March 10th, 2010
Please help me celebrate my first book giveaway by signing up to win Tips Cooks Love: Over 500 Tips, Techniques, and Shortcuts That Will Make You a Better Cook!
I thought this cookbook reference companion might be a timely choice, based on the arguments in my most popular post, The Top 10 Terms to Avoid in Recipes. You’ll find no assumptions here about how to cook and bake, only helpful, knowledgeable information. In fact, on p. 57 is an explanation of the term “blanch,” one of the words in my list.
While I assumed Tips Cooks Love targets novice cooks, I found lots to interest me. Regarding the age-old debate about whether to lower the temperature when using glass baking dishes Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: cookbooks, food writing, Recipe Writing, Rick Rodgers, Sur La Table
Posted in Blogging, Contests | 30 Comments »
March 8th, 2010
I’ve spoken to three hopeful memoirists recently who were convinced that the strength of their writing alone will be enough to sell their book. They don’t need to work on their platforms, they said.
Now, this would be interesting if these people were famous or rich. But they’re not. They have either a small blog or have never been published. And in the world of memoir, being famous helps. In fact, it’s the first question my agent asks when I mention I’m working with someone who’s hoping to publish a memoir.
Since most of us are not ever going to be famous, the best we can do is build a platform. A platform is Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Books | 24 Comments »
March 3rd, 2010
While the public seems obsessed with cooking right now, their understanding of the craft has not improved. Here’s an example from cookbook author David Leite: He told me a reader questioned his use of the term “separate the eggs.” She asked if he meant to move the eggs further apart.
Editors say people know less about cooking than ever before, so recipe writers have to explain more or use terms that everyone understands, Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: food writing, Recipe Writing
Posted in Recipe Writing | 86 Comments »
March 1st, 2010
The postcard inside the plastic-wrapped package advised “…we will be sending you Bon Appetit for the duration of your remaining Gourmet subscription term.”
And there it was, my non-Gourmet. First I got sad about Gourmet’s passing all over again. I like the way Elissa Altman summed up its demise: “Gourmet folded because it had a direct competitor under the same roof in the same genre geared to more practical and commercial endeavors, it made more money, and one of them had to go…End of discussion.”
Once I got over the fact that it was not Gourmet, I was curious to see how Bon Appetit was different. Content, for one thing. Bon Appetit is all about entertaining. Tone, for another. It’s all about ease: world-class dining made simple.
Yet most of the recipes didn’t look that easy. In fact, I got the biggest laugh from Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bon Appetit, food writing, freelance food writing, Gourmet
Posted in Blogging, Freelancing | 38 Comments »
February 24th, 2010
Despite hand-wringing about the decline of print restaurant reviewing, few people seem to care. When I teach food writing, hardly anyone asks about becoming a critic now, and a post I wrote on how the net influences restaurant reviewing elicited no response.
Maybe it’s about the economy. Food bloggers cook, perhaps because it’s less expensive and more hands-on than eating out. Due to lack of funds, restaurant reviewers now fall into two camps: the few remaining newspaper employees and freelancers reimbursed for meals; and hobbyists, who write on websites like Yelp.
So please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems no one wants to be a restaurant reviewer anymore. And certainly this news about Yelp doesn’t elevate the profession.
What news, you ask? It’s called Yelpmail. On this post from Chez Geek, a Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Restaurant Reviewing | 34 Comments »
February 23rd, 2010
While replying to Cheryl Sternman Rule’s comment about how to attract good food blog comments, I got an idea:
What if we all chimed in about which post garnered the most responses on our blogs, and why we think it worked?
The first part is easy enough. It’s based on the number of responses. I don’t care how many you got, as this is not a competition. Let’s skip giveaways as a category.
Next tell us why it worked. Was it the photograph? A banana bread recipe (I’ve heard that desserts are no-fail)? A personal crisis? Your baby announcement (seriously, Smitten Kitchen readers went berserk )?
I’ll go first. My biggest response was for Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Food blogging, food writing
Posted in Blogging | 57 Comments »
Please help me celebrate my first book giveaway by signing up to win Tips Cooks Love: Over 500 Tips, Techniques, and Shortcuts That Will Make You a Better Cook! 
