Why I Started Food Blogging

Lately, lots of people have been asking me why I spend time taking pictures of food and posting them on the internet. Anyone who’s ever had a cast on their arm knows that there’s nothing more irritating than answering the same question over and over again (except maybe when you get an itch on your arm and you can’t scratch it because of the cast; that’s probably more irritating). I thought I’d put the explanation in one place so I can email it to people instead of constantly repeating myself.

The Backstory

When I moved to to the Hill right out of college, I lived alone and didn’t really know anyone. I had no access to free food except for chicken fingers at campaign/PAC events, but that got real old real fast. I could afford to go out for the occasional happy hour, but dining nightly in DC will break you. I decided that if I was going to start cooking my own meals, I was going to learn how to cook really good food.

Like most people, I had no clue what I was doing at first. No one ever told me how long it would take to build up a working pantry with all the herbs, spices, oils, vinegars, et al, much less how much it would all cost. As a matter of fact, my impulsiveness cost me a small fortune over the first few years. I would see something that looked appetizing on TV, print off the recipe, and run to the store to buy all the ingredients. I would routinely spend upwards of $30 per family-sized meal, which is more than I would spend for a nice dinner out (sans alcohol, of course). The only benefit to cooking that way was that I usually had lots of leftovers for lunch and I was gradually learning from my mistakes.

I had lots of ups and downs. Many meals went straight from the oven to the trash. I remember one Easter many years ago when my wife (then my girlfriend) asked me, “what’s that?” “Moussaka,” I replied. She gave me an odd glare and murmured, “moussaka shouldn’t have barley in it.” She was right. I tossed it and made some Kraft mac and cheese instead. Things like that happened from time to time. I ruined more steaks than I care to remember by randomly experimenting with marinades. Good steaks don’t need marinades. They also cook better in a pan on the stove or on a tray under the broiler than on an outdoor grill. No one tells you stuff like that.

Meal Planning

As my cooking abilities improved, so did my meal planning. When I did my weekly grocery shopping, I would prepare for several meals that shared ingredients. Cooking got a little cheaper. I went through numerous phases ranging from grilling to braising to baking, and from French to Italian to Greek. I even went through a long casserole phase a few years ago that my wife put a stop to. The only constant over the years was in the way I planned my meals. I would go to a big box store, buy a bunch of cheap meat in bulk, and then load up on everything else that would complement the meat. All of that has changed over the last couple of years.

Within a mile of our house, there’s the county farmers’ market, a chain grocery store, and an old-fashioned food mart that has a wise, old butcher. I can literally walk to all of them. The farmers’ market is a great place to get fresh, cheap produce. Let me put this in perspective; to buy the prepackaged set of three “traffic light” bell peppers at Publix, I have to pay $6. At the farmers’ market, I pay $1.25-$1.50 per pound for all bell peppers I want. You do the math. I go there just about every Saturday morning and buy my fruits, vegetables and eggs for the week. Once I fill my basket, which usually runs me about $10, I plan my meals for the week. I usually run to my butcher for my meats and then go to the grocery store for everything else. As a result of this new strategy, my wife and I have managed to cut a lot of meat and salt out of our diets. More importantly, we’re cooking creatively, we’re using all of what we buy, and we’re enjoying our meals more. Variety really is the spice of life.

Food Blogging

The wife has been on my case for years about writing down my recipes. I’m always creating or changing them based on what ingredients I have on hand. Like they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Even though she already does most of the baking and cooks all of the sweets, she wants to get more involved in the kitchen. Her desire is to be able to reliably reproduce the meals that we most enjoy. So I’ve been trying to document our favorite dishes, especially the ones that incorporate fresh ingredients from her garden. It’s actually been pretty fun to finally quantify the ingredients and photograph the steps involved. I blog the recipes instead of writing them down on paper because, to be blunt, it’s a superior method. Thanks to this site, I can search through my recipes by title or ingredient with one click of a button instead of flipping through countless binders and cookbooks. I can pull recipes up on my phone while I’m at the grocery store or at home in my kitchen. I can forward my recipes to any number of friends and family with zero effort. If strangers happen to run across my recipes on this website and find them helpful, then that’s great too. But it’s not why I do it.

This is the first part of a two-part series. The second part can be accessed here

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