Or: Why food blogging is close to my heart.

A year ago today, I began my journey into the world of food blogging, with this photo.

…Ok, so that’s not entirely true. The story actually started a few days before Christmas, 2006, when I took my first real food photos. I had made chocolate covered strawberry marshmallows as Christmas gifts, and I went out and bought frilly little silver boxes with food safe paper to house them in. I was so proud, I took some photos to remember it.

Cut to the day after Christmas, 2006.

My husband used to have a job where he was required to do a lot of travelling. I was lucky that I got to spend Christmas with him, since he had spent a week in North Carolina, coming home on the day before Christmas eve, only to leave and go to Seattle for a week, starting the day after Christmas.

I had just quit my job, and I was incredibly bored. It snowed off and on most of those days, and though it never stuck, it did keep me from really venturing out of the house much, for fear of crazy drivers and car accidents.

Time passed incredibly slow.

Between phone calls from my husband, sleep, and the occasional visit from my mom or my older sister, I did a lot of thinking. A lot of thinking about my life, my self, what I wanted out of life.

Somehow I got myself on the topic of treating myself better.

It wasn’t yet New Years, and although I never really have been the kind of person to make resolutions, I decided that in the coming year, I wanted to take better care of myself. I wanted to spend time treating myself to little luxuries, and enjoying everything about life.

Part of that was intertwined with my obsession with food.

I love food.

I’ve always loved making food and cooking and baking and eating food. I realized that when I had people over, I’d get down to business and put so much effort into making the food look good, as well as taste good, where as when I made food for just “me”, I found that I would just slap a few things together and eat it for nutrition.

There were all sorts of reasons for my strange relationship with food. Part of it was how I was raised.. that food wasn’t necessarily something to enjoy, so much as something that needed to be eaten to survive. There are other reasons that I won’t get into here, as they’re much too personal to reveal on a public blog such as this, but I had my reasons. Plenty of reasons.

It had become achingly apparent that something needed to change in the days where my husband was traveling. I never once brought out a skillet or baking sheet. Almost everything I ate came out of a box or was something that could be eaten ‘on toast’.

I told myself right then that I needed to change that, and I did.

It wasn’t until my husband came back and we celebrated New Years, that I realized there was a very good way to keep myself accountable for my new resolution. For my birthday in September, my husband had bought me this shiny new camera. I’ve always loved looking at pictures of food, whether it be online or in a cookbook, why not take pictures of the food I make, and keep track of it all?

Slowly but surely, I began taking photos and posting them to my personal online journal. Over the course of a week, I realized I loved what I was doing, and I opened up my first food blog- A_Muffin_Story, on Livejournal.

I originally started posting food photos with stories that related to the food I was eating. I didn’t start this food blog until a few weeks later, and even then, it was just to keep track of recipes. I had no real intention of making this blog anything more than just a go-to site for the recipes I was using.

Anyways, my first real food blog post on A_muffin_story was a simple photo of one of my favourite foods- carrot slices that I had cut into little heart shapes with a knife. I loved it so much, and I still do. I often find myself looking back to it for inspiration when I can’t think of anything to make or take photos of.

Like this-

Its funny, because I started food blogging so I wouldn’t eat food from a box or stuff that I could just slap together, but I found inspiration in a little carrot cut into a heart shape. It was like it was meant to be.

Over time, the carrot motif became less important, but the heart motif stuck. If you notice, every now and then I throw a little heart into my photos. That’s all because I want to remember where I started. I want to remember why I am doing this… For me.

I’ve since closed A_muffin_story, but Never Bashful with Butter has become “The Big Blog” for me, where I’ve posted stories and recipes and all the photos that I take. I love it here.

So in memory and celebration of one full year of food blogging, I made a little cake for my husband and I to eat with dinner tonight.

Its a carrot juice and clementine cake.

I didn’t use a fancy recipe, and I decorated it simply, but appropriately and deliciously!

Here is the recipe that I used- It was originally a recipe for a simple vanilla butter cake, but I subbed out a few ingredients, and judging by the smell and the texture of the cake itself, it will be a delicious ending to a full year of food blogging… Oh, and a delicious ending to dinner tonight, too. *smile*

Carrot juice and clementine cake-

2-1/2 cup sifted cake flour
1- 1/4 cups sugar
3-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup carrot juice
1/4 cup milk + about a little extra (or what I lovingly refer to as “a glug”)
1-1/2 tsp. lemon juice
3 egg whites, at room temperature

Clementine mixture-
1/4 cup clementine juice
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons powdered sugar

PREPARATION:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9″ round layer cake pans and line the bottoms with waxed paper; set aside. Sift flour, sugar, and baking powder into a large mixer bowl. Add butter, carrot juice, milk and lemon juice. If you really want to, you can add the carrot pulp to the mixture as well. I didn’t, but looking back, I wish I had.zSB(3,3)

Beat on slow speed until blended. Then beat on medium speed for 2 minutes, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add unbeaten egg whites, and beat two minutes longer at medium speed.Pour batter into prepared pans and bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes or until cake is light golden brown and is beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool 15 minutes in pans, then carefully remove layers from pans and cool completely on wire rack. While the cakes are cooling completely, poke a few holes into the cake with a toothpick or skewer, and slowly pour the clementine mixture over the cakes so that it soaks into the holes you’ve poked. (you don’t have to use all of the mixture, so use your good judgement on this one)

Once the cakes have cooled, you’ll need to fill, stack and ice your cake. I chose cream cheese icing, only I added more milk to the mixture so that it was more like a cinnamon roll coating, and not so fluffy, like traditional cream cheese icing. You can choose whatever icing you’d like.

So, Happy 1 year!

This year I’ve decided to continue with this blog as it is currently, devoting it to baked goods and sweet things. Next month I’ll reveal a secondary blog dedicated to healthy, real foods and meals and a generally healthy lifestyle. I’ve asked a few of my friends to help me with it, so I’m expecting it will be a wonderful, interesting project!

Also, if I might direct your attention to that side panel over there…*clears throat and points to the upper right hand side panel*—>

If you notice, I’ve opened up a “ooh you tasty little things” merchandise shop over at cafe press! All you have to do is click on your preferred design and choose what product you want it on, buy it, and enjoy! I made the designs myself, and they’re all fun, original designs. I hope ya’ll like ‘em!

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 3:35 am and is filed under January 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.