Friday 10 August 2007

In praise of food bloggers!

Okay, so I absolutely LOVE reading food blogs, browsing around them reading about delicious ingredients, looking at droolworthy photos, fantasising about what to make for dinner tonight etc. etc. So I thought it stood to reason therefore that I should keep a blog myself. However, I guess despite my fantasies, and to my infinite sadness, I was not born to be a writer. My own prose comes out stilted and false, and nowhere as lyrical and eloquent as I would want to sound. Also, I haven't got the dedication. So if anyone is here reading this as a result of following a link from my profile after I left a comment somewhere, sorry to disappoint you, but there is nothing of note to be found. I have deleted the few pitiful entries that existed (save for the US/UK linguistics mapping, which continues to be of use to me in the US-centric world of food blogging) and served only as an embarrassment to me, and now I keep this blog to allow me to comment on others posts only.

However, I would like to say a HUGE thank you to those food bloggers who manage to write so engagingly day after day, providing me with entertainment and inspiration, and for being able to succeed where I so spectacularly failed.

I get a little spark of joy everytime my Bloglines account tells me there is a new post from any of these marvellous people - thank you all! Orangette | Tea and Cookies | Gluten-Free Girl | Jaden's Steamy Kitchen | Chocolate and Zucchini | Cupcake Bakeshop | Homesick Texan | Smitten Kitchen | David Lebovitz | MattBites

I do read a few others, but those are my favourites. Feel free to leave me a comment if you know of any other great blogs I'm missing out on though, as I tend to read through my feedreader these days, and so miss out on the blogrolls, and my list could do with being extended!

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Tuesday 1 August 2006

The linguistics of food blogging

American English
meat
meat is more difficult to map accurately between the two nations, as the animals are butchered differently in the UK to the USA
tenderloin fillet
strip loin porterhouse
porterhouse and t-bone t-bone
short loin sirloin
sirloin rump
flank steak braising steak
ranch steak chuck steak
round steak silverside
top round topside
pulses
garbanzo beans chick peas
fava beans broad beans
lima beans butter beans
vegetables and herbs
zucchini courgette
eggplant aubergine
rutabaga / yellow turnip swede
cilantro coriander
coriander coriander seeds
arugula rocket
pickles
cornichon or dill pickle gerkin
baking
heavy cream double cream
all purpose flour plain flour
self rising flour self raising flour
cake flour not sure that we have an equivalent
confectioner's sugar / powdered sugar icing sugar
superfine sugar caster sugar
updated 13/08/2007