On a Month and a Half of Food Blogging

-Wow, blogging takes up a lot of time. I'd estimate it takes me an hour to an hour and a half to write a pretty basic post/recipe. I used to read in my free time! Now I'm writing up my dinner.

-My photos are rubbish and that probably won't change anytime soon. I use a cheapie digital camera that my dad got as a thank-you present at a work conference. But I know that the fault really lies with me, not the camera. I have almost no understanding of basic photography, including stuff like lighting, and I don't feel like learning. Like that Harold guy on Bravo's Top Chef, I'm, you know, a cook, man, not some photographer!

-When reading high-end food blogs, I sometimes wonder why I bother. The stunning photography, the 10-course dinner parties, the Michelin-starred restaurants... I remind myself that I aspire to be a good home cook, a good housewife cook, as some snooty French chef put it on Top Chef.

-Do I post about my failures? I like it when bloggers write their kitchen blunders and recipes that just don't turn out. Still, when I failed spectacularly in making tuiles last week, I tossed out the cookie scraps and put away my camera. I regret this now; it would have made an amusing post. I should have started with a pic of the ruined tuiles and the title "This Is Not a Tuile." But too many mistakes and blah recipes are overkill. I like to pick up tricks and hints and promising recipes from the blogs I read.

-"A blog needs a sense of purpose. The author can't just curl up on the sofa like an overfed retriever and recollect his last bowl of kibble; he should strain forward like a terrier who's late for an appointment with a ham bone."

Some wag wrote the above back in March and ruffled a few feathers in the food blogging world. But I think he's right. My purpose, I suppose, is to write about Russian home cooking. Problem is, I don't cook Russian food every day, or even every week. In the past few days, I made perfectly good and even kind of photogenic food, including an Asian-type stir fry with noodles and swordfish with sauteed potatoes (tonight's dinner).

But I didn't blog about these meals because they don't fit my theme. Plenty of other bloggers can cook and write about this kind of food better than I can. Here's what I do want to write about in the future: Kvas (rye bread beer), plov (Uzbek lamb and rice stew), eggplant and red pepper salad, Uzbek food in general (my boyfriend's family is from Uzbekistan), more good things to do with beets and tvorog.

-I started a blog and the world failed to notice. What's wrong with you, world?! Leave one freakin' comment or something!