The 10th Anniversary of my English & Finnish language food blogs
Most of my friends and followers know that I have been enthusiastically blogging to promote home cooked meals, cooking with children, and other food related things for over a decade now. Since I was a child, I have been enthusiastic about cooking, which has served me fine as I've always disliked processed meals.
Since having children, my husband Michael and I have rarely eaten out. Besides, eating out is not a guarantee that you get to eat nice and/or tasty food. Having lived in Rome, I remember one expensive fine-dining restaurant in the historical centre that was closed down due to the lack of food hygiene. Their kitchen was infested by rats and the accumulated grease from the cooker hoods kept dripping down night after night on the filetto di vitello, gamberi rossi in padella, and quality cuts of animelle, which the restaurant's near constantly hurried cooks where frying on their pans. Thus, I am not a big fan of eating out either... unless I know the owners/chefs, or I have received a recommendation to "wine and dine" from one of my trusted contacts. Yes, that is just how fussy I am about the quality of food! That is one of the reasons why I started blogging, in addition to my love of cooking. To promote home cooked meals.
Well not exactly, I got the idea of blogging from my husband. As I have always liked taking pictures/videos as well as finding ways to make use of digital content, Michael suggested that I could run two blogs; one in English and the other in my native Finnish. As a blogger, I could maintain my web content management skills, and stay up to speed with the ever-evolving applications, protocols, technologies and tech buzzwords. In fact, nowadays all marketing-communication job adverts are spiced up with buzzwords and related acronyms (CMS, SEO, CTR, VTR, TRR, LTV, GDPR, CTA, etc.), so in retrospect he was right. Beyond tricky-to-spell-out acronyms, the actual tasks are not rocket science.
As a self-proclaimed eno-gastronomist and an occupied mother of two hungry, ever so active children, I almost immediately embraced my husband's genial idea. And as if by magic, I came up with a name for my blog. The Enogastronomist, bien sûr! When I lived in Italy, most dinners were dedicated to sampling the eno-gastronomic delights (wine and dine) originating from a certain region of Italy. In Italy, there is no such concept as "Italian cuisine", because Italian cuisine is always regional/local, and besides, you would not necessarily recommend a glass of Amarone Della Valpolicella (Veneto) with a Pesce spada alla Trapanese (Sicilia), but you would go for the local wine. You get my point. However, I do like to have my own take on all recipes.
Well, then who is an enogastronomist? Many Italian universities run masters degree programmes in Enogastronomic Sciences and Cultures (Laurea in Scienze e Culture Enogastronomiche or Laurea in Enogastronomia), where culinary academicians train future professionals how to prepare regional dishes and provide them knowledge about the ingredients, nutrition and grape juice in great depth. Obviously, as a self-proclaimed enogastronomist, I haven't taken that particular programme, but I often take knowledge from my friends and their parents, inspirational chefs, restaurateurs, farmers, and other home cooks. During the Christmas holidays in 2011, Michael bought me two URLs: enogastronomist.com and enogastronomisti.com. I have been cooking, blogging and learning ever since!
Shortly after starting to blog, I realized that I could even try to monetise my websites with Google, Amazon and YouTube. For me, gaining monetization for my blog was a difficult, laborious task, but, eventually, I managed to do it, and I am sometimes able to cover the monthly running costs of it (although the blog still has a long way to go in terms of growing popularity).
The key idea of my food blogging was — and still is — to promote home cooking and to actively discover the world of eno-gastronomic delights. And indeed, by trying out new recipes I have been able to develop my food preparing skills and gain more knowledge of different food cultures.
Blogging is also a good idea to keep a record of family recipes, and a way to collect enough material to create your own cookbook. I figured that once our children move out of home, they would start missing the foods they ate when they grew up. Both of them are still attending junior high and to my surprise they have already been using my blog when they want to cook a meal. A blog has its benefits over a physical cookbook after all, especially when your children happen to be as good, if not even better than you at using tech.
A home cook never stops learning!
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| My two blogs have received over 240000 views, most of which are from Indonesia and Hong Kong in addition to the US, which came off as a surprise when I first checked my viewer statistics. |
The Enogastronomist demographics:
- Largest age group: 35-44 (33.1%), Generation Y, or the "Millennials"
- Gender: 53,1% female, 46,9% male
The Enogastronomist — Learning begets hunger
"This is a blog written by a hands-on, self-proclaimed gastronome to promote home cooking and to actively discover the world of eno-gastronomic delights. I often try new recipes and whilst doing so can develop my food preparing skills and gain more knowledge of different food cultures."
https://blog.enogastronomist.com
Enogastronomisti — Tieto lisää nälkää
"Tämä on hyvän ruuan ja juoman ystävän kirjoittama blogi. Haluan vaalia kotiruuanlaittoa sekä tutustua aktiivisesti ruokamaailmaan. Kokeilen alituisesti uusia reseptejä ja siinä ohessa kehitän omaa ruuanvalmistustaitoa sekä lisään tietämystäni eri maiden ruokakulttuureista. "
https://blog.enogastronomisti.com