They let their food go cold. They rock fancy SLRs. They tweet up a storm, posting photos of their on-trend lunches and they always know where to get a good feed. Here are five facts about food bloggers you may not know.
1. They hate food fads just as much as you do
Macarons. Masterchef. Those over-blogged ‘it’ restaurants. Food bloggers have been there, done that, or at least read it in their mile-long blogroll. At EatDrinkBlog, one food blogger admitted to me, in hushed tones ‘I don’t think macarons are that great, actually.’ I had another prominent food blogger email me to agree that Sydney’s recent night noodle markets were both overrated and lacking in noodles. Chances are your fave food blogger is as sick of hearing about Jamie’s Italian as you are…or soon will be.
2. They’re zeitgeisty, not trendy
Food bloggers will break the next big thing months before the more cautious mainstream media. By taking risks, readers feel they get the inside scoop and other bloggers can follow suit and put in their 2 cents. As a rule, food bloggers don’t blog an experience they’re not that enamoured with, unless it’s macarons, possibly served at the night noodle markets by one of the contestants of masterchef, so the initial buzz bloggers create is often well-deserved.
3. They work extremely hard at what they do
Blogging requires consistent effort, especially for big name bloggers or those who have successfully monetised their blogs. Once readers regularly stop by or start paying for content, it becomes even more important to provide consistent, quality stuff. Food bloggers know they have to bring their readers something fresh and new that they can’t find on their own. A full-time blogger may work around 15 hours a day, 6-7 days per week. I myself spend about 8-10 hours a week just to produce 1-2 posts.
4. They’re often not as tech-savvy as you might think
Bloggers aren’t all tech heads, nor are they all graphic designers. When figuring out how to do something tricky on their blogs, the default method? ‘Google it’. I’m really glad I’m not alone in this, as along with visiting forums, it’s the method I usually use. Another thing I’ll do is to get in contact with bloggers who have a feature on their blog I particularly like, and ask them where they got it. Food bloggers are usually more than happy to share their knowledge and help you out.
5. They’re not all trying to get published in mainstream media
It’s often assumed by those outside the blogging community that bloggers are trying to get published in a ‘real’ medium. For some, this may be the case – they may be after freelance writing jobs or book deals. But for many, blogging can be a hobby, or it can be a business, it can be just plain fun. I know for myself the motivation is producing something, publishing something myself.
Image courtesy of Krug6
Today, I will donate the money I would’ve wasted on eating my way out of boredome to OzHarvest. Today, my household will donate $348.87. Add $70 to that and you get the amount on money we spent on food the week before. Scary.
I just want to say a massive thankyou to everyone who blogged, tweeted, commented and participated in the inaugral $35 Challenge this year. I want to thank those regretfully declined. We’ll be back next year, bigger and better than ever, and I hope you’ll join us. I really, really do.
I’m still musing on it, you’re probably sick to death of hearing about it, but there you go.
Sydney food bloggers suffer from the paradox of choice. We are presented with so many food choices, trends and fads that sometimes we become paralysed. We can’t decide what to have for dinner. It’s a hard life.
Last weekend, having just finished up The $35 Challenge where there was very little in the way of food choice, I was far from paralysed by this paradox. In fact, I was salivating, and not even necessarily at the variety of food offered up by the harbour city, but at the very concept of choice itself. Now. What to eat first?
I knew exactly where my first foray back into foodie-ville would take me. A week or so ago, after a tip-off from kindred blogger Inner West Foodie, I got an email from Ashfield council inviting me to its three upcoming festivals: Ashfield’s Tastes of Asia (Friday night), Haberfield’s Primavera (Saturday) and The Summer Hill Grand Food Bazaar (Sunday), all part of the Crave Sydney Food Festival. Friday I was still on The $35 Challenge and Sunday the inner-west trains weren’t running so I knew I’d be at Haberfield come Saturday. It was to be my only Crave Sydney Food Festival event, and one I’m glad I didn’t miss. Haberfield isn’t a suburb I’ve spent much time in, so I welcomed the chance for a bit of exploration. And with Ashfield Council promising 100% local stallholders (specifically, no gozlëme) I was hooked.
