Introducing: Foodist Friday

So… I’m a little excited about this. Okay, a lot excited.

See, I’ve had in mind to start a food blog for a long time now. I’ve had a vision, a name, an understanding of how it would be unique, and a huge belief that it could help a lot of people.

The blog would be about learning to work with food, and ingredients. Not about recipes so much, and not exotic, just practical knowledge that would help the most uninitiated home cook go from oh-my-gosh-I-could-never-do-that – to - holy-cow-I-just-made-that-deliciousness-without-a-recipe.

Learning to work with food has proven incredibly worthwhile for me. It has enabled me to save money, eat healthier, experience less stress with grocery shopping and meal planning, be less wasteful, and, best of all, to create tastier food.

The problem with the food blog idea is that I can’t possibly take on another project right now. I just can’t. Even though I am passionate about helping people overcome their home kitchen woes and even though the Dude is constantly encouraging me to share what I’ve learned over the years, I just don’t have the life-space to start a new, entirely different, project.

But the other day it finally clicked: exploring food this way is a perfect fit for Project Grownup. It is approaching something we never learned and trying to become more capable with it.

So for the benefit of Project Grownup (hopefully), and for the sake of my sanity (certainly), I have scrapped my previous food blog project and am grafting it into our little life here, in the form of a weekly column I’m calling Foodist Friday.

You interested?

Now, you might be wondering what a “foodist” is (hint: it’s not someone who spends their days on a beach wearing nothing but lettuce), so I’ve explained that and answered a few other Foodist Friday questions below.

Q: Uhhhh, what’s a foodist?

A: The meaning of the word “foodist” is still evolving. And since the word is still coming into its own, different people have different ideas of what it means. But from what I can see, it is most-often used to describe exactly the approach I’m aiming for: “over-interested in the essence of food.”

Q: How is a foodist different from a foodie?

You can look this up elsewhere on the web, but I might say it like this:

A foodie is a food hobbyist. They love to find recipes, buy cookbooks, watch food network, and read food blogs. They talk about their favorite restaurants and menu items and what they’ve tried, in a comparing notes kind of a way. They have found a hobby and it happens to be food.

A foodist is a food enthusiast. They see food as an adventure and love to taste everything, learn about flavors and techniques, and are endlessly curious about real food. They read and talk about food in an exploratory or academic sort of way. They have found food and it happens to look like a hobby.

Q: Is this just going to turn into a food blog?

No. I couldn’t possibly keep up with a food blog. And my photography skills are wanting.

Q: You’re not a chef, how do I know you’re reliable?

Well, you don’t. That pretty much goes for anyone telling you anything on the interwebs. But I’ll be sharing things that I’ve been doing for a very long time. Plus, I’ll be using my food reference library and researching my little heart out to pass along the very best information I can.

Overall I hope Foodist Friday will help you feel more confident in the kitchen, and provide you with the encouragement to get started. And, as I’ll still be learning for a very long time, we’ll be growing together. Next week we’ll talk about using dried beans, and I’ll try to convince you to trade in your cans. Ready to get started?

But first, what would you like to see in Foodist Friday?