A personal note on blogging

When I started blogging it was mainly because I couldn't find the simple Kerala recipes. If you have at least read three or more posts on Ginger and Mango, you know I am enchanted by the multitude of simple Kerala recipes.

I want to record them in English and when someone searches for kanji, I am ecstatic one of my blog pages show up on search. Someone once wrote to me, she was having fever and that she was in a foreign country and wanted badly to have some kanji and searched and she hit on my blog. Yes, thank you reader, that's exactly what I want too. Especially I love it when a non-Keralite says they tried the Kerala kuthari or the rice gruel. Ummaah!

To me blogs especially food blogs should be less sophisticated and should reflect one's own kitchen. I love to see pictures in the commonly used steel utensils and kadai than on pretty bowls. I don't think it should be about excellent dramatic photographs or professional writing or precise recipes. We have fantastic cook books for all that. To me, it is about individuality, love, passion and stories behind them. Cooking to me is all about expression of love. And who else can bring it forth to the blogs than us women?

To write a food blog, it is good to have a camera. Well, I didn't have one but when I switched to DSL, my service provider send me a small 3MB web camera with no flash. One couldn't even put a memory card in that thing and could take only 7 pictures with the internal memory. You could just click and take a digital photo. That's it. So I had to cook early and take a picture in the afternoon when I had full light. I rarely saved a post in the draft and what I would eat for lunch, I liked to immediately share it with you. It was like from the stove to the table to the blog.

Could I buy a decent camera? Of course I could, but I didn't want to. I had an old SLR with me and had given it to my brother. When I traveled or I needed one as a must, I borrowed one from my cousin. I was thinking I should be able to survive with this good for nothing camera too. I could write if I couldn’t put good pictures. I could excite you with a new ingredient for lack of good pictures. I could tell you stories. And that’s what I did.

Then, one fine day I saw Google Adsense. I thought If I put that on my blog and If I could get some money and If I buy a camera with that for my food blog, wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be the thing to do? Wouldn't that inspire someone? And yes, that's exactly what I did. Though as an Indian syndrome, I was hesitant and shy at first to put ads. But I put them this year and I made money. Yes, I got my first Google check last month and was unimaginably happy. It was like how you would sell old newspapers back home, how you would sell fish from your fish tank to friends and make some extra change. I bought a Nikon L14 for the money I got. I have no excuse now for not having a good picture on my blog.

It was fun watching the piggy bank slowly getting filled up, sometimes as low as .02 cents, but I was patient like making koya by stirring milk on the stove for hours. If I had regularly posted it would have been much faster, but hey I got a life too right?

Thank you my wonderful readers!