A woman after my own heart, I agree – there is ALWAYS room for dessert! On occasion I even have dessert first. …On a really rare occasion – don’t tell my Mom or my Dentist, shhh! – I could easily have nothing but dessert for dinner! Life is simply too short sometimes, you know!?
While the title suggests all things sweet, Laura – the host, includes ‘all things that come before [dessert]’ too. She has been blogging locally since 2008 and has a classic blogging style – including recipes, photos, and the stories that lead up to it. For blog or bust share #20, visit Always Room 4 Dessert!
Foodosophy is a diverse food blog that includes content from all over the world, as their eight contributors travel and share their food experiences. They have many posts from all over, but their most heavily covered city is ours – Vancouver.
I like the title of this blog, yet another pun (love it!), and then their tag line, “Eat, Sleep… Dream… Food”. I could not relate more to that mantra!
For my Blog or Bust #19 share, check out Foodosophy. See where they have traveled – its an extensive list!
Their home page says it all: URBANSPOON Vancouver! UrbanSpoon is a resourceful food site, that includes contributions by many of the food bloggers I’ve already mentioned, and have yet to mention. Their TOP rated lists are helpful, when searching for a particular style of dining or cuisine; and they include reviews of all the great eats around town.
The Vancouver page, is just one of many other great Urban Spoon city pages within the larger mother-site, including Melbourne, Calgary, Toronto, Seattle, New York, Florida, Atlanta, and more.
Simply said, who wouldn’t love convenient referrals to good local eats?
Tonight is another short post about food blog titles – that I simply love. Each are more great local writers and fun follows!
I’m Only Here For The Food – A great Vancouver food blog a local, that reviews a variety of local restaurants. The author shares they does not have a formal culinary background, through the about page, but has an adventurous food philosophy to live by, “taught to appreciate food and [have] willingness to try almost anything.” I think the content of this blog reflects this policy! Well done!
I'm Only Here For the Food - food blog
Vancouver Street Eats – Another great name for a food blog in Vancouver, especially with the recent addition of more food vendors and ‘street eats’ following the Games earlier this year. Lots of fun pics of food carts on the street downtown in Vancouver, reviewing them all as new additions to the food scene in Vancouver. This blog is also a relatively new one, established this year. This blog is extra cool because it includes videos and maps of the exact location of the street eats! A FUN FOODIE FOLLOW!
Yes. Really, a Samantha Jones food blogging experience, which for me parallels to the scene in Sex & The City 2, when Samantha meets Miley on the red carpet and they are caught wearing the same dress! Gasp! Granted the angle the movie took was more about Samantha dressing age-appropriate, but on another level it was still a fashion faux-pas experience. What do you when you are expected to have your own look, and you look the same?
Same dress, same shoes, same blog look – whatever your fashion medium may be, it is your look but when someone else has the same look, what does one do? In the blogging world, there are a finite number of looks to dress your blog in for those at the mercy of wordpress or blogspot designs (until one day you can branch out and hire a creative team to rebrand your site).
In my recent food blog scene research, I have now come across more than one blog with the same look as Beyond The Dough – and all are also Vancouver based bloggers. Perhaps purely a case of great minds thinking a like, but at first I did not know how to react. Should I share them or try to change my look? Personally, I feel the look of one’s blog is an important image – like hosting guests in your home – you want to be inviting and encourage people to return.
Today, I choose to embrace my fellow food bloggers and their fabulous content – just as Miley and Samantha chose to do, gracefully. One dress can be worn in many different ways, just as a blog can.
Each of these Vancouver foodies have been blogging longer than myself and each has a different story to tell, with a different angle to the food scene than myself, and with great content of photos and stories. We each share two things in common 1) a clean contemporary blog look and 2) we are each based in Vancouver and love sharing about the food here!
For my blog or bust challenge post #12, check out each of these Vancouver Food blogging divas, in no particular order:
#12A – The Well Tempered Chocolatier – I met this food blogger in August at a food tasting event. She writes on ‘the science of sweet things’, and has been blogging since 2006!
#12B – Vancouver Good – I also met this food blogger at the same August event, her blog happens to cover ‘all things good about Vancouver for visitors and locals’ and naturally includes alot of food! Angie’s blog is organized conveniently so you can find what you want – like a local food / travel directory.
#12C – Ethnic Eats – On covering Tiny Bites yesterday, I learned this blogger is one of their contributors as well. Degan Beley not only hosts her own blog, Ethnic Eats, but contributes to a few other food blogs around town as well. Her Ethnic Eats site includes good eats, cheap eats, photos and and array of menu diversity – as Vancouver’s food scene offers. Her style is very captivating too.
To wrap up the long weekend, and double up on my blogs (in lieu of missing yesterday, due to giving thanks) here are a couple more quality sites to add to the Vancouver food blog repertoire in my blog or bust challenge include TINY BITES and the CASUAL BAKER.
#10 – Tiny Bitesis a blog lead by one, Karen Hamilton, with two additional contributors. Karen is a women after my own heart, as her blog encourages local tourism and helping Vancouverites decide what to ‘bite’ on. The blog is another award-winning site in the food blogging community – check it out!