These days, no matter how awesome the food festival, there are always your usual suspects. I’ve written about it before, but there’s your tapas stall, your gozlëme, your poffitjes. You’ll find them at the night noodle markets, at the Campsie Food Festival and the Glebe Markets. Ok, there’s a reason they’re so ubiquitous – they’re solid crowd pleasers. But I think that markets and festivals have a brief, a theme, and I think they should stick to that brief. If the theme is noodles, there should be noodles. If the theme is, say, a suburb, the festival should be made up of businesses from that suburb or at least that area. If the theme is a country or region, there should only be stalls serving food from that region.
I applaud Ashfield Council for sticking to its own brief. Haberfield’s Primavera was made up entirely of businesses from Haberfield – in fact, I think it was made up entirely of businesses from the Ramsay and Dalhousie streets. It is quite a small festival, so maybe that will change as it garners more interest. But I hope not. Aside from The National Multicultural Festival earlier this year, it’s one of the only food festivals I’ve been to that has truly stuck to its own brief.
When I arrived, there wasn’t much to see. Ramsay and Dalhousie streets were blocked off with a caravan stage in the middle of the crossroads with everything quite spread out. This is because the stalls were located directly in front of businesses, which I thought was a fantastic idea. It meant that the stallholders could cook in their own kitchen if they wanted and punters would easily be able to return for a meal sometime if they liked what they tasted.
The point of Haberfield’s Primavera is to showcase the flavours of the local area. To this end, everything served was in very small portions, with nothing costing more than $5. This made it not only affordable, but (my favourite part) it meant that you could try many different dishes without feeling like a huge, ridiculous whale at the end of it. For the businesses involved, it also ensured the maximum number of customers would get to taste their food. It’s impossible to object to eating a small $4 treat sitting in the gutter on a beautiful spring day, let alone several treats. Thus, Haberfield Primavera managed to circumvent the much uttered criticism of ‘But I could pay $15 to eat that in a restaurant! Why would I pay that to sit in a park/on the ground/standing in the street?!’
And I ate so many things. I started with fried zucchini flowers stuffed with cheese and anchovy from Haberfield Post. They probably needed to drain and cool a bit, I got way too excited and ate mine fast. I’d brought my (vego) mum along to take photos and she said ‘Oh…I think that had and anchovy in it.’ Damn, Italy, always with the secret fish. Ah, well.
At the Zanetti 5 Star Delicatessen they had free samples of olives, salami and cheese. We tried the Sicilian green olives marinated in lemon and garlic and vowed to go back and buy a tub. Out the front of the iconic Lamonica IGA where an old man played the piano accordian I grabbed a $1.50 espresso which was heavy on the crema but also on the bitterness. Ah, well. You get what you pay for, I guess.
At La Pasteria they were selling two things: meat lasagne and spinach and ricotta cannelloni. I grabbed a lasagne, it was pretty greasy but in a guilty pleasure kind of way, super rich, cheesy and tomato-y. At the same time, the flavours were very simple; just folds of pasta and cheesy Bolognese. Heaven.
I lost track of how much time we spent staring at and photographing the gorgeous Italian pastries, cakes and savouries at the Pasticceria Papa stall. They had cannoli, their famous ricotta cake (which I vow to try next time), gorgeous looking thin squares of pizza, arancini the size of which I’d never seen before, sandwiches, biscuits and god knows what else. As there were still more salty snacks to try, we decided either to return at the end or, if not, to join the ever-lengthening queue for gelato at an as-yet-unopened gelataria.
We considered tasting some wine at Haberfield Cellars, but found ourselves drifting straight past to the stall at La Disfida. This stall would definitely win the award for the most varied and interesting looking food, it’s was actually really hard to decide what to eat; there was amazing looking orecchiette, eggplant involtini, Panuzzi, arancini with mushroom, rocket and truffle, peperoni pizza, and, something I wish I’d had room for, Italian doughnuts. We opted to share a slice of margherita pizza, cheeseless but to die for. The tomato was rich and balanced, the crust perfectly cooked, with just enough herbs and olive oil to finish it off.
Next up was the Paesanella Cheese Shop which makes its own cheeses. They were selling three kinds of bruscheta; fresco and rocket, buffalo caprese, and a blue cheese and marscapone mix. They were also selling bocconcini ‘lollipops’ wrapped in prosciutto. The stall was such a simple idea but it was so effective in showing off Paesanella’s range of freshly-made cheeses. We grabbed a fresco and a caprese to share, the fresco was pan fried and salty with fresh crusty bread, offset by the peppery rocket and a dash of vinegar, while the buffalo mozzarella had a fresh, clean but still salty flavour. The tomatoes used were perfectly ripe.
