Smeared Type

Blog. An intimidating word for this woman in her sixties, who hasn’t even figured out the features of her cell phone and sends out a distress call every time she has a computer problem.

If you’re going to write a blog, you have to have something to say, don’t you? Maybe not. I came across more than I want to know about how Baby Carla is growing. But from there I moved to Jan Erikson’s blog about Day of the Dead in Poland, where she’s visiting. I’m intimidated. She takes the reader on an insightful, sensitive journey to a country long oppressed by its neighbors. I can’t be that eloquent.

Maybe I can write something to show I’m well-read. But I’m just now getting around to my first book by Russell Banks. (I gravitate toward contemporary women authors.) I just read on-line about how the Baylor study found a lot of women have been hit on by clergy. Too depressing for my first blog entry. Maybe later.

Something compelling, like how I survived being abducted by North Koreans when I was in Korea last year. I did go north of the 38^th parallel with a group of 500 South Koreans for one day. That’s hardly abduction. Or how I’ve overcome my fear of anthills or my addiction to NPR, neither of which is true—though I try not to step on anthills and I do listen to NPR nearly every day.

Can I get an interesting blog about my struggles with insomnia or my sundry aches and pains? No, that’s what an old lady would write about, and I’m not—oops, I am but I don’t want to highlight that.

The problem with keeping up with a blog is that eventually I’m going to make it evident that I’m inarticulate or stupid or shallow or all of the above.

Why did I agree to do this?

By Nancy Werking Poling, author of OUT OF THE PUMPKIN SHELL, Spinsters Ink, pub.; available through Bellabooks.com, amazon, and many independent book stores

www.nancypoling.com

In today’s light-speed world of having everything now it’s interesting to note the veritable renaissance home-cooking is enjoying.  A new blog concept shows just how far we’ve come in our quest for the reassurance of the tried-and-true tastes of past generations.

Comfort Food is Everywhere

 Scan the shelves of the cookery aisle at your local bookstore and you’ll see what I mean.  On a recent foray to W.H. Smith here in Paris, I found the choice of books containing cozy photos of dishes presented in chipped crockery, of titles assuring the old-world authenticity of the recipes tucked between the fabric-bound covers, to be truly staggering.  The same can be said of the cookery programs on offer these days.  Flicking through the channels available through my cable package, I noticed the networks dedicated to all things domestic have a penchant for genial hosts with rolled sleeves serving up decidedly homey fare in welcoming kitchens.  They’ve all but replaced the expert, white-clad chefs cooking on the pristine studio sets of past cooking shows.

Enter the blog

It was, of course, only a matter of time before this trend, if indeed taking the time to prepare meals with care and honest ingredients can be called a trend, caught on in the blogosphere.  There are more food blogs than you can shake a breadstick at, and while the topics addressed span the far reaches of the culinary arts, there is a particular recurrance of the home-cooking theme among these sites.   The appeal of a home-cooked meal is universal, and so it stands to reason that in the environment of prepared, pre-packaged, convenience foods, supplements, dietary restrictions, political-correctness and a general suspicion of gastronomic pleasure, there is something of a boomerang effect at play.  The further we stray from the simple pleasures of food, the greater the need to get back to them.

Bridging the Generational Food Gap

At Thursday for dinner they’ve taken the bull by the horns.  Here, home-cooking has entered a new arena, and in so doing, has reached a new audience.  Dedicated to preserving family recipes, the site, created by second generation Greek-Canadians hoping to not only learn to prepare the dishes which were an integral part of their childhoods, but to archive them in such a way that others might enjoy them too, is a cookbook of traditional recipes for the “now generation”.  Step-by-step videos of family members and friends preparing simple but treasured recipes are uploaded onto the site weekly.  Neither the cooks nor the videographers are professionals, which only serves to highlight the grassroots appeal of the site.  The clips are, however, very clear and easy to follow, and the results are spectacularly tempting.  That the site is available through RRS feed and e-mail updates, can be downloaded to your iPod or accessed via several networking sites makes it particularly attractive to an audience that might otherwise never even consider sorting through Grandma’s stained and dented recipe box or Mum’s dog-eared kitchen bible.  Originally designed to document the family’s Greek-Canadian heritage through the recipes that have been handed down from generation to generation, Mercina and George, the site’s creators and administrators, will be taking things a step further by integrating an interactive feature to the blog.  Soon others will be able to upload their videos of traditional recipes being prepared lovingly in the family kitchen, too.  A cross-cultural, cross-generational feast, if you will, and a deliciously creative way of bringing a generation back to their roots while giving them a little soul-warming nourishment at the same time.