Learning Process

“That sounds a little risqué.” Was the first thing Mom said when I told her about my new food blog. 

The original name of my now month old blog was "Muffin Topless: Healthy Cooking in Florida" but it quickly changed it to Florida Coastal Cooking.  For one, Mom kept checking with me to make sure I wasn't going into some kind of cooking porn and secondly my friend Chris said it was interesting to get an email from me that said cooking muffins and topless.  Doesn't anyone know what a muffin top is?!  I'm trying to stay muffin top-LESS. Get it? (Sigh) Alas, apparently my joke flopped and I decided I wanted to change up my blogging image. I wanted it to be classier as eventually I may want to make some kind of career out of it.   

Serious embarrassment has cause a major temptation to want to go back and delete some old posts because I now know, from all I've read in a month from fellow food bloggers, the photos are not up to par, my recipes are not perfect and my writing skills are exceptionally rusty.  Imagine my horror when I read Better Food Writing : Adjectives by Amy Sherman warning not to use lazy adjectives such as "yummy" or "delicious" and I had just finished writing a post that included both. GAH!  Following that was more great advice from Garrett McCord who wrote 11 Tips to Improve your Blog.  He notes to wait a little bit before posting.  Initially, I would get so excited to get each new post out there I was a posting dervish!  Later I went back and found spelling and grammar mistakes as well as desperately bad composition.  Thank God I'm perfect now.

Just kidding....by all means tell me if you find something I screwed up.  I'd rather fix it than realize ten years down the line I thought recipes was spelled RECEPEES.

On the subject of food photography, most people don't realize how much goes into making something like a grilled cheese sandwich look more appealing than the paintings in the Sistine Chapel. I used to think; put it on a plate. Take a picture.  Done.  Whoa, there is so much more that goes into it.  Lighting. Depth of field. Composition. Equipment.  I have learned my point and shoot camera (that I may as well have excavated on an archeological dig, it is apparently such a technological dinosaur) just doesn't have the features I need to compensate for taking night time food photos properly. However, in Food Photography for Bloggers, written by fellow food blogger, Lolo, I did get two great tidbits for using my little Nikonasaurus.

1) I was reminded about the rule of thirds, for Pete's sake don't take a picture of your bowl of soup straight down and in the middle of the frame, boooooring.  (But wait...why does it work for this Eating Well recipe? I guess because of the bread off to the side?)

And 2) the article says to get in close but warned not to get in too close!  Ooops.  What IS that?  Duh, it's cranberries and pomegranates.  Of course what is confusing is I see exceptions to every rule. 

Another thing I have been contemplating is what is my niche going to be? What makes me unique? I know what I'm not, that's easy.  I am not a classically trained chef.  I am not vegan.  I am not a baker.  I can't bring myself to cook with more than one tablespoon of butter (organic or not) and use white sugar or flour.  I don't use full fat dairy very often.  I marvel at the fact that some of my favorite food bloggers can be so thin in their photos but use white flour, sugar, full fat butter and cheese. If anyone can tell me the secret of this please share!

There are so many things I have in common with the average woman.  I'm a wife and mother. I work full time and have about three minutes to work on my blog before reading half a page of a book at night and collapsing into bed.  I love food. I love eating. I am constantly watching the weight on my 5'3 frame.  Luckily, I also love learning about fitness, nutrition and working out. Currently I do spinning, weights, Body Pump, "fitness yoga" and, my first love, heated Vinyasa flow yoga.  I love farmers markets and Native Sun and Whole Foods.  

So what is it that I want to share through blogging?  I have settled on adding a dash of yoga to my food.  As I said in a previous post, yoga is my meditation in motion. The world would be a better place if people would quit fighting and do yoga. In my practice I'm currently working on Vrschikasana which is scorpion pose on the forearms demonstrated in this yoga blog, the Devil Wears Prana.  I can get into it but I haven't mastered it yet.  Physical challenge and centering is why I continually return for more. 

Where am I going with this you ask?  Why did I even start a food blog?

I want to become a better cook. Food makes people happy.  Who doesn't get excited to sit down to a big plate of _________(insert favorite food here) and feel a sense of accomplishment when something starts out as a random group of ingredients and turns into a masterpiece?  I want an outlet for stress, so for a little while (three minutes to be exact) I can think about food, yoga and photography rather than the economy or children being abducted or bombings, starvation, dog fighting and on and on.  I love learning about the photography.  It's challenging to see if I can make something work with the bare bones equipment, shooting at night and no time for food styling.  But I like a good challenge.

I don’t know if anyone will read my blog, but ultimately it’s the journey that makes it all worthwhile rather than just the end result and, wherever that takes me, I plan to enjoy myself every step of the way.