We finished things off with a ricotta canolli from the aforementioned Pasticceria Papa. It had an amazing crunch to it was disappointingly bland in flavour. Sicilian olives in hand we headed for home, satisfyingly filled and pretty impressed at what Haberfield Primavera had to offer. I will definitely return next year.
When it comes to food, do you suffer from the paradox of choice?
ANZAC crispies – that’s what my mum always calls them so that’s what I call them. That’s because they should be crisp (but not burnt). We ate these a lot when we were kids as they’re super easy and only contain only one non-pantry ingredient – butter.
The story goes that these bikkies were often sent as part of care packages to the men of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during World War I. The recipe came to be because something high energy, solid and transportable was needed, and the ingredients in the biscuit were basic and plentiful at the time. Eggs were scarce, so a recipe without eggs yet was developed. The recipe itself is only allowed to bear the Anzac name if it adheres to the original, as the Department Of Veteran’s Affairs owns the term ‘Anzac’.
A quick tip: These bikkies are made to spread while baking but sometimes, inexplicably, they don’t. I usually put this down to stale bi-carb soda, so be sure to keep yours in an airtight container.
Anzac Crispies
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 cup plain flour
125g butter
2 Tablespoons golden syrup
1 ½ Tablespoons teaspoons bi-carb soda
2 Tablespoons boiling water
Preheat the oven to 160°c (140°c fan forced). Line two biscuit trays with baking paper.
Mix the rolled oats, sugar, coconut and flour in a large bowl. In a small pan, melt the butter and golden syrup together. Boil the jug.
When the butter and golden syrup are melted to liquid, take the pan off the heat. In a small bowl, place the bi-carb soda, followed by the boiling water. Once the bi-carb is dissolved, add it to the butter mixture. The whole mix will foam up, pour is immediately into the dry ingredients and stir through.
Form heaped soup spoons of mixture and place them on the trays. Leave plenty of room for the biscuits to spread, I only fit about 5 per tray.
Cook the biscuits for 16 minutes, swapping the trays after 8 minutes. They should be golden brown and very flat. If not, they may need a little longer.
Leave the ANZAC crispies to cool on the tray until mostly cool and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely. Serve with a cup of sweet tea or a glass of milk.
Makes about 18 biscuits.
Did you eat a lot of homemade treats when you were a kid?
Day 7 of the $35 challenge and it’s time to sit back and reflect. The $35 Challenge is not just about denying yourself, and it’s not just about raising money. The most important part of The $35 Challenge is that old cliché – putting yourself in another person’s shoes. It’s about experience, and more importantly, what you learn from that experience. Here’s what have I learned.
There is power in numbers. This is the most powerful lesson I learned. There is power in numbers when we all come together and decide to make a difference. On a more practical note, there is power in numbers in terms of the size of your household. The more helping hands you have, the easier it is to get by. Also, on a per-head basis, costs go decrease when they are shared.
Don’t underestimate what you have. I mean this literally – look in your cupboards. Look in your fridge. I cannot tell you how many times this week I thought we didn’t have enough food and then managed to sort something out. I thought we were out of food for tonight’s dinner. I was a little bit nervous, it was not a great feeling. But I found veggies, eggs, rice, tofu and lemons and tonight I will cobble together another fried rice. It will be of the 2/3 veggies, 1/3 rice variety. It may not blow anyone’s mind, but it will probably be very tasty.
Don’t underestimate yourself. We’re all tired. We’re all busy. But I can’t see how we’re too busy to make a tuna sandwich. Or scrambled eggs on toast. Or a salad. Or this soup. Making do with what you have, not wasting a thing – these are old-fashioned lessons we learn through having very little. But they would still serve us well when we have more. Frugality is having a comeback. Jump on the bandwagon.
Be thankful (but not complacent). Bloody hell, the list of things I am grateful for right now would fill a book. I have a roof over my head. I can have espresso any time I want. I have privacy, freedom, dignity. When I walk down the street, I don’t need to beg for money. People don’t abuse me for being a drain on the public purse. I have an education. I have family and friends I can turn to for help. I can do something to help. I have something to contribute.
