermind is the US/Europe time zone one, next week, on February 18. You can find the registration info in this post below:
The March meeting for the Europe/Africa/Asia-Pacific group will be taking place on March 18, at the usual time, and registration details will be shared in a couple of weeks. If you’d like to teach a short masterclass in the next call, please reach out or put your name and topic here at this LINK.
And now, here is the recording and bit of a background story, since it seems that I somehow need to experience some technical issues every single time. This time, I have accidentally recorded the breakout room and spent several hours trying to edit it out of the recording (because what happens in a breakout room, stays in the breakout room). I now know how to clip/edit a video (maybe not ready to teach a masterclass on it yet). Another thing I forgot was that when recording a Zoom call I need to use the ‘show self view’ option, otherwise you can only hear me and not see me (mistake I made in the 1st meeting I hosted for Mastermind in November last year). So in this one, I only make a video appearance in the last 20 or so minutes of the recording. So, now you know all the back of the room drama. And here is the video, I hope you’ll enjoy our conversation. And maybe it will inspire you to join us in March.
As always, remember to reach out to Rebecca Blackwell or me if you wanted to have your name added to the Directory we host and make use of the chat, so you can connect with food writers in other time zones.





It was great to finally join a meeting and feel like part of the tribe 😊
Thanks for organising / hosting Liza!
Great meeting with lots of great thoughts and sharing of ideas. I am now going to put more heart and soul into my posts and dust off my big Canon camera to take better images! Many thanks for hosting and keeping the conversations flowing, Liza