Ideas in Food started as a digital notebook. It is still that. I have let the distractions of life muddy my vision.
I want to share ideas, developments, discoveries and delicious.
I want to be able to afford to create.
I currently use this space to hash through thoughts.
Years ago, in an internet far far away, this blog had thousands of daily readers. Today, we average in the tens.
And to this small group of readers, who have found us through the muck and mundane, I want to tip a hat and say thanks for sticking with us and perhaps stumbling upon us.
We tried to always keep Idea in Food alive and well. We hit some rough spots and were thankfully thrown a life line.
Our archives have incredible depth. A random walk through the pages should spark plenty of ideas and ah ha moments.
I spend a lot of time pointing to our archives. I do this because I have not found my voice and my consistent tinkerers way back. Occasionally I stumble upon bits of interesting and amazing. I try to share them here.
I want to find the path to create, to cook, to care and to question. I want to cook through the thoughts and bring the scripted dishes to life.
About the Author
this morning i found myself sitting with two friends on a rainy lazy sunday and my expressed desire for waffles was met with enthusiasm. my further desire for playful experimentation, was left to me to activate as my energy and interest allow. i set myself to thinking, “what makes a waffle a waffle, and what possibilities for surprise exist therein; what resources might spark and guide me toward a plan” and it was in this train of thought i remembered ideas in food, which a decade or odd ago became a loved resource in my efforts to retrain my kitchen brain from rote execution toward informed play, and which i hadn’t returned to in some while, but perhaps i would find some nugget of inspiration in the archives, or at least if the site was still up (as the new internet swallows the old) i could show this old forgotten friend to my friends here now in the room…
and lo, this post from a few days ago. felt like a synchronicity. so, this reply. i am curious to see where this recommittment and interrogation of your present visions and wants takes you, and i am glad both your archives and you who created them remain present and active on the world.
Sir! It is interesting to me you published this this week. I started following you two around the beginning — when you first headed off to the resort to cook in the early-ish ‘oughts — have Maximum Flavor, and just generally think of you all as being an enormous influence on how I think about food. Life changes, and I dropped off six or so years ago (sometime around the doughnut shop became permanent) for a range of reasons …
… and this morning decided I needed to see what was happening. Very glad I did, back to the daily rotation you go. Best to you as you work through this phase.
RWM
Still here, still reading, still appreciative of the inspiration, commitment, and creativity.
Keep going. I have your book and in my hundreds of Apple Notes on food and recipes contain links to old broken likes to blog.ideasinfood. I clicked another one today to see another broken link. But I figured you were still blogging so I found the new site.
I had also let my own site decay and suffer. And I’m technical. But thankfully, these new free coding tools make maintaining and improving a website perfect for places like this. They can even take all of your old broken links and redirect them to your new site.
So please keep going and posting. Push your site to get it where you want it. Keep tinkering. Add an rss feed. If you don’t know how, ask the machine to do it.
When I want a unique pairing or a new way to try a flavor combo, I generally swing by here first.
Not a long-time reader, just a maker who keeps a notebook the same way. Mine is the only place my work exists. I write instructions exact enough to be finished by someone else’s hands, and the first one I sent out was eaten by a stranger before it ever reached me. So the notebook is not the record of the work. It is the work. Tens of readers still beats a perfect folder nobody opens. Keep going.