Tiny Bites food blog
#11 – Casual Baker, is sweet blog written by Sheena, a Vancouver women with a self proclaimed penchant for sweets – bake on my fellow foodie! Her blog is simply baking, since 2006, and covers an array of recipes, handy to have in your shortcuts toolbar as a cookbook in your virtual library (She even has a recipe index – convenient!). Her stories paired with the recipes are great, sometimes including music video YouTube links and other fun-interesting parallels.
Her photography is rustic reflecting the baking and recipes; looking oh so tastefully homemade. I would definitely support this casual baker if passed in a farmer’s market.
There are so many ways to find new information these days, it is quite overwhelming, and all of the blogs I share with you I have found through a variety of resources. But tonight, as the rain beats down here in North Vancouver, and I search for a festive dessert recipe for my Thanksgiving weekend, I write to you about a Twitter foodie blog find for today’s Blog or Bust post #9.
Good Life Vancouver is a blog that covers Vancouver and beyond – it is a large site that is well designed and fun to poke around on. The navigation bar includes fun headers like Cook, Dine Out, Drink, Events, Taste, or Travel, making it easy to find what you want fast.
The author, Cassandra Anderton quotes in her ABOUT page that she is a “freelance wine, food and travel writer and broadcaster. Cassandra appears regularly on Breakfast Television, can be heard on The Shore 104.3 and has been published in The Vancouver Sun, Western Living, BC Wine Trails Magazine, Vancouver Magazine, Northwest Palate, EAT Magazine and Concierge Quarterly….”
As a local food & wine guru, Cassandra is clearly abreast of the ‘Good Life’ in Vancouver and shares to us all. Thanks Cassandra – great site!
By the way, I just found the recipe I want to make: Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake from Martha Stewart… Stay tuned!
Going into the long weekend, where many are about to feast on a turkey dinner of some sort and all the fixings, it is good to be thankful for quality food. Thankful for homemade food, and treating your body right.
Organic food is much more common knowledge now and is increasingly more accessible in grocery stores. Farmer’s markets are more popular, it seems as well, because local produce a good way to support local economy too – local farmer’s often produce organic too.
Across my blogging research, I discovered a hearty blog from the west coast, called Organic Food for Everyone – which is my Blog or Bust post #8. The blog, by the Bovay Family, is sure to answer any of your organic food theory questions. Their home page describes their content as a site that, “provides you with all you need to know about organic food: including the benefits of organic food; growing organic food on your farm, in your garden, or on your patio or balcony; and where and how to buy, cook and eat organic food.”
This site is filled with guides about genetically modified food, organic beverages, where to buy organics including pet and baby organics. It is an information packed site that will surely answer any organic questions you might have!
…Perhaps your turkey dinner will include some organics this weekend, enjoy!
About six years ago I worked at my first major food event, the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival, and it was an amazing experience. The wine fest, as it’s affectionately known to Vancouverites – who actually know about the festival, was an amazing experience then and has been each year I’ve returned as a consumer. It comes around once a year in the early spring at the convention centre downtown, look for the 2011 festival.
It was at this festival that I learned many things about Vancouver’s food and wine scene – including exposure to many of Vancouver’s industry personalities. One of which is Barbara-Jo McIntosh, who has opened a cook book story in 1997 and has been growing every since. Her store, Barbara Jo’s Books to Cooks, is located in the Armoury District (a known design district area of Vancouver just south of downtown) – originally she opened in Yaletown.
She was recently inducted to the BC Restaurant Hall of Fame, as a Friend of the Industry, and is incredibly well known in Vancouver and beyond for inspiring culinary enthusiasts of all levels and sharing cooking lessons and events in her store.
Well, Barbara-Jo also has a blog, which is my Blog or Bust #7 share, called Cooks with Books. It is staff-authored and includes recipe reviews from their favourite cookbooks – high quality content. And **secret** if you purchase a book referenced in her blog, there is a discount offered: see their blog home page for more information.
If you’re in the area, visit her store because she has helped put Vancouver on the map as a food city. If you are anything like me, you could be her store for days…
LOVE sculpture on Georgia Street, downtown Vancouver
Many locals should recognize this piece of artwork that graces Georgia street in downtown Vancouver. I’ve been past it countless times in my 11 years here, and every time it grabs my attention, with a rubber neck. Secretly, I’ve always thought it would be rather (hopelessly) romantic for anyone to meet their true love in front of this statue. Yes, I know, it may be quite ridiculous but there is nothing wrong with dreaming, right?
The other day as I walked past, to take the photo, I took the time to look up this piece of artwork for the first time. I learned that it is not the only one in the world surprisingly. We are a piece of the LOVE sculpture collection around the world, including other major cities like New York, Montreal, Lisbon, Bangkok, Istanbul, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, and more… I am not familiar with the criteria behind the city selection for each sculpture replica, but all of these cities have great food too so could it be correlated? One can dream, right? Art and food in great cities around the world… Vancouver loves food and we do it well.
There are many writers out there who agree, including the Foodists, a popular Vancouver food blog that includes a list of contributing writers who have also found food love in the Vancouver area and beyond. The blog includes food news, events, restaurants, great photography, and an appropriate tag line, “enlightened appetite”.
My blog or bust #6 post is Foodists. I met one of the contributors to the Foodists blog at my PC Confections tasting with Paul Croteau; it was fun to meet other food bloggers from around the city – offline.
Beyond The Dough 