Culinarty

I wouldn’t describe myself as a nosy person but the truth is that is so not true when it comes to food and food-related stories *blush*. Could you forgive me for being like that? Would it help if I told you I probably wouldn’t be blogging today if Curiosity and I wouldn’t have met at a very early age?

You need proof? Well here it comes. As I was planning to write a post on what brought me into the world of food blogging I caught myself wondering what would other food bloggers stories sound like. So last week I’ve been bugging some of them with questions like “why did you start blogging about food and what brought you into this great community?” or “was it something you decided one afternoon while thinking about what you should cook for dinner that day or did you thought long and hard before jumping into it?”. It must have sounded like a survey to them . Please remember that we’re talking about seriously nice people here! That is why they agreed to share their stories with us. Sending a big thank you their way!!!

Here are their stories…

Rachel (S[d]OC) of The Essential Rhubarb Pie

I think when I started my food blog a little over a year ago, I was barely aware that “food blogs” existed. I really really love entertaining (I often say I live to give dinner parties) and I found myself talking about it a lot in my MySpace blog, where hardly anyone cared because most of my friends are not into cooking. I really wanted a good online space to save and possibly share all of the ideas for recipes I came up with. At first I was actually considering doing video cooking demonstrations and doing witty short videos and just posting them on my MySpace video page. Then I thought, “People consider me a good writer. Why not just write about my cooking?” I had been hearing the phrase “food blog” a bit more than usual, so I decided to go in that direction. The Essential Rhubarb Pie was born. Some of my other blog title ideas: Rhubarb Pie!; Pork, Pie, Chocolate, Ice Cream & Cheese; Spicy, Fried, or Chocolate; No Fish!

Corinne of A Gourmet Love Affair

Daniel, my husband, and I got started one day after I had developed an addiction to various food blogs. I simply told him I wanted to start one… and he wanted in! We brainstormed different names and eventually came up with A Gourmet Love Affair because after we had gotten married we discovered how fun it was to cook together. We still have all sorts of fun playing with each others’ dishes and making the other guess what we put in it… he’s always been good with smells/flavors, and I’ve always had the technical know-how (from watching tons of cooking shows)… so we make a great team. Even though he works (while I get to go to school and do the housekeeping) he still keeps me thinking about new foods/meals and I keep him guessing on what I used and how I did it. We compliment each other’s styles and our “muse” seems to bounce back and forth between us, sometimes staying in his court for a while, and sometimes leaving him and inspiring me.

Clumbsy of Clumbsy Cookie

Well I just starting blogging about food a little over 3 months and really it seams I belong to this great community for a longer time. I have another blog that I started more than 3 years ago, basically for my family and friends when I was living abroad, so I wasn’t new to the blogging thing. I don’t remember when did I stumble upon a food blog for the first time but I started exploring and all I could see was more and more great food blogs everywhere. I though I would like to do that someday, but then I wasn’t sure why would people want to read it. I though maybe I hadn’t anything new to offer and it was better to just be a reader. So I was an avid food blogger reader for a while. But last April I was bored one afternoon and I decided to start playing with blogger and next thing I new I had a blog. I thought at first nobody would come to visit so I though it would be at least good as a way of collecting recipes or serve as an excuse for a couple of experiments I had on standby. Now I don’t even remember life pre-blog, lol! What I enjoy the most about it is to share my food obsession with other food obsessed people! It feels good not to feel crazy alone!

Hanna of Hannan Soppa

I really didn’t even have a clue about the huge amount of food blogs in the end of last year. I had studied to become a restaurant cook for a couple of years and one day was surfing the net looking for recipes, when I found all these fabulous food blogs. And, well, as I always am sitting in front of my computer and had a hard drive full of food pictures, I decided to give it a go. And on that road I still am. How boring, sorry

Dragon of Dragon’s Kitchen

Why did I start blogging? My friends and family kept asking for my recipes so instead of writing them down each time, I started the blog. It’s as simple as that. After I started posting for a while I began to discover other food blogs and I was hooked. I’ve started focusing more on the photography in the past couple of months and I’ve been having a great time.

