Everyone has a food blog, right? I just wrote a dissertation questioning why everyone's a foodie these days, because it really seems like everyone you meet calls themselves a foodie and feeds you a link to their blog (see more on this in my 10,000 word dissertation...to be published here never).
With the world of academia behind me and an overwhelming storm cloud of food thoughts taking over the internet, what to do but start a food blog of my own. I've always shied away from it, purely because everyone else does it. Not to be all hipster, but I don't really have any particular idea of how to make this unique, and all the great ideas I've seen have already been thought of by other thinkers. But, everyone keeps telling me to do it, and it's not like I have anything better to do (thank you worthless college and graduate degrees!)
So here goes. I have a master's in the Anthropology of Food, no job, and I am obsessed with food. Every day I think about it, and every day I get annoyed by how obsessed with it everyone else is. Sure, food is everyone's thing, and this is one field where you definitely don't need a degree to be good at it. But when one is trying to grab a foothold in a creative industry, it's hard to come up with something no one has done before. So I'll just try being myself.
Today I scrolled through an array of award-winning food blogs, and a lot of them seemed so similar. To join the fray or not to? What can I do differently? Most of these blogs combine recipes (whether original or not), restaurant reviews, and beautiful photography. I could try a lot of those things, and probably will. But I can also take the boring, dry academia of my past and make it just that much more interesting. My best friend and I always talk about how much we love this stuff, but the readings are just so painful to get through - and yet the meat of it is so fascinating! Why doesn't anyone try writing smart, educated, well-sourced commentary on food, health, the environment, anything, without sticking to the age-old limitations of journals and textbooks? Maybe I can do that here.
After nineteen years of editing my writing for others, it's daunting to think I can write this however I want. The grammatical errors that I find creative and fresh can find a home here (stylistic choices, people). I've been told a thousand times that I'm good at writing, but I have hated doing it, because it somehow hurts to see my thoughts written down; I feel like an asshole and delete it. I've deleted two blogs before this one. But this time I'm sticking with it. You'll like it or not - like a dish in a restaurant. I've never really cared what critics thought, if I'm enjoying my meal I'm enjoying it, even if someone "more experienced" gave it two stars. So: enjoy my limited photography skills and often overdramatic word choices.
I leave you with a few photos of one of the top three meals of my life, enjoyed on May 31st, 2014, in Paris. Eaten on the perhaps touristy but intensely beautiful Ile Saint-Louis; at the not-so-hidden Brasserie Ile Saint-Louis. Touristy, but somehow absolutely five star perfect. See below the undeniably best french fries I have ever had in my life, paired with the greatest steak tartare I could imagine. Allow your mouth to drool in tandem with my own (ew?)
