It’s always amazing to me how many people are writing about food. It’s something that everyone can relate to I suppose. It’s a more generally acceptable subject than sex, sleeping is not as stimulating a subject and breathing is something that most people take for granted. That leaves eating and drinking as the most universal topics out there as they are two of the few things that everyone in the world is forced to do whether they like it or not. Fortunately, for most of us, they can also be two of the most pleasurable and easily attainable experiences.
When I first discovered the world of food blogging I admit to becoming a bit of a junkie. Each new site led to countless others and I compulsively clicked through links to see what other people were writing about. I would skip from site to site, skimming pages and placing bookmarks at addresses that looked worth returning to for an in depth read. These days I do this more sporadically and click to links from sites that I personally find interesting. It’s a big world out there and in my experiences, even the writers that I enjoy do not necessarily link to other pages of interest. But hey, you never know if you don’t make the effort to find out.
The most intriguing thing about these sites is how very personalized they all are. Certainly some of them have been set up for personal gain, an evolving resume of sorts, but most of them are just people writing about the things that interest them. It’s a million different voices and perspectives that might never have found an outlet or an audience elsewhere. I learn something new from each site I visit, even the ones that I don’t return to. I am often struck by people’s willingness to put their ideas and their lives out there. You can read the comments and see relationships developing among readers and writers in way that almost never does in other forms of literature and journalism. How often do people finish a good book or a thought provoking article and immediately write a letter to the author to thank them or even to share their own ideas with them? Blogs allow people to do that instantly, through e-mail and comments, much to the benefit of both parties. It seems a much friendlier world than the real one. Somehow the combination of revelation and anonymity brings out the best in people allowing them to share in ways they might not be able or willing to do so face to face with strangers. Or perhaps that’s just what it does for me, because someone who takes the time to read our blog is interested in what we have to say. There’s no coercion involved because if people don’t like it they can leave and never come back and you’ll never know. Even if you only have one reader, that’s still one person who is interested in what you’re saying. In my case I always know that at least one person is reading…but that’s yet another reason why family can be a good thing.
Frankly we started this blog to keep from losing our minds out here in the wilderness. Some days it works better than others. The problem with being a part of a start up, this start up in particular, is that once we opened there was a lot of down time. There are things that you are supposed to do before you open your doors. Marketing, publicity and creating a buzz before opening are crucial to a quick start up. Unfortunately that didn’t happen here and we’ve been playing catch up ever since. The upside is that we have a great kitchen and access to amazing purveyors and ingredients. The downside is that there aren’t as many people to cook for, as we’d like, so we started cooking for the blog, which is really cooking for ourselves I suppose. We created the blog as a motivational tool to keep us interested in what we’re doing and to help us explore food photography. We really just try to have fun with it. It has actually helped us out a lot, clarifying ideas and techniques, and helping to hone our culinary edges. Certainly it’s more constructive than having us sharpen our edges on each other in moments of extreme boredom.
