Weekly Dish

Since I began blogging about food, several people have asked me how I find time to do it, why I do it, where I find the energy to cook a different meal every night and then write about it, etc. There’s a meme going around, where different food bloggers list seven things about themselves in various categories. Rorie over at Milk & Honey tagged me to do it a few days ago, and while the seven things I say most often might or might not be interesting to you, I thought it would be useful for me to articulate exactly what it is I enjoy about this blogging business. And since I’m somewhat of a nonconformist, I’d like to offer it in narrative, rather than list, form (if that’s okay with you. Please don’t call the meme police .

I should start off by saying that I do not make any money doing this (although various relatives and family friends are always giving me suggestions about how I might start), and as a matter of fact, I pay a (very) small yearly fee for my domain name and for web hosting. In the same way that another person might pay for a video game or to play golf, I pay to get to write about food and publish it for all the world to see. Some people might find that strange, maybe because there are people who get paid to write about food or maybe because so many people consider writing (and cooking, for that matter) a chore.

But I love to write. I always have. When I was in the seventh grade, my hometown newspaper ran a column I wrote every week. What did a junior high student have to contribute to The Clinton News? I don’t know. Probably not much. But the experience of having other people read what I wrote, of having someone care about what I had to say, of having my mom’s friends say, “I agree with you about such-and-such,” or “I like the way you said that,” affected the way I thought about myself and the way I thought about writing.

Those experiences continued into high school–I had wonderful, gifted English teachers who praised me when I wrote well and challenged me to write better. And so I followed the natural progression: in college I became an English major. And then a magazine editor. And then back to school to study English again. And here I am, in school again. All the while, pursuing this thing, this writing thing, trying to figure out how it fits into my life.

The magazine was fun for a while–my favorite part was getting to write the editor’s note each month–but writing and editing other people’s writing about fancy houses and parties didn’t quite seem fulfilling. And it wore me out. And while I love being in school, what I learned in my last few years of undergrad and in my master’s program is that writing in an academic way about literature doesn’t quite do it for me either. For one thing, I have to completely don another self to fake the writing style that’s acceptable, and for another thing, I don’t really enjoy reading that stuff (literary criticism), so why would I want to write it?

And so now that I’ve found my home, the place where I feel useful and gifted and purposeful about life–as a writing teacher–I find that I need–and want–to practice what I teach. I tell my students that the key to successful writing is to find something they’re passionate about. I also tell them that through the writing process, through figuring out what it is they have to say, they are also figuring out who they are. And I tell them to write. A lot. About what they care about.
Food blogging meets those criteria for me. It allows me the space to write about something I care about. Not just food, per say, although I do love it. But the act of making cooking a part of everyday life, of making food not just for sustenance or survival, but to communicate to my husband, family, and friends that I care about them, and to express my creativity in a productive way.

Through that act, writing about my passion for food, I also continue to learn about myself and about how I fit into the world–both by connecting with those I already know and by connecting with a whole world of other people who share my passion. One of the other things I believe about writing is that sharing it builds a sense of community because you are sharing yourself with your audience. I have found that to be true in most every writing situation (even when I’ve read my stuffy academic papers at conferences or in class). Maybe because I am initially very shy about meeting new people, or maybe because I feel like I am truer to myself when that self is expressed in writing, I enjoy being able to connect with other people through this medium.

I have been slow to catch on to this aspect of the food blogging community,–for many of the same reasons that I am slow to meet new people in everyday life, I’m sure–but most people who do this thing that I do also are looking for a sense of comradery, for people with whom they can share their taste in food or their writing style or their sense of humor. One of the reasons blogs have the feature where people can leave comments is so that other people can enter into the discussion you’ve started, if only to say, “Hello, I’m reading what you have to say.”

For a long time, I didn’t leave comments on other people’s sites because, like I do in my everyday life, I would think, “they don’t care about what I have to say,” or “they already have their discussion group established,” or “they don’t know me.” But as other people began to contact me about my own site, and as I began to pay attention to the kinds of things other people wrote in their comments, I realized that all of this is simply a way to get to know other people whom I would never meet on the street (mostly because they all live far, far away from me) with whom I share a basic, common interest. I can learn from them. Like a big open classroom (my dream come true!), the food blogging world is full of people who have passion and knowledge and who want to share it with others.

There’s also that I love photography and have always wanted to get better at it. And that I like to learn about technology and to figure things out. But those are things that are really only about me. What I love most about food blogging is that I can engage all of those parts of who I am, while maybe, just maybe providing a little inspiration for someone else to get in the kitchen and cook. Whether for a loved one, in order to meet the daily need for food, or just for the plain and simple enjoyment of it, if one person foregoes takeout pizza in favor of making a homecooked meal, I will feel that this blog has done its job. Quite simply, I write about food in this format because I enjoy it and hope you enjoy it too.

Rather than tag seven other people to participate in listing lists of seven, as the higher order of meme decrees I should, I will simply say that if you’re reading this and you find enjoyment either in the reading or the writing about food blogs, I’d love to know what your reasons are. And I don’t care how many you have. If you are so inclined, feel free to leave comments on this post, either listing your reasons, or telling us that you’ve posted your reasons on your blog. Either way, I care what you think, and I’m happy that you’re reading, or writing, or both. I could only hope that you’re cooking too.

Posted: Saturday, January 14th, 2006 at 8:16 am Filed under: Miscellaneous Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.