Lexington, KY - As it has done with so many other aspects of day-to-day life, the Internet has thoroughly transformed the home-cooking landscape, providing a platform for endless quantities of recipes, nutritional information, suggested grocery lists and inspiration from hundreds of thousands of like-minded home cooks from around the world who chronicle their weekly culinary adventures on food blogs.
Unbeknownst to many, Kentucky has its own established community of food bloggers, and the recently instated Kentucky Food Bloggers Association has made strides in recent months to organize and connect the group, which now boasts more than 60 members.
What Is a Food Blog?
It's a question that many food bloggers regularly encounter. For the unacquainted, food blogs are akin to online food journals, usually centering on recipes, stories and anecdotes about food, and photographs of completed meals. Blogs are typically updated one to three times a week, and sometimes include nutritional information, special promotions, restaurant reviews and other features as well. Food blogging has become an increasingly popular way for the international "foodie" community to share and discover new ideas, recipes and inspiration, and has opened the door to an onslaught of events geared toward the international food blogging community: conferences, workshops, festivals and other educational and networking events.
"The food blogging community is pretty tight on the national scene, and very interconnected," said Stella Parks, a pastry chef at downtown Lexington restaurant Table 310 and author of the popular dessert blog BraveTart (www.bravetart.com). Parks started blogging just over a year ago, and says that she has found herself increasingly plugged in with people from all over the world as the result of her blog, which sees more than 40,000 visitors each month, and its corresponding Twitter account. The blog also landed her a weekly guest-writing gig on the national food website SeriousEats.com, as well as a spot as a panel member at the Foodbuzz festival in San Francisco later this month, where she will discuss the relationship between social media and food blogging.
Parks' experience as a food blogger has provided her not only with a means to organize and share her recipes with an international culinary scene, she said, but also with a way to connect her directly with the people who eat her creations at Table 310. ("I get tweets and comments all the time from people who are literally still sitting in the restaurant eating dessert -- pastry chefs 10 or a 100 years ago couldn't imagine such connectivity," she said.)
Connecting the Connectors
If local food bloggers are the connectors that provide foodies around the world with ideas, recipes and culinary inspiration, the Kentucky Food Bloggers Association is a way to connect these connectors on a local scale. Founded earlier this year by bloggers Mindy Wilson of Danville (www.theworldinmykitchen.com) and Lori Rice (www.fakefoodfree.com), the group is free and open to any food blogger living in Kentucky, and centers on a (very active) Facebook group page that provides a platform for the members to bounce ideas off each other. The group has organized a handful of networking events (dinners and restaurant crawls), which have allowed the members to meet in person.
"I didn't realize how many other food bloggers were in my area until joining the [group]," said Meagan Moughamian, who describes her blog, "Meagan's First Kitchen" (www.meagansfirstkitchen.blogspot.com), as a "documentation of [her] experiences in the kitchen, the good and the bad."
Wilson notes that while most of the food blogs in the group focus on particular recipes that may or may not be Kentucky-centric, most members of the group also have a vested interest in promoting their home state, and their Bluegrass roots tend to shine through in the personality of the blogs.
"Being from California, and having lived in a number of different places, I can say that Kentucky has a very strong identity," Wilson said. "It's great to have the support of local bloggers who understand the advantages and limitations of blogging from a smaller state like Kentucky."
Who's blogging?
Very few food bloggers are food industry professionals -- most are just folks of varying professional backgrounds who like to experiment in their kitchens, and have found that creating, photographing and writing about food is a creative outlet and a way to connect with people across the world who share similar tastes and interests. It can also be an outlet for a personal or professional passion, such as health or nutritional science, or a way to focus on the food your family consumes each week. Lexington blogger Melissa McDonald (www.MyMcDonaldMeal.com) works as the Kentucky relationship manager for the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a non-profit that works with schools to reduce childhood obesity. She started her blog nearly two and a half years ago, focusing her posts on family-friendly meals made with fresh, unprocessed ingredients.
