Puttin’ me to shame
Man, I think I just realized the completely obscene amount of food blogs that exist on this here interweb. I mean, I’ve always known there were a lot of people out there writing about their food exploits, but it’s suddenly just hit me that there about, oh, 6 million Web sites out there with recipes and ridiculous pictures, and people commenting about how gorgeous the photography is, and how much they want to make that dish.
Today I plucked up the courage to again visit delicious:days, the crazy food Web site of a lady in Munich who makes beautiful Web sites and beautiful food that she takes beautiful pictures of. Honestly, this lady makes me feel like a complete failure, what with her “50 Coolest Websites” award from Time magazine and her BOOK DEAL and her really cool, easily navigable site. Damnit. Not that I’m expecting to be that awesome right out of the gate, mind you, but honestly, I feel like I could never get there.
Then, I kinda realized that I don’t really want my Web site to be like hers, because that’s not really even what I’m going for. I mean, I’m not out there to give recipes with crazy close-ups of the corner of whatever artfully disheveled dish I’ve made. Honestly, I rarely, if ever, use recipes, and only for crazy things that I know I can’t just wing, like bearnaise sauce or candy-souffle-cake or something. So why would I be kinda hypocritical and totally untrue to myself by putting a blog out there that consists of mostly recipes? I wouldn’t, which is why I’m not going to.
I’m really attempting to do a little more than that here, and though I have yet to really settle into what I’m trying to do, I’m working on it, and hopefully soon I can make it there when I stop being a lazyass and feeling bad because I don’t take beautiful pictures of amazing dishes. Can I just say that cropping and resizing pictures in Photoshop is a total pain in the ass, especially if I’m trying to do like, 10 of them, and trying to crop out the blurry part when all I really want to do is write. But I do the pictures because I like to have something more to look at, and I’d like to think that they are endearingly terrible in a funny way. Maybe?
Unlike most food bloggers out there, who have other careers first, and just happen to write about the stuff they make for dinner, I’m a writer. That’s what I am. That’s what I want to do with my life. And writing about food makes me just about as happy as cooking and eating. I want to have crazy food adventures and explore the crazy and not-so-crazy stuff that people stick in their mouths. I want to delve into more than just writing down a recipe, and, above all, I want to be funny. And recipes are just not funny. I’m sorry, it’s a truth. I think they tried recipes a few years ago on SNL, but it didn’t go over so well. Will Ferrell kept tryin’ to improv and just throw crap in willy nilly, and the dishes just never came out right.
So, OK, I’m going to stop feeling bad about myself because I don’t make these ridiculous dishes randomly for dinner and take ridiculous pictures, because I’m way more than that, and it’s gonna be awesome. I always knew that Rachael Ray was so obscenely famous, not because she can cook, or is cute or funny or is some sort of culinary genius, it’s because she had a hell of a gimmick and she milked that baby all the way to the bank and up Oprah’s ass. So, I guess I need a gimmick. Hot and funny. Ooh! And being a picky eater. We’ll go with that one. Yeeeah.
