Food Blogging
July 4, 2009 7:56 AM   Subscribe

With the long holiday weekend, there's plenty of time for cooking... and eating. So, a few food blogs for your perusal. The Food In My Beard, from antipasto to zucchini. Macheesmo, learning to be confident in the kitchen. The Pioneer Woman Cooks, more from this woman who channels Lucy and Ethel. Chez Pim, chronicling her globetrotting adventures, and misadventures, in the world of all things edible.
posted by netbros (16 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
I adore Pioneer Woman Cooks. Yeah, it'll clog my arteries, but by god I'll go happy.
posted by custardfairy at 8:03 AM on July 4, 2009


Worst name for a blog ever.
posted by Zambrano at 8:07 AM on July 4, 2009


Somewhat lighter fare: The Vegan Feast Kitchan and Vegan YumYum.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:16 AM on July 4, 2009 [1 favorite]


The PostPunkKitchen is a great food website/blog/forum/recipe repository. It's vegan and even though I'm not vegan, I love the recipes, they taste as good as they look. My favorite recipe I've made from that site is Gingerbread Cutout Cookies. They're crazy good.
posted by headnsouth at 8:25 AM on July 4, 2009


My Estonian friend Pille's blog Nami Nami has the most gorgeous pics and tasty recipes I've seen yet on any food blog. I did declare a bias, right?
posted by imperium at 8:37 AM on July 4, 2009


Love Pioneer Woman. Also, while she is not a food blogger, We Are THAT Family has great recipes and hosts blog carnivals related to recipes from time to time.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:53 AM on July 4, 2009


Chez Pim is only intermittently updated, which makes it an extra treat when a new post pops up in my reader. The writing is casual, unpretentious and vivid. It's pretty much everything a food blog ought to be.
posted by felix betachat at 8:58 AM on July 4, 2009




Which of these are aimed at or otherwise useful to the complete newbie?
posted by kimota at 9:29 AM on July 4, 2009


Which of these are aimed at or otherwise useful to the complete newbie?

kimota you might like the Lazy Vegetarian. It's written for people who aren't foodies, don't have lots of time/money/equipment, but want to make delicious healthy food.
posted by headnsouth at 9:38 AM on July 4, 2009


Which of these are aimed at or otherwise useful to the complete newbie?

Hmm... possibly the Amateur Gourmet, if you start at the beginning of the archives and work forward. It documents Adam's attempts to learn the ins and outs of gourmet cooking and dining (mistakes and all), despite having grown up in a household where cooking was done rarely, if ever. A lot of posts demonstrate recipes along the lines of, "I thought making this would be hard, but it worked out okay and you can do it too -- here's how!" And there are plenty of pictures and descriptions of technique.
posted by the littlest brussels sprout at 9:41 AM on July 4, 2009


I thought at first that the Pioneer Woman channeled Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz, which would have been a strangely schizophrenic combo. But no, it's Lucille Ball and Ethel Merman, which is still odd enough.
posted by blucevalo at 10:19 AM on July 4, 2009


If you enjoy Southwestern, Southern and/or Tex-Mex cooking I can heartily recommend the Homesick Texan blog. The recipes are the real deal and without the slightest hint of haute cuisine.
posted by jim in austin at 12:44 PM on July 4, 2009


The food blog that single-handedly changed the way I eat and approach food evermore is Orangette. And I say this as someone who had a food-ambitious upbringing (my father always laments it took him until his 50s to realize he wanted to be a chef, when he figured he didn't have it in him energy-wise to pursue it...his long-lost dream career path, alas) whose idea of the best way to dispose of pocket money was collecting cookbooks, real-deal local fresh ingredients, and durable cookware. I took Bittman and Rosengarten and Kimball and David and Bourdain as prophets. And still. It took Ms. Molly to really help me push on truly on my own.

I was so compelled I wrote a comment in her blog, which I never do, least of all for "famous" ones. She is also the only blogger whose book ever made it to my shelf. Again, I say this as someone who filed away Clotide's recipes over 5 years ago, remembers David Rosengarten's Taste program on Food TV before it all went to McDonaldized spectacle shit, loves Lebovitz et al in the incestuous blogosphere...Molly was just the one for me. She was real, humble, "normal" in this very not-Martha way I needed, but she still had priorities I admired.

Anyway, here's exactly how I gushed on in her blog:

I'm late to the party!

I just wanted to say...I have been cooking my way through your list of recipes for a few months now, ever since a friend mentioned those Nutmeg Doughnut Muffins, and I'm in love with your food perspective. My parents were foodies, but of the brut-hardcore, old-world New England meatasaurus style...lots of finicky French cream sauce bases, 20 lb roast beefs, etc etc...and that is all well and wonderful (childhood holiday memories will attest), but it's, you know, a bit overwhelming when you're first on your own in a tiny apartment kitchen with a limited big city supermarket budget and schedule, and some new-school health and safety and animal well-being concerns. I love your recipes, and your approach in general. I keep singing your praises to anyone who'll listen, and even though I'm late to the party I feel like this is the perfect time to have found ya--I just snapped up your (fairly new) book, and get excited every time I see it in a walk-in bookstore (!), I discovered your marriage story--courtship, proposal, honeymoon!--just shortly after getting engaged myself, aaand I've really found that Spring and Summer are your time to shine (all those wonderful salads boasting fresh flavor and produce bounties!). I feel so fortunate.

You talk a couple times about turning to certain food experts with the hope they can make it all better, make it simple, make it foolproof now that you're on your own. I totally hear you, and--ta-da!--you along with Beth Hensperger and Joyce Goldstein have proved to be those kind of comforting resources to me. I have yet to make a single dish you've mentioned that wasn't delicious and easy. I don't have that kind of track record with ANYBODY--not even Chris Kimball & crew or Mark Bittman. You even turned me into a dedicated baker, which is something I NEVER saw coming (I've loved cooking for as long as I can remember, but the usual finicky aspect of baking put me off...). It is awesome, and I salute you.

Anyway, I thought here was as good as any place to let you know, since we had this meal recently and it was so incredible it almost brought tears to my eyes. But then, I could say the same about many others too--the turkey meatballs, the roasted sausages with red grapes, the busy day cake, the pear salad. Every dish illuminated the day. I'm almost embarrassed to say that isn't hyperbole...

Cheers.

posted by ifjuly at 10:55 AM on July 5, 2009


Among my favorites:

Bake and Shake is irreverent and funny and, unfortunately, updated only infrequently
Bakerella's photography is, to me, the epitome of food porn
chaos in the kitchen
Cheap healthy good offers a lot of links to interesting reading; the author's cooking itself does not interest me
Confections of a foodie bride
Cream Puffs in Venice
lick my balsamic
mattbites has beautiful photography
Serious Eats is in dire need of an editor or three, but because of its many contributors, it offers recipes, stories, and forums
posted by runningwithscissors at 12:06 PM on July 5, 2009 [1 favorite]


I've noticed an odd phenomenon myself about several "high profile" food blogs, including Chez Pim: Once most food blogs and/or bloggers get recognition, they stop actually blogging. It's weird to go to food events and get introduced to a "famous food blogger", and then check their blog and find that they only post once every five weeks... and all of those posts are about events they got invited to...

It's like several other types of fame. Once you get it, you no longer have to do that which got you famous.
posted by kaszeta at 1:24 PM on July 6, 2009


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