Sefa of Food Is Love

Here is my story *smile*. Back in Indonesia, I was a spoiled youngest child in my family. The kitchen was not my playground and I even hated the smell of it. My mom always told me that one day I will get married and have to cook for my husband, but I didn’t care. I told my mom that I’ll search for a husband who can cook or not a picky eater who loves to eat from the street chicken noodle vendor. Everything changed 180° by the time I started my life in Germany. I started to cook in order to survive and to save money. After some time, I found myself in love with cooking, I love to spend hours in the kitchen just to make Indonesian foods that are hard to find in Germany. When I started to blog at the end of 2004, I started to fill the recipe column with all the foods that I’ve tried. Some of my friends (non Indonesian) kept asking me for recipes. To make it easy for them, I made a food blog in English. But that blog was deleted by mistake. I decided to stop making an English food blog (kinda frustrated a bit, since I’d written lots of recipes there and joined many events). But again, I couldn’t say no when my non Indonesian friends asked me to make a new English food blog. It wasn’t a bad idea at all, since I could promote Indonesian foods and Arabian foods (where my hubby comes from) and, at the same time, learn to cook dishes from other countries and make new friends. I find that friendship between foodie bloggers is so unique and true. I hope my friendship with them will last forever and my humble food blog can help people in searching recipes of their dream food and find love through it, like I see love in my husband’s eyes every time he eats my food.

Kittie of Kittens in the Kitchen

The first time I came across a food blog whilst surfing the internet a couple of months before. (I’ve always used recipes as a basis, and seldom used one as is!) The recipe I found was this Ginger Chicken by Sher from What Did you Eat? who tragically died of a heart attack earlier this month. I remember being slightly confused by the idea that someone was combining a personal website with food and recipes. I had never really understood the whole blogging thing - I don’t think I even realised that’s what it was! So anyway, I sent my mum the link, then promptly forgot all about it! Fast-forward a couple of months and I was trying to work out how to track down a curry I had heard of - from a small town in south India! It seems strange now - especially considering I work with computers and the Internet for a living - but I had never considered using the internet for recipes, beyond BBC Food and UKTV Network. Back in the days when I used to read cookbooks like porn! I never did find that curry - but I did discover Indian food blogs. Hundreds of them - with interesting recipes, ideas and things I never even knew I didn’t know!! And from that, I followed chains of comments from India to Malaysian, South Africa, USA, back to India, the UK, etc etc etc and realised what a huge international world the food blogosphere actually is! That was it - I was hooked. I started on my journey into Indian food blogging at lunchtime. By teatime I was buzzing. When my boyfriend got home at 8pm that night I couldn’t wait to tell him my new plan. I was going to become a food blogger. I can’t remember why I chose Kittens in the Kitchen! Other than because I have two cats… who live in the kitchen. I wanted to be clumsy cook - but someone already had that one in the bag! (Though she’s now renamed as Caviar and Codfish - whereas I’m still clumsy - with cats! I had a brief stall - eek, how do you write the first post?! But I finally bit the bullet and got my first recipe up within the month. Since then I reckon I blog on average 3 times a week. Blogging has become such a big part of my life now. I can’t believe how much time it takes up - and that I don’t mind giving up that time at all!

The Blonde Duck of A Duck In Her Pond doesn’t consider herself a food blogger but she writes the most wonderful stories about creatures that love food.

Most people blog about food because they’re wonderful cooks, bakers or dessert artists. They dream of food the way a painter dreams of images on a canvas. Give them a can of beans and a loaf of bread and they can create something that you had never dreamed of. I can’t do that. I can follow directions, at best. The last time I tried to create something it looked like a cross between King Ranch Chicken and Beef Stroganoff. But in the Pond, I talk about food a lot. Every once in awhile I’ll share a recipe or photos of a nightly dinner. I’ve been known to pen quite a few odes to waffles, peanut butter, pancakes and bacon cheeseburgers. And pie. I adore pie. I’ll do anything for pie. However, most of the time others talk about food for me. There’s Callie and her candy animals, a group of critters created from a candy batch gone haywire in her play oven set. Then there’s the animals in the Land of the Flowered Bed. Pumble the bumblebee is always baking honey cakes or eating something, and the seals are always up for a good cup of tea and some salmon and seaweed. By the way, these are stuffed animals that live in a world of Flying Pigs (who really want some tasty grass) and ducks that live in a bathroom. (They prefer to call it a spa.) There’s the GLUG (Ginormous Lime-green Unusual Gnat) who flings himself on windshields and faces demanding tasty leaves and wuffling Chihuahuas begging for cashews (roasted only, please.) Normally in every story I write, there’s some element of food or a character that is obsessed with a certain type of food. Since I’m obsessed with food, that’s probably why they are too. After all, if Pumble eats a pie every few sentences, I kinda am too. Even if it’s all in my head. And who can say it is? Isn’t the best part of eating the anticipation of placing something that is bound to be the most delicious thing ever created in your mouth? It’s the dream, the fantasy. Just like the creatures who frolic in the Pond. At least this way, I can still fit in my jeans. And if anyone has any pie they don’t want, I’ll take that too. The critters in the Pond are hungry.

