Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Blogging Vanity and Pickled Eggs

Since cooking is a major hobby of mine, I read lots of food blogs. The ones I like best are written by people that seem to me to be down to earth and don't have "the tone". What I have dubbed "the tone" is one that implies "I know everything". When I first was inspired by the likes of Smitten Kitchen, but I grew weary of the tone. I don't know SK, and I don't think she's someone I want to know. She recently blogged about how Club Med invited her to visit as part of an elite group of food bloggers. Bloggers that have "the tone" are always assaulting me with advertising. I am always a little suspicious of a little too many Amazon pass-throughs or Google Adwords on a food blog. Is the goal to share recipes or to make money?

Another blogger that I used to love and felt like we were practically blogging twins separated at birth has decided to use her food blog to make political statements quite regularly these days. I liked her so much better before I found out her political preferences. Next time I am cleaning out my google reader subscriptions, she will be deleted. I want to remember her just the way she was, where her blog post inspired a few of mine. I keep using this as an example for a newly divorced friend of mine that's considering internet dating...you can never really know someone by what they write on the interweb.

I write this food blog mostly to share recipes with friends. I am always thrilled to find out that someone found my blog and is a regular reader and it is some one I don't know. Wow! I'm surprised to find out about which ones are most popular. I love to get comments. The blog post that got the most comments was one I wrote about meatloaf. But are comments the best way to know what content is most popular? Probably not...for that I turn to Google Analytics.

I have a love/hate relationship with Google Analytics. I love that it just told me my readership is up by over 5000% since last year, but hate that it says my readership is only 2% higher than last month. Have I not been a good enough blogger? Who knows?

Google Analytics tells me that my most popular posts over this past year were:

My most read blog post of all time is my recipe for B&B Bar pickled eggs. It was my 4th blog post. ever. Google Analytics tells me it got over 1500 hits in this past year. Why pickled eggs, I wonder? Anyway, for the good people that didn't read my blog back then, follow the link and take a gander. Pickled eggs are spicy and are a upper peninsula bar room snack. They go great with cold beer, and they are a great snack for my Lenten fast from meat. Just writing about them is making my mouth water. I am going to have to make some to enjoy this weekend.

Thank you to everyone that reads my blog!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I try to leave politics out of my blog, too. The only thing I ever rail about on LJ is the homeschool/charter school and anyone who knows I'm a public school teacher should guess that I'm anti home"school" and charters.

As you know, I hate that smug tone, too. As I think I told you, I see a dividing line in the foodie community...the (usually married to a rich guy) rich folks living a life of leisure who get off telling us about how they cooked the gourmet dinner. Well great! If I had nothing else to do all day (no kids, no money worries), I'd be whipping up gourmet dishes, with mushrooms hand picked in the wilds of Mushroom Land and chocolate straight from the Oompa Loompa who lives in my basement and fair trade coffee that's been shit out of a monkey's butt.

But for the rest of us who didn't marry rich or who aren't rich and who have to watch money...uh, yeah. I can swing meatloaf and pickled eggs. I like the blog, the Prudent Foodie, because she addresses these very issues.

Btw, I haven't yet found a richie smug blog eminating from Ann Arbor yet, but perhaps I just haven't looked far enough....

mom2four said...

Ok, not so computer savy here, but how do you use Google Analytics?

Cynthia said...

At the risk of sounding cheeky, all you have to do to find out about Google Analytics is to google "Google Analytics". It is a way to track website statistics.

Kathy W said...

I made those eggs once when someone posted the recipe. That must have been YOU!

Maggie said...

I think the food blog freebies are a double edged sword. They're darn hard to pass up but then you have the obligation to blog about it and does your audience really want to hear about how you got to go to Club Med and they didn't? I love a ton of the bloggers doing the POM juice thing but really I don't buy the stuff, don't want to and don't feeling like reading them rave about it when I know they got a free case. Thankfully there are better bloggers that did something creative but there was a lot of POM post skimming the past few weeks. BTW, did you enter morel contest? *wry smile* Just to show that when the incentive is there I'm no better than the pack.

wolf said...

If you like pickled eggs you might like pickled bologna too. It's a pretty common site around the state, especially up north. Dearborn Sausage Co. does a really good job on theirs.