Inside Kitchen Conjugations

This afternoon while we were snacking at Cheesecake Etc., Food Magazine (or so I overheard) was doing a photoshoot of the --whatelse -- cheesecakes. As I pointed this out to my hubby, I said, "Yung ginagawa ko, ginagawa din nila," insinuating that staging and taking pictures of food is a normal thing. He said something like, "Dapat ganu'n din ang camera mo," insinuating how underhanded my Optio A10 was compared to the digital SLR the fotog was using, with a tripod to boot.

I said, "Di ko naman kayang bumili ng ganun," to which he replied, "Ibibili kita."
Sweet. :)

Anyway, the ongoing photo shoot got me thinking about how different food blogging is to food magazine writing.

Magazines are armed with editors, writers, researchers, photographers, the kitchen crew and the publication staff. Foodbloggers usually (I for one) do all the work -- the research, the shopping (for ingredients), the cooking/testing, food styling, taking of pictures, writing, editing and publishing.

Magazines have budgets for testing and re-testing and have assistants documenting and testing measurements and procedures. One-(wo)man foodblogging teams do it all in one-go (with little or nothing to spare for retesting), with measurements done by approximations (a sandok of this, a handful of that, a pinch of this, a dash or so of that). And so as I write the recipes for my posts I have to go over what I put in and what I did in my head and try to come up with the nearest approximations in terms of standard quantities. Thankfully so far no one has commented nor complained that their cooking from my recipes has come out salty or tasteless or inedible. :)

Magazines have the luxury of food styling and the ability to use even non-edible chemicals for the sake of making the food picture-pretty. My products need to be edible, palate-pleasing AND picture-pretty. Magazines have the luxury of long photo shoots; while I've held up countless lunches and dinners (at home and outside) taking shots of the food for my foodblog, I don't take longer than two minutes and sometimes settle for a not-so-pretty picture in the interest of feeding my already hungry family.

And because it's a one-woman team behind Kitchen Conjugations, life sometimes gets in the way and posts come far in between. (As is the case now.) And the biggest difference? You get the recipes (sometimes with a dash of humor and entertainment) virtually free. The cheapest food mag costs P50.00 I think.

So why do I keep at it? Gee, I don't know. Perhaps the need to share and connect? The need to glorify my creative spirit? Or just plain KSP? Hahaha.