Blog hop

Why I write? A Blog Hop on Yummy Lummy

You might have seen this thing called Blog Hop going around blogs locally and internationally. It’s a chance to gain a little insight into the minds and motivations of bloggers, and an opportunity to reflect when answering the questions yourself.

Lisa from Bake Bike Blog passed the ‘blog-hop-baton’ to me. Lisa is a Canberra local who cooks, rides, runs and blogs. I’m mainly in touch with Lisa through Instagram where she shares images of her delicious food, her child and selfies after she’s been for a run or ride.

The blog Hop posed the following questions…

What I am working on?

I really don’t plan my writing. It basically happens and depends on what I’m eating. Any planning that does occur is a result of weekly meal planning or going out to a restaurant.

The main thing I’ve been doing is migrating from WordPress.com to WordPress.org and working out the joys of a self hosted blog.

The other thing I’m doing is teaching myself as much about photography and food photography as possible from watching YouTube videos and reading blogs. I’ve always had an interest in photography, although food is a very different subject to photomicroscopy and clinical wound photography 🙂  Moving from film to digital has made it a lot easier (yes I’m old enough to know about film).

How does my writing differ from others in the genre?

For Yummy Lummy I try to write as little as possible. I’ve never thought of myself as a writer. Of course I do a lot of writing but very little of it is creative. High school was mainly technical and descriptive. University was much the same. As a clinician my writing is brief and pointed with information relevant for patient care.

I’m always in awe of other food bloggers. They have marvellous descriptions of their food. Many of them tell stories, sometime related to the food and sometimes completely unrelated to the food. At times though, when I start reading another blog, if the text is too long I skip to the images.

You may have noticed when I write recipes I do them in my own way. I hardly refer to quantities. Everything is in dot points. I’m not sure there’s a subject and predicate in every sentence. That said, if I baked like I used to, everything would be written like it’s a scientific report with exact quantities and a methodology that would resemble a laboratory manual. In my mind, baking is like making media in a microbiology laboratory kitchen. When I was training we used to cook pavlova with science grade sugar and egg whites that were left over after making egg yolk agar. We could also steam Christmas puddings in the industrial steamer. If I ever get back to baking I’d design my blog like a laboratory manual with emphasis on quality management and it would be compliant with ISO 15189 lol 🙂

Why do I write?

I often ask myself why do I blog? It’s the same as why do I tweet? Why do I share where I am on Foursquare? Why do I post status updates on Facebook? I’m a show off. I like to share with people what I know. I’m also competitive. Getting points for Foursquare check ins is a game to me. I’m hopeless with computer games but for me Foursquare is a game. Social media including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and blogging allows me to show off what I know. Of course I am careful what I share. I keep quiet about much of my life. We all have rules governing what we do and codes of conduct to adhere to. I think social media and blogging is my reaction to the rules of life. 

How does my writing process work?

Being a food blogger makes the process easy. I don’t need creative juices to come up with an idea. If I’m going out to eat that’s the motivation already sorted out. If I’m cooking dinner, I know that I’ll capture an image and post it on twitter, instagram and facebook. If the food looks good enough to share a recipe then it will become a blog post.

Technically a lot depends on the quality of a photograph. For restaurant food I use a Canon point and shoot camera (Canon PowerShot G16). For home I use a Nikon DSLR (Nikon D5300). I shoot in RAW and process in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I have my MacBook set up with a DropBox so that as soon as images are loaded from an SD card they’re imported and the file names are changed to a YYYY-MM-DD_HH.MM.SS format. In Lightroom the processing automatically converts the final jpg to an image 2400 pixels long, the image is geotagged and a watermark is added.

I now blog using WordPress.org and I usually write in the native application adding images manually.

Now it’s time to pass on the Blog Hop baton. I’ve chosen two Canberra food bloggers. Elias and Michele are relatively new to blogging. I enjoy their posts and I hope you will follow their work. I’ve asked Elais and Michele to share a little about themselves.

A photo of Michele Walton and Elias Hallaj
Michele Walton and Elias Hallaj

Elias Hallaj | CBR Foodie

Elias started the food blog CBRfoodie in 2014 to identify affordable and tasty food in Canberra and share food stories. He’s lived in Canberra for 14 years and has a home in West Belconnen that he shares with his lovely wife, their five children, two dogs and two cats. As there is no money in being a food blogger he earns a living working for the Labor Party. Elias says he can talk for hours about politics and campaigning if prompted, but is equally comfortable spending time with his family eating honest food and watching the occasional zombie movie.

Michele Walton | Fine Eating

Moving back to Canberra where she grew up, after many years in a small country town, Michele feels totally spoilt by all the amazing dining opportunities. She’s always loved the way food brings people together and adds joy and flair to life. But it seems that so often, enjoying food and especially eating out often with friends makes it very difficult to also have a healthy weight. As a dietitian, Michele spent her professional life helping people tweak what they love to eat to lose weight and be healthy. So she’s always on the look out for a great tool or tip that works. When she finds one, it’s too good to keep to herself, she has to share it around.

Bloggers and Blogs mentioned

Lisa Bake Bike Blog http://www.bakebikeblog.com/

Elias CBR Foodie http://cbrfoodie.org/

Michele Fine Eating http://fineeating.wordpress.com/