Taste (not the social grace kind of taste, but the one in your mouth) is one of the very few things in this world in which everyone has (and is entitled to) an opinion.
In a Google search about food blogging, I discovered that I am one of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people around the world that have blogs related in one way or another to food. I was not surprised.
There are blogs on eating meat and its polar opposite, veganism. There are blogs on fruits and blogs on molecular gastronomy. Nutrition, gluten-free diets, diabetic recipes, heart-healthy, stroke prevention, iron-rich, weight loss, weight gain, and on and on and on. All of these subjects and many, many more have bloggers who are passionate about their subject matter.
I write and blog in much the same way I approach food. I’m an omnivore – that means I’ll eat just about anything – and, by the same token, in this column and on my blog on my Web site, I’ll write about anything. As long as it’s food-related.
Coincidentally, what you’re now reading marks my one-year anniversary writing this column. And yours truly was quite disappointed that no champagne or cake showed up in my mailbox from the publisher. Geez.
Anyway, let’s review. I began this little enterprise by attempting to give you three variations of lasagna, but the editor cut the third recipe. I’ve got it on my to-do list, to get you that recipe. Or you can drop me a line and I’ll send it to you via e-mail. But I will work it into a future rant.
The columns that provoked the most responses dealt with “international” issues, especially the one where I described my American interpretations of certain Italian dishes. When I wrote about Pasta Frittata, and posted an accompanying video on YouTube showing my method for making this dish (more than 30,000 views), I was deluged with e-mails from Italy. Many of them were not very kind and untranslatable, as most electronic dictionaries don’t include scatological slang terms.
Then the French weighed in and kind of cancelled out the Italian outrage. Monsieur Chef, vous savez comment faire cuire une frittata.
Another large volume of mail came as a result of my three-part review of my annual trip to Sint Maarten/St. Martin. My list of new places to try next winter is quite full, thank you very much.
I’ve been characterized by some people as an iconoclast, and that’s OK by me. I don’t engage in random attacks on icons just for the sake of attacking. Blogs, properly used and written, are opinions. I found more agreement than disagreement when I slammed Suze Orman for ridiculous advice that, if taken en masse, could have increased the unemployment rate in the U.S. by a full 5 percent. She thought people should stay out of restaurants altogether as a strategy for combating the recession. She sort of forgot that restaurants employ the second largest number of people in this country after the government. Hard to believe she didn’t know or chose not to remember that she used to work in a restaurant.
And screaming Chef Gordon Ramsay got a full column’s worth of my opinion on kitchen and personnel management. While I admire his abilities as a cook, author, restaurateur and entrepreneur, I have nothing but disdain for the way he treats employees. I don’t discount the “Fox Factor,” for a reality show wouldn’t be very interesting without some sort of drama. But I did not spare the Fox Network and their complicity in the stupidity that is “Hell’s Kitchen” for choosing cooks who cannot seem to perform even the most elementary tasks in a commercial kitchen.
Looking forward, I’ll keep doing what I do. I’m an opinionated cook with a journalism background, so I can’t help myself.
So if there’s something on your mind that you’d like me to weigh in on, I always welcome suggestions.
But I really was expecting cake.