Yesterday I spoke with Elena (elenavi, group E) about the pleasures of cooking. We both agreed that cooking can make you feel relaxed. Whenever I am sad, I “explore” my mother’s huge cookbook collection, looking for a recipe which catches my attention. Then, I start cooking. I like experimenting with recipes, learning new techniques, trying new ingredients. Cooking requires a special attention, so that my problems slowly fade. Then, I must admit, I feel completely satisfied when I share with my friends something delicious I’ve just baked.
Sometimes, however, when you have too many cookbooks, it is difficult to find the best recipe and you may end by cooking the same recipes over and over again. Heidi Swanson tries to solve this problem in her own blog. 101 Cookbooks is a blog which chronicles a cookbook collection, providing a recipe at a time. The idea behind the blog is the following: “When you own over 100 cookbooks, it is time to stop buying, and start cooking”. 101 Cookbooks contains a lot of recipes coming from the author’s cookbook collection or from her everyday experience (travels, interests). You may even find vegan recipes or vegetarian menus on the right side of the page. I suggest you to visit this bolg also because it is a winner of numerous awards (among them 2006 Food Blog Award Winner - Best Food Blog – Recipes).
Unlike most of the previous blog, Simply Recipes contains only a few hundred recipes. This blog is a sort of family project, even though its popularity have incredibly increased during the last period. I loved it because it is full of tips and advice. However what impressed me most was the atmosphere in the blog. As the author points out in the presentation of her blog, the site is a sort of a family kitchen. All these recipes are tested by the author (Elise Bauer) or by her family. They are divided into different sections therefore it is easy to find what you are looking for. Many of the recipes are family recipes and some of them are very easy to make. You can leave a comment after trying them!
As the title suggests, Bakingbites mainly deals with baking. It is not merely a collection of recipes, it also contains tips and advice, reviews and discussions. This blog is clearly structured, for example you can easily find on the left side some suggestions about delicious recipes containing pumpkin among “October favorites”.
Generally speaking, the language on blogs is simple and plain. The posts are short and they give the essential information. However, you can click on one of the links you find in the text in order to retrieve the information you miss. In each blog dealing with cooking I found a list of other blogs which share the same subject. I visited a lot of blogs before choosing these ones. I tried to use different tags in order to see if the language changed according to the topic. Actually, the register can vary noticeably depending on the subject matter. For example, we may find a lot of colloquialisms and neologisms in personal blogs dealing with life experience of young people. In these blogs you can find abbreviations, sms language and even mistakes. On the other hand, there are other blogs dealing with grammar issues where people use an academic style.
