Drowning in Delicious

After the nice compliment from House of Annie (they asked to use one of my recipes on their April recipe round up that used - obviously in part - food from the garden), I got caught up in a marathon of reading food blogs. There are food blog search sites by recipe, or by the names of the blogs themselves. There are awards for top food blogs by various media, and I've just chosen one example of each.

These are examples of vegetables, not of stuff about food blogs...but food, get it?

But what I like best is to go to a blog, which I usually find because I'm looking for a recipe, or I've found a reference to a food I've never heard or read about. If I like the blog, I'll read it a bit, then start visually wandering around...where is the writer from? What's their story? What other blogs do they recommend? The fall down the slippery slope seems endless, a mental movable feast of sometimes brilliant writing, gentle humour, and fabulous photography. Were all of these people taking photos of their food in the years before digital cameras? Clever, edgy, fascinating stuff here!

Not here, silly. In the blogs. This is just a picture of meats and fish...you know...food?

Some of these people have gotten book deals, cook books, natch, and I'm sure some will get a deal on how to write a food blog, or magazine article offers. While that number is small, relative to the number of food blogs out there, it's still impressive. Without the magic world of the computer, the internet and the ability to allow users to SEE the food being discussed and how it's prepared, how would Sane Jane, who stays home tending the chickens and the kids and her blog with no high-falutin' connections, living SoFarInTheCountryIt'sNotOnTheMap get an agent from a major agency in NYC to say, "Hey! This isn't just another one of your grandma's food blogs! I'm going to contact her about a potential book deal!!" If there is a blog named Sane Jane, I really didn't mean you, sorry! And no, I'm not going to look...yet.

Yes, another stolen visual; this time it is spices and herbs, you know, that go in and on...food.

I could go on and on about the socialogical aspects of technology, because after using the computer in a *live* manner for going on 20 years now...ouch...I'm still wowed by the simplest of its magical powers; take email, for one of them. But I won't go on because it's more fun to go to the food blogs I liked so much today...just because their famous doesn't mean they aren't like you and me. They just work harder. Oh. That...

I'll start with Matt Bites' great blog, which he self describes as 'a man obsessed with food, drink & everything inbetween'. He's funny, he takes great photos and he's about as surreally down to earth as he can be. I got to his blog by following the brownie crumb trail leading through Pioneer Woman Cooks which lead me to Smitten Kitchen which, I think, led me to Matt. Maybe.

{time out} Somewhere in there I had to read about an herb I'd never heard of, papalo, a supposedly sort of, but not like, cilantro and/or racao. The web site I've linked to, Nichol's Nursery, is one I've ordered seeds from for 30 years...especially back when our garden included kohlrabi and rhubarb and jerusalem artichokes and peanuts....so I'm not real suprised they have papalo!

A Seated Woman Preparing Food in a Kitchen
by Franciscus Carree

(Fran wasn't real imaginative in naming his painting, but I like her a lot - her laptop is just out of view, as you can see by her glazed stare; she has pulled up some food blogs on meat preparation)

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Of course, many of the recipes are, for me, like window shopping at some very expensive but fabulous store (for me that would be a kitchen gadget store like Cook's World). When I am around things I like and would like but they are way out of my price range, I am free to just enjoy them and not lust for them, sort of like watching a good looking movie star. Why bother with the lust, just enjoy! So are these recipes to me, since so many of the ingredients are not available on a whim. Or maybe even a shopping trip. Though I DID finally get some real vanilla! Hector got it in (at Milka's) and I bought four bottles. The next day, the rest of them were gone. Gotta be quick around here...


So check out some food blogs. Get creative. Who knows, in a few cyber years you may be on a book tour! And as one more tangent crosses my mind...isn't it nice to know that with all the techno gadgetry in the world, it's still just really nice to hold a cookbook in your hands...especially an old one with grease stains and food bits and underlined parts, with old magazine clippings for Apple Brown Betty or Meat Loaf Surprise....

Yes, that surprised me too....I really meant something more like this:


Have a glorious Sunday afternoon! It's so disgustingly beautiful here today I'll give you a peek...I must go outside now.