sidebar links

food blogs

It's been tricky getting started on my sidebar links. The problem is, I want to categorise them but am not sure how. By frequency of reading is too dodgy- it changes all the time. By blog topic doesn't work for the interestingly wide-ranging ones, which is nearly all of them. By nationality doesn't cover "Jewish" very well. I once had "Friends/ Romans/ Countrymen", which sounded good, but implied that countrymen could not be friends, and involved the misnomer "Romans" for all foreigners. "The good/ the bad/ the ugly" sounds cool and amusing, but insulting two thirds of my blogroll for the sake of sounding cool and amusing seems less than optimal.

Basically, trying to fit the strange and fascinating selection of human beings whose ideas I like to read into labelled boxes feels like trying to fold up Texas and fit it in an envelope. Perhaps alphabetical order is a better idea.

On the other hand, perhaps complete randomness would be even better.

I'll start with food blogs.

Gastroblog is a wide-ranging food blog with recipes and food stories, as well as good writers, who have opinions about all kinds of food. They are absolutely down to earth and sensible, and can even write about foie gras without a hint of snootiness. Gastroblog also has a handy sidebar from which to go food blog surfing. When I decide what my favourite food blogs are from their sidebar I will probably add them onto mine.

The kosher blog doesn't seem to be updated very often, but it's the only one of its kind I have found, and has useful links to Jewish recipe places. The Jewish tradition of eating is unlike any other, with its combination of religious laws that can be applied in any time, place or cookery-style, and its huge stock of very distinctive recipes that still seem to maintain their popularity. I am planning to learn some soon, watch this blog.

Though small, it is tasty seems to be the new name for "Let's eat with Meg and Ted", which title I personally loved, but never mind. They are in Dublin, don't update especially often, but write a good, no-nonsense, interesting food blog.

I was just really very hungry is going up because it includes posts about cookery and food books, and I love reading about food. And it is good.

If you are wondering now whether reading and writing about food is such a great idea, I refer you to Maki's post about what the whole enterprise means to her. I am definitely going to buy and read the book she raves about. Food is more interesting to me than, say, fiction, these days; it can be immensely significant (which brings to mind this post by Google Hador about the significance of the family table in Judaism. I found GH at Mirty's place, which I also mentioned the other day). On the other hand, some people treat food like it is religion, or like it is art and art is like religion and they are the High Priest Maestro, which is quite sad. But you knew that already.

More links later.