Food Blog

20 Most Inventive Cupcakes Known To Man

Here’s a shot of the elk ragout, cheese curd poutine at The Gage. Just about as satisfying a meal as can be invented.

And the char burger and truffle fries at Edzo’s.

The 8oz char, nicely done, meaty with just the right amount of juice. The truffle fries are loaded with powerful truffle salt, giving me a nice truffle buzz for the rest of the afternoon. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten an order of fries that needed absolutely no catsup.

Some links that have been sitting around in my bookmarks gathering dust.

Tactical Canned Bacon Will Be “Edible” For 10 Years

Is it ethical to engineer livestock that feel no pain?

Oktoberfest Etiquette

20 Amazing Vintage Alcohol Advertisements

10 Sculptures Made of Butter (it is State Fair Season).

The Illinois State fair promised their butter cow sculpture will be “something unique, special and unlike anything that’s been done at the State Fair before”. It’s a display of a cow and Abraham Lincoln. Their butter cow cam isn’t working.

You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster, Dan Barber of Blue Hill writes about the tomato blight in the northeast. “According to plant pathologists, this killer round of blight began with a widespread infiltration of the disease in tomato starter plants. Large retailers like Home Depot, Kmart, Lowe’s and Wal-Mart bought starter plants from industrial breeding operations in the South and distributed them throughout the Northeast.”

How to bake cheeseburger cupcakes

Is there a political meaning to the beer summit having BLUE moon and RED Stripe?

CORRECTION: Prof. Gates must have decided the political and cultural implications of a Red Stripe would have torn the country asunder, and decided to have a Sam Adams Light.

Some good food shots over at Strobist’s latest assignment/contest.

Boxed Red Bull ingredients

“100% Natural” Can Be 0% Green

Fancy Fast Food

It’s time For Real video made by Olgivy Canada for eatreallocal.ca, Hellman’s Canada. Great food graphics illustrate the need to eat local (it’s about Canada, but it’s certainly the same message for the US).

Beer truck spills on the Tri-state. I love the comments.

“We’re giving bees high-fructose corn syrup”.

The Almond and the Bee – short 2:49 video highlight of a longer talk on farming and sustainability.

The first post of Food Blog was May 1st 2002. Back when ‘Food Blog’ sounded like a brilliant, original name.

There was a handful of food blogs, and comparatively few (tens of thousands?) of regular blogs. Communities of food bloggers hadn’t organized, food blogging events hadn’t happened yet, and restaurants and cooks never heard of us, never mind feared us or offered us the same perks or service print reviewers got. I was questioned like a criminal when I first asked a PR firm to lend me a shot of a food product, to use to illustrate a post. And advertising? A store actually requested I remove a favorable post I gave them because they thought I would divert all the traffic about them away from their AOL hosted page.

Real work diverted me away from daily, or even weekly posts about 3 years into the adulthood of this blog, and I watched food blogging become a profession, and there’s even a food blogging movie now. Food blogs went from sloppy Angelfire sites to professionally photographed pieces of art. I’ve witnessed many fun, entertaining blogs turn into slogging daily grinds of PR campaigns and shills. Many more have come and gone – had their fun and success along the way, but inevitably, other duties, hobbies and pursuits fight for the attention, time and passion it takes to maintain a healthy blog.

I’ve never considered shutting this down, even after some periods of long dormancy. The reasons for starting and keeping this blog have always stayed the same. There was never any reason to give up, but there was never a reason to force posts, just to maintain readership, keep up traffic for advertising or for google juice. For many years this was the number one search result for ‘food blog’, and it may have deserved it. These days there’s many more out there that deserve to be found when newcomers start exploring the hobby/profession/business/whatever it is. This thing will always be around, but only when I have something to say, and I have time to say it.

I still get almost daily requests to get on my decrepit list, most are nothing more than vehicles for adwords. In fact I see many destined for failure, that the signs of a new blog’s motivation becomes obvious, and the predictions of their short lifespans are easy. But once in awhile I do see new inspired bloggers, passionate about food, photography, community, their heritage, their culture, writing, communicating, educating and entertaining. These new-comers are just as excited about the ‘medium’ as us ‘old timers’. Unlike most of the posts recently, I’m going to approve comments to this post, at least for a reasonable amount of time. I’m not normally able to edit the sincere requests from those who just want my google juice but I’m going to try, since I’m sure there are many how deserve to get some. I might even make a list…

In any case, thanks to any readers who are still around after all these years.

Long live the food blog^*!

^* I mean the food blog genre – you know what I mean.