Give generously. Organisations like OzHarvest run on generosity. They run on donations of time, food and money. If you are a business with excess food going to waste, get in contact with OzHarvest. If you have a teensy bit of cash to spare, donate to OzHarvest. If you have time, volunteer. There are people not so very far from where you live who rely on these organizations. They shouldn’t have to, but they do. And until systematic change provides some kind of safety net, we need to do what we can to help.
I have to say thank you to everyone who has helped with The $35 Challenge this year. By participating, blogging, tweeting and donating, you have all made a big difference. Join me next year during anti-poverty week and we’ll do it all again.
What have you learned from The $35 Challenge?
The $35 Challenge, where we have just $35 to spend on a week’s worth of food and drink, is drawing to a close. And while it hasn’t been as hard as I thought, we are getting to the point where were actually running out of food. Or so it seems.
Eating last night’s dinner for lunch will be impossible tomorrow, because today, dinner is steak and mash. Discount rump steak that’s been sitting in the freezer for a week, waiting for this very day. The day when I can’t be arsed to chop more than a potato and some beans. But what of our tomorrow-lunch?
As usual, the answer is leftovers, but not in the way you’d think. This time, I’m taking all the disperate leftover bits and bobs we’ve accumulated over the week and making them into (hopefully) a tasty dish for tomorrow.
Here’s what I have to play with:
Crepe filling from day 1 (cottage cheese, spinach, dill)
A tiny bit of chicken pie filling that’s been in the freezer forever
Tomato sauce for the pizza we ate on day 5
To that I added:
The juice of a lemon
Green beans
A tin of butter beans
Spaghetti
Basically, I cooked the spaghetti and green beans, stirred everything else through it and bunged it in a container for tomorrow. It’s not the most incredible meal in the world, but it’ll have to do.
What about you? Do you ever throw all your leftovers together in this way?
Day 5 of The $35 Challenge sees me a tad tired of coming home from work and having no choice but to make dinner (and tomorrow’s lunch) from scratch. Don’t get me wrong, I cook dinner at least 5 days a week but sometimes that could be just grilling a steak or making a salad. I haven’t chopped this many veggies on a regular basis since I was vegetarian.
I’ve been saving a treat for later in the week, knowing that we were going to get sick of veg-heavy meals. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea as piza is a bit labour intensive, but I sucked it up and got on with it. This meal is the ultimate in frugality- it takes one portion of pizza dough (care of The Australian Women’s Weekly) and divides it into three so-thin-you-can-cut-them-with-scissors pizzas.
Fancy Pants Pizza
(makes 3 pizzas, serves 4)
2 teaspoons (7g) dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
¾ cup (180ml) warm water
2 cups (300g) plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
Combine yeast, sugar and water in a small bowl. Cover, stand in a warm place for about 10 minutes or until very frothy. I usually have to put it in my oven on its lowest setting.
Put flour and salt into a large bowl; stir in all other ingredients with your hands. Mix to a soft, sticky dough.
Knead dough for 10 minutes/until smooth and elastic. Oil the bowl you mixed the dough in and place the dough in. Cover with cling wrap, stand in a warm place for about 1 hour or until doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 250◦c/220◦c fan forced (I have a pizza stone in mine). Punch down the dough, knead until smooth and then separate into three even balls. Let sit for 10-15 minutes.
Roll out one of the balls, place on greeaseproof paper and top as desired. Don’t go nuts on the toppings or you’ll weigh your pizza down. Place the pizza, on the paper either on the bottom of your oven, the baking rack in the oven or on a pizza stone if you have one.
Tip: Each pizza should take less than 15 minutes to cook. Keep an eye on it or it will burn! Be sure to leave about 10 minutes between pizzas to reheat the oven properly.
What’s you fave homemade treat?
We’re four days into The $35 Challenge and still going strong. The support in the blogosphere/twitterverse has been fantastic, and while we may not raise a ton of money this year, we’re definitely raising awareness of poverty.
I am planning to run the $35 Challenge every year during Anti-poverty week so hopefully it’ll just get bigger and better. If you can’t do it this week, why not next week, or the week after that? It’s never too late, drop me an email and I’ll add you to our tally. Or, if you donate to OzHarvest for the $35 Challenge, let me know.
Yesterday Emma over at Love Thy Kitchen posted an update on what she’s been eating so far. By the second day she’d spent only $8 and doesn’t feel like she’s going without, and I have to say, neither do I.
