Looking Back

Six years ago today I posted my first piece on Seriously Good, a recipe for Sangria. It consisted of a short paragraph and a recipe. At the time I didn’t even know food blogs existed. Most of the blogs I’d seen really were what Pete Wells infamously called “grilled cheese blogs” or “what I had for lunch.” In fact, it wasn’t until nine days later that I posted my first grilled cheese sandwich.

I’m not sure what prompted me to begin with a Sangria recipe, but the grilled cheese recipe is anything but a what-I-had-for-lunch post. To begin with I began with a recipe for the bread. A loaf that to this day I consider the perfect bread for a grilled cheese sandwich. The recipe is followed by a very precise description for making what I called the Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwich including which cheese to use and how thickly to slice it. It’s an ode to one of the simplest and most delicious meals you can make.

Seriously Good is about food that makes you sit up and take notice because it just plain tastes really good.

In fact, I think it was the grilled cheese recipe that set the tone for what SG has become. This blog is not about fancy food (although it includes some), it’s not about technique or ingredients (although these topics, as the grilled cheese piece reflects, inevitably come up), it’s certainly not about a particular cuisine such as low calorie or Greek. Seriously Good is about food that makes you sit up and take notice because it just plain tastes really good.

An unexpected aspect of blogging is that I’ve become part of a community of bloggers. The first thing I do every morning, after pouring a cup of coffee, is logging on to bloglines to see what my favorite food bloggers have been up to. Some of these bloggers are working writers such as Michael Ruhlman at Ruhlman.com, others are professional teachers like the recently retired Kalyn at Kalyn’s Kitchen, some write short essays on meals made a la Cookie Crumb (CC as I call her) at I’m Mad and I Eat, while others are professional chefs (Ms Glaze’s Pommes d’Amour) or talented home cooks (The Culinary Chase). My list has almost 100 blogs in it and all but ten are food blogs — fortunately not everyone posts every day.

It’s humbling to know and read so many talented food writers. It’s invigorating to be able to ask them for advice and suggestions. It’s fun to see food trends build from the ground up and it’s exciting to make my own contributions. I wish I had time to mention every blog I follow now from Elise to Lydia and the many that have disappeared over the past six years. But I don’t.

So to celebrate this anniversary, I’d like to invite every food blogger to post a description and link to one of their favorite personal blog entries in the comments here. It needn’t be a recipe (CC almost never posts recipes, just approximations). Search back through your posts and find one you’re particularly proud of or fond of and share it with us.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | seriously good | anniversary

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