"I'm on the mission to prove to folks that you can cook real, fresh food for a family, and have them eat it too," McDonald said. "There is something rewarding about posting a recipe that I have created, cooked and served my family, and for at least one person to benefit from this. It's also a wonderful way to help me write down recipes for family and friends."
Brian King, one of the authors of "Man Cave Cuisine" (www.mancavecuisine.com) also started blogging as a means to keep his family's eating habits in check.
"When my wife decided to be a stay-at-home mom, we drastically had to change our spending habits," King said, adding that his family went from eating out five to six times a week to once a week.
"With that came creating meals on a budget that are healthy and something the kids would enjoy."
With a shared history of posting pictures of meals they had created on Facebook, King and his friends, Cavan Allen and Alex Tietz, started their blog in August. King describes the blog as having a unique "talk show" approach -- the three of them post recipes and stories about food, and they all regularly chime in to comment on each other's posts with a friendly, competitive and humorous tone. The blog regularly champions local restaurants, and often delves into the topics of family traditions as well. The experience has challenged the friends to create better, more creative meals, King said; not only in an attempt to one-up each other, but also because of the reward of positive feedback from their readers.
"It's an outlet for our passion," Allen added. "We all cooked this way before the blog. We are just sharing what goes on in our kitchens."
Regional Blogger
The Kentucky Food Bloggers Association quickly grew from five to 60 members since its establishment a few months ago. Below, we have listed some of the bloggers in the Bluegrass area.
wokSergio (www.wokSergio.com): Alison Settle, John WInters, Josh Wolford, Kento Kobayashi, Matt Witt -
Lexington
Pappardella (www.pappardella.blogspot.com): Amy Camenisch -
Lexington
That Winsome Girl (www.thatwinsomegirl.blogspot.com/): Amy Kelly -
Lexington
The Goodness of the Garden...All the Year Round (www.goodnessofthegarden.blogspot.com): Beth Dotson Brown -
Lancaster
ManCaveCuisine (www.mancavecuisine.com): Brian King, Cavan Allen, Alex Tietz -
Lexington
Candy Girl (www.candygirlky.blogspot.com): Candy Wafford -
Lexington
Bourbon & Beans (www.bourbonandbeans.com/blog/): Carolyn Gilles, Erin Holaday Ziegler -
Lexington
A Day in the Life (www.danielledeskins.blogspot.com): Danielle Deskins -
Lexington
Mirabelle Creations (www.mirabellecreations.blogspot.com): Deanna Talwalker -
Danville
Erica Bakes Cakes (www.ericabakescakes.tumblr.com): Erica Allen -
Danville
Crazy Englishwoman Cooks! (www.crazyenglishwomancooks.blogspot.com): Fiona Young-Brown -
Lexington
From Cupcakes to Caviar (www.fromcupcakestocaviar.com): Janet Brand -
Winchester
Kentucky Foodie (www.kyfoodie.com): Jennifer Wehrle -
Nicholasville
Packed Table (www.packedtable.blogspot.com): Joyce Harter Pack -
Berea
Boonie Foodie (www.wanderluck.wordpress.com): Kate Bailey -
Paris
A Healthy Passion (www.ahealthypassion.com): Kate Horning -
Lexington
Fake Food Free (www.fakefoodfree.com): Lori Rice -
Lancaster
Meagan's First Kitchen (www.meagansfirstkitchen.blogspot.com): Meagan Moughamian -
Wilmore
The Art of Homemaking (www.hiphome.blogspot.com): Megan Smith -
Lexington
My McDonald Meal (www.mymcdonaldmeal.com): Melissa McDonald -
Lexington
The World in My Kitchen (www.theworldinmykitchen.com): Mindy Wilson -
Danville
The Shenandoah Supper Club (www.nthonaker.wordpress.com): Neil Travis Honaker -
Lexington
Savoring Kentucky (www.savoringkentucky.com): Rona Roberts -
Lexington
A Teenage Gourmet (www.ateenagegourmet.wordpress.com): Sami Rivard -
Danville
BraveTart (www.bravetart.com): Stella Parks, Sarah Jane Sanders -
Lexington
Eat at Home (www.eatathomecooks.com): Tiffany King -
Lexington