Friday, July 18, 2008

Getting All Philosophical...

You may have noticed that I have added some advertising to this blog. Foodbuzz is a foodie social networking site along similar lines to Facebook. The ads, thank God, are far more elegant and easy on the eye than AdSense, but I have yet to figure out exactly how much money this is going to make. I wasn't lured by money, though; I was lured by the potential for more traffic. One of my New Year's resolutions was to update this site more frequently than I had in the past, and build up my readership. I am toying with finding a new template, too. This one is starting to bug me.

Foodbuzz seems to have great folks working for it. The communication has been very good and the people I've dealt with have always been friendly and answered any questions I've had in a timely manner. I've also gotten some cute loot: an organic cotton shopping bag and some mini business cards with pretty pictures on them. I have no idea to whom I'd give business cards, but they are very cool, and there is something "grown up" about having them. I've never had business cards before; never had the need. But I have them now, and they even came in a nice little box!

In other news, I made something the other night that I really don't like. This doesn't happen very often, and it rarely happens with ice cream, of all things. Yet, I made an ice cream I don't anticipate eating. It's maple pecan, a flavour combination I'd normally enjoy. In this case, it made a mediocre ice cream I have no motivation to consume. This is a shame because I used up the rest of my pecans in the recipe, a signifcant amount of maple syrup, and whipping cream I could have put to more fruitful use. Alas, I might have to foist this on my family, who might be less picky. I didn't follow a recipe, but rather was inspired by one I saw in a magazine. I winged it, and it didn't work out. Not mapley enough, not as creamy as most ice creams I've made (probably because the addition of an adequate amount of maple syrup changed the liquid composition of the mixture, and so it froze differently), and a kind of crumbly texture. I'm really disappointed.

Blogging is interesting on a lot of fronts, and when you blog about specific things, like food, or mental health (as I do here), you get a certain kind of audience, and you gravitate towards certain things. Recent events in my life have punctuated the fact that we as bloggers are more than the sum of our parts, and that although we may blog prolifically, the blog is never an entire picture of who we are as individuals. We may blog about food, but we are each far more than our foodblogs. It may seem obvious here, but on my other blogs, it's more complicated.

Forgive my philosophical mood tonight! I have no recipe to offer today, but I am curious about this:

What life lessons have you learned through failures and/or disappointments in the kitchen?

5 comments:

Rosa's Yummy Yums said...

Great bag and set of cards!

Cheers,

Rosa

Karen said...

I love the layout of the Foodbuzz advertising - far less annoying than Ad Sense, definately. It blends with the blog very nicely. As for lessons learned, no matter how badly something turns out, if you're not having fun doing it - get out of the kitchen. People can taste the difference.

Milla said...

"What life lessons have you learned through failures and/or disappointments in the kitchen? "

Zorro almost burned down the kitchen one Saturday afternoon, when he tried to BBQ some food ON THE KITCHEN STOVE (it was raining outside). My lesson is: never, ever, EVER leave Zorro alone in the kitchen.

tshsmom said...

We always put maple extract in maple nut ice cream.

What have I learned in the kitchen? Expensive ingredients don't necessarily make the meals my family likes the most.

Thistlemoon said...

I am totally with you on all accounts - Foodbuzz is great and that our blogs do not reflect all of us. That is why I think we all love reading memes on each others' blogs - a window into the person.

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