Adam of Baking With Dynamite

Why did I start food blogging? I think it happens like many things in life, which is like an “educated spontaneity”. That might sound like a jumbo shrimp oxymoron, but I think it makes sense. We all wander the internet for recipes. I don’t think I know anyone who likes to eat the same exact food everyday, so the best place to find ideas for anything is online. You can start with websites or you can stumble onto some blogs. I chose to look at blogs because the pictures were awesome. I’m very much a kinestetic and visual learner (I’m a chiropractor right?) so anything with pictures helps me greatly. So I would find some recipes and try them, and they would be awesome. I would then change up some of the flavors, or make them healthier to suit my own needs or whatever. Then after a few years of this, I wondered if I should enter and have a blog of my own. I’ve always received compliments on my baking, and got nicknames like “Betty”(Crocker), and always took them in stride. So, here comes the “educated” part. I sat down and thought… could I do this?… and most importantly… do I have the time? I think time is the largest factor of the equation. My friends think a blog takes tons of time, but honestly it probably takes me an hour to do one post. At this point in my life, I have this kind of time. Maybe once I become a practicing doctor, I’m not 100% sure. The reason I don’t mind putting time in, is because of the people. I look at it like a high school job. When I was 16, I was a bagger at a supermarket. It was the easiest, most mind numbing job ever. Dude, you put stuff in a bag and flirt with women. It was sooo easy, but I liked it. It wasn’t the job itself you see, but it was the people at the job. I met so many cool people there, and looked forward to work to hear about stories, and make some new ones. Food bloggers are the same way. I’ve met so many cool people, and I think we are very similar in many ways. We have great senses of humor, we don’t sweat the small stuff, and we are all genuinely nice people. I’ve never met any of my food friends in person, but yet I would not hesitate to invite them to my house. Maybe I’m a little too optimistic, maybe I’m still naive at 25, but I go with gut and instincts on these things.

Lo of Burp! Where Food Happens

When Lore asked me to tell the story of how I came to the world of food blogging, I had to take pause. How did it happen? I’ve always been a writer. And I’ve always loved food. In fact, I’ve been writing and cooking ever since I can remember. Meals were always a huge focus in my family. Dinner was the time we all reconnected, and mom always made sure that we had plenty of delicious, healthy sustenance while we shared stories around the table. As I grew older, I saw cooking as a creative outlet and began to add my own spin to old family recipes. In college, I cooked dinner for my roommates and hosted theme dinners in our tiny three-room apartment. Soon, nourishing friends and family with food became an integral part of who I was. When Peef and I got married, I vowed that we’d keep in touch with friends and family-regardless of time or distance. As part of this effort, we published a quarterly paper newsletter that we called “News From Peef and Lo.” The newsletter was filled with funny anecdotes about our life together as newlyweds, and it included a regular column about the foods that were cooking in our kitchen. Friends laughed at our experiments with tofu and family marveled at our ability to cook “real” meals even on weeknights. The newsletter became a fixture, and we even created a concept for Burp!, an imaginary restaurant where we served our culinary creations. After ten years of publishing a paper newsletter with ever-increasing readership, we took the show online in an effort to save paper and postage. News from Peef and Lo became the home for funny anecdotes and photos of the house and cats. And Burp! became a living, breathing food blog where we shared our meals and recipes. Since our first post in June of 2007, we’ve been absolutely floored by the community of onlookers that have taken an interest in what’s going on in our kitchen. I had no idea when we took our silly stories (and bad photography) online that they would become part of something larger. The fact is, I’ve always had at least 20-30 food blogs bookmarked in my browser; but, I never imagined that anyone would bookmark me. It’s been an incredible experience! To have so many people supporting our efforts-by reading and commenting and inspiring us to do bigger and better things in the kitchen-is phenomenal. These days I can’t imagine life without the blog!

Hope you enjoyed reading their stories! It was nice to find out a bit more about you and the things that brought you on board . If you’re also a food blogger and you’d like me to share your story in a future post (told you I’m nosy ), I’d be glad to. Just drop me a message at .