Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Food Blogs: I am over this??

Alright. I just happen to be browsing a food listserve to which I belong and someone posted a link to a food blog, The Two Fat Als. Of course, I bit. Following the link, I found yet another beautifully photographed, ironic, and amusing blog written by a highly educated and lovely couple both named Al.







Again, lots of tasty, professional-looking food photos.





Delightful food snippets from their lives, much food lust on my side. Hmmmm...

So I wonder, how many food blogs are like this? How many of these does the world really need? What the heck is the point of these blogs, like my own? What's with all this titillating food photography? Are we simply trying to make our lives photogenically more romantic and compelling than they really are? Do we convince ourselves of this trick everytime we finish and post a blog?

OR... Is this just a modern diary, like my older sister's in her pre-teen years--the hard cover digest thingy with a cute little keyhole? (You bet I lusted after it's contents and at some point found a way to jimmy my way inside. What a thrill. Sorry sis.) I think not. Her diary could hardly be described as glamorous. Self-doubt, befuddlement, fear, sadness, those are the key concepts I sussed out in my reading.

There is little personally revealing coming from these food blogs. Everything is fine in the kitchen, even when a recipe goes south. Life is fun and colorful and intriguing and suspenseful. These adjectives hardly describe my life since I started my food blog. My sister's teenage diary more closely resembles my recent emotional world.

But hey, maybe that's the attraction of the blog. It takes me to the silent and creative space of the kitchen, where the ugly and disappointing hardly intrude. It allows me to fix on the one thing that remains unchanged and pleasant. I just don't know how many of these blogs I can view, before I spiral away in a fit of anti-conformity.

That's it for now. Good night and good luck.

By the way, remind me to show and tell you about my recent experiment with turning rolled cookies into dropped cookies (ha, ha).