Recipe Sources Investigations

Due to an overload of work and a racking cough, I have not cooked anything yet this week, figuring I should save that for when I can do so without infecting everyone who eats it. ;] However, I have been spending some time finding new recipes to add to my already long list. But, I have been finding all of my recipes from magazines or bettycrocker.com and I wanted to see who else out there is blogging about food just like I am. Maybe they will have ideas for me, or recipes, or suggestions for how to make cooking posts engaging and entertaining, rather than just posting pictures and a detail of what I did.

Guilty Kitchen has been a fantastic find. The layout is so appealing, right from the beginning - her photography is amazing and I love the header font. But her posts are what really capture me. Each post has at least one, though usually two or three, recipes with only one picture of the final product. But each post also has a story behind what she has made and why she has made it. There are pictures of her husband and child, stories of life with them, and personal connections to the food she has made for or with them. This is by far the most endearing blog I have found, and though her recipes sometimes (okay . . mostly) outstrip my budget (and sometimes my taste - she is super fancy sometimes!), I know I will continue reading it just for the connection her outside of her cooking.

Simple Daily Recipes has been another great read, and not only because the layout is similar (though far more sophisticated and appealing) to mine. ;] It is very clearly laid out in terms of categorizing and how to find specific types of recipes, and plus soooo many of them look absolutely delicious. Lastly, I think what I love the most about this blog are the comments. Prof. Groom has been talking to us a lot about commenting on other people's posts, and I can see the positive effects of that right in this blog. One post about blueberry muffins has 46 comments alone, some with general feedback but others have changes they made to the recipe, and a few have entire variation recipes posted for others to try as well. So not only does each post give you a recipe, but also all the responders add new ones as well. Obviously, a sound reader/comment base takes time and a series of legitimate posts to acquire, but she really shows what hard work can lead to.

Plum and Radish was the third site I found that I have particularly enjoyed, but not so much for the recipes. Joanne, the poster, encompasses the entire kitchen in her posts, not just the food, and I find it so helpful. She has very detailed posts about different cooking utensils and their uses, different kinds of dishes and their pros and cons, different styles of cooking (like gluten free and their choices/limitations), all sorts of things that are actually important aspects of cooking that I have yet to see on blogs related to cooking. It's just a simple blogspot blog with ads from other places, but what she has to say is very helpful to those of us who don't have a lot of guidance other than the internet. She uses videos from youtube of famous chefs and posts about fun pop culture like food in the shape of faces. It's a blog about cooking in its entirety, not just the actual act of making food.

Also, there was one last blog that I didn't like as much, but at the bottom of each post there were links to other posts that were related and if you liked that post, then you might like these other recipes. I thought that was very clever and reader friendly, and would be interesting to see how much people that like the original post actually like the related ones.

Clearly, I have found new sources for recipes to cook for class, and a lot of guidance on how to make a good, reader friendly, entertaining food blog that also helps show my personality. As such, the attached picture is of the 75 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I had to make last summer when I was in charge of food organization at a summer camp. It should be noted that I cannot STAND even the smell of peanut butter and therefore I chose to focus on the jelly aspect of these sandwiches. haah.