If anything my household is eating healthier than usual this week. Everything is packed with veggies, and I’m squeezing the last ounce of flavour out of every meal. My cooking is also a hell of a lot more creative. I made this salad which came out of nowhere and blew my mind. I keep forgetting just how much limitation breeds creativity.
Every day I’m eating last night’s leftovers for lunch, and it’s fine. It’s not amazing, but fine. And I’m loving how when lunch rolls around I don’t have to think about what I’m going to have and how much it’s going to cost.
Here’s what we’ve been chowing down on in the Corridor Kitchen household this week:
Day 1 – Breakky – Scrambled eggs on toast
Lunch – Everything summer salad
Dinner – Crepes with spinach, cottage cheese and dill, salad
Day 2 - Breakky – Porridge with brown sugar and strawberries
Lunch – Leftover veggie curry (made last week)
Dinner – Ginger brown fried rice w/ tofu and 7 veggies
Snacks – Grapes, an orange, raw almonds
Day 3 - Breakky – Burgen toast with cottage cheese and tomato
Lunch – Ginger brown fried rice w/ tofu and 7 veggies
Dinner – Pantry Pasta + salad
Snacks – Blue cheese, 4 crackers and 4 pear slices (work leftovers)
Suddenly I can’t bear to waste anything – last night, old broccoli became broccoli and ginger soup. This was while I was making dinner. Now there’s soup sitting in my fridge, rather than old floppy broccoli I could justify chucking out in a couple of days.
Broccoli and Ginger Soup
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 thumb of ginger, finely chopped
1-2 carrots, roughly chopped
1 small potato, roughly chopped
1 ripe tomato, roughly chopped
2 heads of broccoli, in florets
½ a stock cube
Freshly ground black pepper
water
Heat the oil in a medium saucepan. Fry onion and ginger with a pinch of salt. Once they start to colour, add the carrots and potato and cook for a couple of minutes.
Add all remaining ingredients, almost covering the veg with water. Put the lid on the pan and simmer until all veggies are well cooked.
Take the pan off the heat and blend the soup with an immersion blender until smooth. Heat to thicken and serve.
You can read about Emma from Love Thy Kitchen’s take on the $35 Challenge here. She’s costing it down to the cent, I really applaud her commitment. You can also read more about the nuts and bolts of the challenge here.
What are you eating this week?
Yesterday I was interviewed for 612 ABC Brisbane by the lovely Emma Sykes.
The interview went to air this afternoon. If you missed it, you can listen to a podcast here.
Thanks so much to Emma and the ABC for helping promote The $35 Challenge!
Yesterday afternoon, in the midst of wishing I could run out and grab a coffee I got an email from Luci, a woman living on the disability pension.
Luci feeds her whole family for $100-$150 each week. All 7 of them. That’s $14-$21 per person, per week.
Sure, shared food costs may help – the cost of food for a family of 4, for example, is less per person than for a single person living alone. But $150 to feed 7 people is nothing in Australia, especially with the increase in cost of living.
As is true of so many things, Luci and her family pull it together each week through their own ingenuity. They’re not starving, although she admits that things are getting harder as food gets more expensive.
“I do think we eat quite well though. We eat sprouts and eggs from our chickens, we grow pots of herbs for herbal tea, a leg of lamb (8.99/kg) can stretch to make 21 individual meals…”
My hokey little ‘taste of poverty’ challenge is not something Luci, or her family can afford to try. However, she wasn’t critical of it, even though I am coming from the privileged position of being able to ‘play’ at being poor for a week.
“I really like this challenge however and I hope it does increase awareness of poverty in Australia. We tend to think it is overseas, not in our backyard.”
These kinds of situations are exactly what I’m trying to raise awareness of. 11.1% of us live below the poverty line. 2.2 million Australians go without the basics we consider essential to live, not even a comfortable, but a not-hideously-uncomfortable life.
With this in mind, I invite you to donate to OzHarvest today. If you do, please comment below or email me at lau@corridorkitchen.com so that I can keep track of the $35 Challenge tally.
It’s not too late to support The $35 Challenge. During Anti-Poverty Week, from October 16-22, participantshave $5 a day to spend on food. By experiencing poverty for just 7 days, we come to a better understanding of the realities and stresses of those living in poverty. By blogging or tweeting this experience, we can raise awareness of an issue so often swept under the rug. And by donating the remainder of the money we would usually spend on food to OzHarvest, we can make a real difference.
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