Juli's Take on a Year of Cooking and Blogging

When Jeffrey told me he wanted to do a lot more cooking, and then later, when he thought it would be a great idea to blog about cooking, I was a little surprised.  Jeffrey could make a few dishes really well, but hadn't experimented with many new recipes, and he didn't know a lot about basic cooking techniques. 

There was also the difference in our recipe preferences.  My own style of cooking tends toward homey, familiar comfort food. Jeffrey's occasional cooking was the polar opposite- spicy, unfamiliar, and foreign.  I'm a little bit country and he's a little bit rock and roll, as the saying goes.

This is us, circa 1970.  Heh.

Also, if I'm being really honest, most of my cooking was about avoiding having to do a lot of clean up.  If you work 60 hours a week, as I do, this priority goes straight to the top of the list!  I didn't want to spend an hour cooking, and then another hour cleaning up.  I often didn't have the energy to cook in the first place, much less wash, dry, and put away all the dishes afterwards.

Caffeine, why have you failed me?  WHY?



So, I wasn't against the idea of having someone else cook.  Especially if we did the clean-up together!  But what I really wasn't prepared for was how strange it would feel to not know what we needed at the grocery store, or not knowing what we had in the refrigerator or pantry.  It was an eye-opener, being on the other side of that equation.  I wonder if this is how most men feel when their wives are the primary meal-preparer?

Something else I found surprising was the joy Jeffrey clearly felt as he created our meals.  This was an emotion I hadn't associated with cooking for years.  Somewhere along the line, cooking had become drudgery.  It was a shock to realize this about myself!  I still have Barbara Billingsley fantasies, but they mostly revolve around not having to make a living by working outside the home- a super appealing fantasy for a person who works long, LONG days.  For a working woman, who still has to wash the laundry, muck out the cat boxes, vacuum, and keep the house in reasonable order, being a housewife sounds like kind of a Nirvana, truthfully.  I would at least be relieved of Evening Guilt, which is what happens when you've worked a 10-12 hour day, but can't really relax at home because you know how much there still is that Must. Be. Done.  



Barbara, I would love to step into your shoes for awhile.  Even if they are high heels!

The second most surprising thing was that Jeffrey generally approached cooking as a hobby.  He loved reading anything about food prep, and was continually reading reviews and searching out the best tools for the job. For instance, I might have gone the rest of my life believing that raw chicken was impossible to cut if we hadn't purchased a wonderful set of knives, which cost more than I would have been comfortable spending had I been the one in charge of the kitchen.  I certainly NEVER would  have asked for a set of pots and pans for Christmas, or put a cast-iron skillet on my birthday wish list!  But these are all good things.  Maybe it takes a man to realize that you really do need to have the best tools you can afford for the job at hand.  It was also a good lesson for me that the attitude with which you approach your efforts makes an enormous difference.

Even when this is what you see:

Yipes!

Love you, Jeffrey.  Keep up the good work.



Why We Are Blogging - One Year Later

Today this blog is 1 year old.   Our first post was on September 16, 2010.  There are a lot of food blogs that have been around for several years, but there are probably twenty times as many that are started with the intention of longevity, but which peter out in less than a year's time as the blogger loses interest, or becomes too busy to spend time blogging, or whatever.                                       

In the year we've been around, we have posted at least once a day.   It has been a bit of a pain to keep up that posting pace sometimes, but when we started the blog, I set the goal of posting at least once daily, and I'm proud to have managed that. 

One of the things I've found rewarding about blogging is that I've been inspired to cook a lot of different and new things in order to have something to write about.  As a result, I've cooked a lot of things I'd probably never have gotten around to cooking if not for the blogging.  This includes a lot of recipes from cookbooks, cooking magazines and cooking websites - including other food blogs - plus a lot of original recipes.  Over the course of the past year, we've presented a lot of original recipes - 280 or more - and while some represent old favorites of mine or Juli's, well over half of those are ones we came up with during the past year. 

  My hope is that many of you have tried some of our recipes and enjoyed them.  Better yet, I hope some of what we've published has inspired you to come up with some new recipes of your own, or to try something you wouldn't have tried before. 

Blogging has also inspired us to try some new restaurants and stores we might not have gotten around to trying.  That's part of the "Adventures in Iowa" we refer to in our blog subtitle. 

As we move into our second year, we plan to have lots more new adventures, and we hope our readers enjoy reading about them.

Note:

My plan is to continue posting at least once a day, but tomorrow - Saturday, September 17 - we will be posting late in the day or perhaps some time in the evening, as we have a very busy Saturday planned.

Lots of Great Food Blogs!

Since we are food bloggers, it should come as no surprise that we like looking at others' food blogs.  We often get ideas from looking at what others are cooking, and we've found the better food blogs to be a good source for quality recipes.   Regular readers probably recall that we have frequently made recipes others have featured on their blogs, and particularly those included on our blog list.

Those paying attention may also notice a new feature on our blog:  The Foodie Blogroll widget on the right sidebar.  The Foodie Blogroll is, quite simply, a website listing of food blogs.  We figured joining was a good way to introduce our blog to more people.  As happens, the Foodie Blogroll is currently doing a promotion, offering some giveaways (tote bags and Amazon gift certificates) to member bloggers who promote the site.   I'll admit, this post is intended in part as our entry into that promotion, but I wouldn't post about the site if that was the only reason.

The main reason I wanted to mention the Foodie Blogroll is that it is a great site for finding quality food blogs!  The Blogroll lists more than 10,000 food blogs, from all over the world and representing a wide range of cuisines, expertise and foodie interests.  If you're interested in checking out more food blogs, drop by the site.  I won't pretend I've checked out all of the sites - again, there are more than 10,000 member blogs listed, with new ones joining every day - but from among the ones I have checked out, I've found several that interested me enough to follow them, and I expect some of them will find their way onto our recommended blog listing next time we update that listing.  I've already noticed several recipes that I might be trying out in the near future

Honestly, if you are the least bit interested in food blogs (and if you're not, why are you reading this?), it's hard to imagine you not finding something interesting listed at the Foodie Blogroll.   So, do yourself a favor and check it out.  You can find it here.