Globe & Mail
June 11, 2005
DELICIOUS DOT-COM
From the daily musings of a French gourmand to the dinnertime dilemmas of a novice cook in Canada, there's a food blog to satisfy every craving
by Shawna Wagman
Clement Lo no longer fears puff pastry. When it was his turn to host Sugar High Friday, an online recipe potluck for food enthusiasts, he chose the flaky dough as the theme. He was thrilled when 30 people from around the world turned up at his virtual table to meet the challenge.
"There were classic French palmiers , Portuguese egg tarts - a lady in New York combined a Cannoli and a Napoleon, she called it a Cannoleon," says the 25 year-old Toronto-based media designer and creator of the website A la Cuisine. "It's such a diverse group, it's unlikely you'll see two people doing the same thing."
Several months ago, Lo became a food blogger, one of a burgeoning community of online diarists devoted to the discussion of recipes, restaurant reviews, and culinary obsessions of all kinds. Like Lo, the vast majority of food bloggers are amateur cooks--or at least they start out that way. Monthly cooking challenges like Sugar High Friday encourage bloggers to tackle new recipes and trade tips on techniques that might have once been reserved for the pros.
In just a few short months, Lo has gone from humble home cook to culinary adventurer, dabbling in the land of butter-poached lobster and coconut panna cotta. Starting with just a handful of readers, his blog now attracts upwards of 500 visitors a day. " I wanted to share my cooking adventures with other people, " he says . " Seeing that people actually read what I write, it's incredibly motivating."
It's no wonder that for some bloggers, the act of writing about food can become addictive, transforming every meal into an opportunity to entertain or impress.
"It has definitely permeated my life," says Debbie Koenig, the Brooklyn-based scribe behind Words to Eat By ," In a weird way it has become a second job."
The former fiction writer started a food blog last October, about the same time she returned to Weight Watchers as part of an on-going battle against the scale. " I enjoy food tremendously, but I'm also a bit afraid of it," she confesses. She hopes the process of documenting what she eats might have a therapeutic effect. "I thought I'd learn more about myself - how I deal with food and what I think about food," she says.
Like many novice food bloggers, Koenig drew inspiration from Chocolate & Zucchini , the unofficial top banana of the genre. The popular website created by Clotilde Dusoulier , a twentysometing Parisian computer engineer with great taste and astonishing facility with the English language, has established a dedicated worldwide following since launching in September 2003 .
Several times a week Dusoulier jots down her latest market-stall discoveries, describes her mastery over new ingredients, and confesses to purchases like stainless steel egg poachers. Her down-to-earth charm and stylish yet accessible recipes seem to be feeding a growing hunger - her site attracts 7,000 visitors a day. It's not uncommon for each entry to receive 20 or 30 comments.
It is the interaction and intimate exchange among earnest epicures that spurs Jennifer Hamilton, the Toronto nurse and passionate baker behind The Domestic Goddess . Hamilton frequently swaps recipes and hints with fellow foodies in France, Australia and Singapore. When she was planning her wedding day menu last year, fellow bloggers chimed in with support and suggestions for everything from hors d'oeuvres to wine pairings. "I probably know a lot of these people better than the people I work with," she says.
Worldwide recipes (sidebar)
A la Cuisine, http://www.alacuisine.org/
Amateur Gourmet, http://www.amateurgourmet.com/
An Endless Banquet, http://endlessbanquet.blogspot.com/
An Obsession with Food, www.obsessionwithfood.com/
Chocolate & Zucchini, http://chocolateandzucchini.com/
Domestic Goddess, www.domesticgoddess.ca/
Tasting Menu, www.tastingmenu.com
Words to Eat By, http://wordstoeatby.blogspot.com/
