cdkitchen > feeddaily blog
Welcome to Feed Daily
by Guest Writer, Valerie WhitmoreIt's official. I'd said I'd never be a blogger, but now I am. Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with anyone blogging, that's not it. Being a blogger (a good one, anyway) takes a lot of time and effort. Something I hadn't been willing to devote to this type of activity... until now.
So, what changed? Nothing really. But recently I found myself thinking about topics for blog posts many times a week - to the degree that I had them mostly written in my head before they were erased when I moved on to the next task. Recipe testing, site news, and various musings from my life - thoughts that were too wordy for Facebook or a recipe review, but that I kinda wanted to share. I've tried keeping up with regular postings in the past. There was "CDKToday", which ended up being more like "CDK Once In A While". There was "In The CDKitchen", which fizzled out after 2 posts. I'm vowing to do better this time.
And while the name of our new blog is "Feed Daily", there may not be daily posts every week. We bought the domain name many years ago when we were going to start a news site for foodies. And like many of my other projects, that one just never got the priority to get finished. I like the name though, so I'm using it here.
Since this is my inaugural post I thought I would lay out some ground rules.
What this blog isn't.
A collection of recipes I've created myself: While I do once in a while create an idea from scratch, typically I spend most of my cooking time testing recipes from the site. I try to test them exactly as submitted so others can benefit from the experience. And even though sometimes certain ingredients aren't my first choice (such as packaged convenience foods) I will use them for the sake of testing
A showcase of my photography: Be gentle. I've taken some good photos, but I've also taken some bad ones. I honestly don't spend a lot of time styling the food, monkeying with the camera settings, or retouching the photos. I try to get a good photo as quickly as possible so visitors to the recipe will see what the final produce should (kinda) look like. I am working on improving my skills, so hopefully this paragraph will become irrelevant in the future. I also won't be adding step by step photos of every recipe I try. I will definitely not be adding the ridiculous photos of basic ingredients you see as "filler" in some blogs. If you need to see what a bag of flour looks like, you aren't going to get it here. I will sometimes add photos from various stages in the cooking process if I think something needs further explaining or if it just looks cool
A shill for products or advertisers: CDKitchen has never, and will never, accept products in exchange for promotion. If I mention a product or brand it's because I actually like it and think they deserve some free publicity. I will also not accept money to personally endorse any product or brand. You are welcome to advertise on the site but if you are an advertiser or PR firm please do not send me products, samples, or literature. Really
What this blog is.
A more thorough explanation of the recipe testing we do: When I write a recipe review for the site it's usually brief and hits the high (and low) points of the recipe. That's what the typical recipe surfer wants - a quick and dirty look at whether the recipe is worth making or not. But often there is more to the story than just "it was delicious". Many times there is an adventure involved in finding an ingredient, juggling the steps of the recipe, or an unforseen kitchen disaster.
A way to communicate with our visitors: Occasionally we have things to announce and up until now we really didn't have a good way to do it. Tweaks, improvements, new features, known bugs, or even requesting visitor feedback will be mentioned here
A glimpse into my personal life: For years I kept myself hidden behind the site. Many people thought CDKitchen was owned by a big corporation because there was no personality to it - no identifiable human connected to the brand. Self-promotion isn't my strong suit so I deliberately stayed hidden. But to differentiate ourselves from our corporate competitors we decided that I should make myself more visible. I can no longer take sole credit for the success of the site (I have some great people working behind the scenes with me these days) but it's maybe because of this that I now feel more comfortable stepping out of the shadows and sharing information about myself.
I'll be enabling commenting soon on the blog along with a RSS feed for those who keep up with posts that way
So, what changed? Nothing really. But recently I found myself thinking about topics for blog posts many times a week - to the degree that I had them mostly written in my head before they were erased when I moved on to the next task. Recipe testing, site news, and various musings from my life - thoughts that were too wordy for Facebook or a recipe review, but that I kinda wanted to share. I've tried keeping up with regular postings in the past. There was "CDKToday", which ended up being more like "CDK Once In A While". There was "In The CDKitchen", which fizzled out after 2 posts. I'm vowing to do better this time.
And while the name of our new blog is "Feed Daily", there may not be daily posts every week. We bought the domain name many years ago when we were going to start a news site for foodies. And like many of my other projects, that one just never got the priority to get finished. I like the name though, so I'm using it here.
Since this is my inaugural post I thought I would lay out some ground rules.
What this blog isn't.
A collection of recipes I've created myself: While I do once in a while create an idea from scratch, typically I spend most of my cooking time testing recipes from the site. I try to test them exactly as submitted so others can benefit from the experience. And even though sometimes certain ingredients aren't my first choice (such as packaged convenience foods) I will use them for the sake of testing
A showcase of my photography: Be gentle. I've taken some good photos, but I've also taken some bad ones. I honestly don't spend a lot of time styling the food, monkeying with the camera settings, or retouching the photos. I try to get a good photo as quickly as possible so visitors to the recipe will see what the final produce should (kinda) look like. I am working on improving my skills, so hopefully this paragraph will become irrelevant in the future. I also won't be adding step by step photos of every recipe I try. I will definitely not be adding the ridiculous photos of basic ingredients you see as "filler" in some blogs. If you need to see what a bag of flour looks like, you aren't going to get it here. I will sometimes add photos from various stages in the cooking process if I think something needs further explaining or if it just looks cool
A shill for products or advertisers: CDKitchen has never, and will never, accept products in exchange for promotion. If I mention a product or brand it's because I actually like it and think they deserve some free publicity. I will also not accept money to personally endorse any product or brand. You are welcome to advertise on the site but if you are an advertiser or PR firm please do not send me products, samples, or literature. Really
What this blog is.
A more thorough explanation of the recipe testing we do: When I write a recipe review for the site it's usually brief and hits the high (and low) points of the recipe. That's what the typical recipe surfer wants - a quick and dirty look at whether the recipe is worth making or not. But often there is more to the story than just "it was delicious". Many times there is an adventure involved in finding an ingredient, juggling the steps of the recipe, or an unforseen kitchen disaster.
A way to communicate with our visitors: Occasionally we have things to announce and up until now we really didn't have a good way to do it. Tweaks, improvements, new features, known bugs, or even requesting visitor feedback will be mentioned here
A glimpse into my personal life: For years I kept myself hidden behind the site. Many people thought CDKitchen was owned by a big corporation because there was no personality to it - no identifiable human connected to the brand. Self-promotion isn't my strong suit so I deliberately stayed hidden. But to differentiate ourselves from our corporate competitors we decided that I should make myself more visible. I can no longer take sole credit for the success of the site (I have some great people working behind the scenes with me these days) but it's maybe because of this that I now feel more comfortable stepping out of the shadows and sharing information about myself.
I'll be enabling commenting soon on the blog along with a RSS feed for those who keep up with posts that way