Betty and I doing our best C.S.I. imitations. Photo by Kath from A Cupcake or Two.

Picture this: six bloggers with their friends and or partners huddled around a dish. Some sniff, some look at it from all different angles, some close their eyes and inhale deeply. Then a portion is taken to the table where using a fork each piece is savoured, pulled apart and each minuscule, ground up piece turned over and examined as if under a human microscope. Welcome to a Forensic Eating Dinner party, C.S.I. food blogger style.

Ellie’s dish

This night we’re gathered at Trissa and Dan’s house and in attendance are Betty, Kath, Trisha and Richard as well as their friends and partners. I first heard of the term “Forensic Eating” from my friend Liss from Frills in the Hills who mentioned it in a comment on my blog. I then floated the idea of having a Forensic Eating dinner party while we were brainstorming a theme for a dinner party one night at Guylian Cafe and everyone seemed eager to give this a try. Fast forward a few weeks later and we’ve all brought a dish to taste. A sheet of paper and a pen is handed out to everyone. The rules are simple: forensically determine what is in these dishes using sight, taste and smell. The creator of each dish tells everyone how many ingredients there are in the dish and everyone sets about compiling a list of the ingredients.

You are only allowed to name as many ingredients as the creator says there are in the dish and points are awarded for correct answers (none are deducted for wrong answers). First up is Ellie’s dip served with French bread. “The dip has 7 ingredients and no salt and pepper” she says and we get to work. I’ve teamed up with Mr NQN who loves the idea of a challenge. There is a strong taste of garlic and it reminds me of a tapenade and there’s a salty fishyness which screams anchovy. “There’s something else in there to give it body” Mr NQN says “like bread and there’s also water”. I can see parsley and tomato and what I think is olive but he is less convinced about the olive. We come up with a list of 7 ingredients based on both of our guesses.

Kath’s dish

Next out comes Kath’s dish, or more specifically Mama Eugenio’s (her mum’s) noodles. “This dish has 11 ingredients” Kath says counting them mentally. There are some obvious ones like carrot and obviously noodles (points are deducted if you couldn’t figure that one out), Lup Cheong or chinese sausage, sugar snap peas, wombok and chicken as there are clear pieces of each. However we have trouble coming up with 10 ingredients.

Trissa’s dish

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Foodus Bloggerus in action

I recently did a story about 10 Things You Should Know About Food Bloggers. I didn’t realise how popular it would be, after all it was just my rambling musings on the topic but what I did find out was exactly how alike we are as a breed and how fantastically comforting that was. The comments and astute observations of other food bloggers made made me chuckle too and gave rise to a second post on the topic, 12 MORE Things You Should Know About Food Bloggers.  So without further ado, here are another 12 things you should know about our particular, peculiar kind.

1. If you dine out with a Foodus Bloggerus, you’ll learn the art of dissecting food. An answer such as “It’s ok” is no longer sufficient. If you can create some oral poetry and describe the flavour or better still if you can pick the ingredients in it so that we can replicate it at home, you are a food blogger’s friend for life.

2. Is everyone at dinner thinking of ordering the same thing? Can you hear the voice in our head screaming “Dear God NO!” (or perhaps we even say it out loud). We love ordering different things as means that there’s more coverage of the dishes at the restaurant and it makes for a better story. In many cases when people ask me “What are you going to order?” my first response is “Depends on what you order” .

Oh yes there’s the Eiffel Tower around here somewhere..but look at the queue for ice cream!

3. If you’ve ever seen a food blogger’s holiday snaps you’ll notice that 90% of the photos will be of the food and restaurants that we’ve visited. Sure there may be 1 or 2 of the Eiffel Tower thrown in but it may just be because there happens to be the Jules Verne restaurant there. And ok we may also include the non food ones because we know that you’ll laugh at us if it’s full of food photos.

4. Sharing is caring and we love to share. Have you ever cut up a chocolate into quarters? We have. After all everyone has to have a taste right? Even if you don’t want to, just try it and let’s talk about it some more

5. Colleagues of food bloggers are the biggest benefactors of our habit.  In order to try and maintain a reasonable weight, it’s much easier to foist our creations on you. Send us your Weight Watchers bill.

6. How do Food bloggers kill time? Scouring obscure ethnic grocery stores and high end food emporiums for unusual ingredients. Is it exotic? Does it derive from the petals of a plant that only opens 3 days in a year? Check! Into the basket it goes.

7. Spouses of food bloggers are generally patient people, ones whose credit cards may have run slightly dry at the purchase of gold leaf and saffron (“Honey I had to buy it. And didn’t they say that gold is a good investment?”). I don’t want to say long suffering though as they do reap the benefits of good food. Some spouses like Mr NQN even get into the process and photograph the food even though he has very little interest in food whilst some remain bemused and embarrassed by the whole thing. Just surrender to us and comply quietly. It will make things a lot easier, trust me…

8. Some food bloggers take notes. Please don’t be offended, just pretend that we’re typing into a Blackberry and hopefully that may seem more normal.

9. The bedside table of a food blogger is simply a cookbook book shelf with little post it flags stuck to each second page marking recipes we intend to cook – one day. It’s a socially acceptable form of pornography – food pornography.

Autograph from Marcus Wareing

10. We question because we care. A non caring/unknowledgeable waiter is our worst nightmare and we are their nightmare customer. If we’ve enjoyed a dish we want to know more about it. so we can a) blog about it and b) perhaps recreate it at home. If a waiter has been trained to know everything there is about a dish, their face brightens when we ask them as they finally get a chance to show off what they’ve been asked to learn. And it may lead to a kitchen tour which is pretty much like going backstage at a rock concert. And that’s why we collect autographed menus from chefs.

Danish Horn of Plenty

11.Got a birthday/christening/anniversary/wedding coming up? Chances are the foodus bloggerus will probably help out. After all when else are we going to have the opportunity to make a Croquembouche or a Danish Horn Of Plenty? I brought this Horn of Plenty to a friend’s party once and it was such a hit I vowed to turn up to every party with a Horn of Plenty.

12. We carry a spare battery and if it’s a once in a lifetime moment, we carry a spare lens and/or camera. I also carry a fork with me and a knife is in the car. I have a response already prepared for the police officer that stops me and is alarmed to see I have a knife in the glove compartment. “I’m sorry officer but you see I’m a Food Blogger”.

The species Foodus Bloggerus is a peculiar creature. I know, because I feel distinctly peculiar most times.  We march to the beat of our own drum (or more accurately the sound of food sizzling). When most people are enjoying their food, we’re taking close ups of it. So to understand this misunderstood creature, allow me to reveal 10 things you should know about this unusual creature, should you ever encounter us in the wild.

1. Be prepared to eat early. Like a reverse Vampire, we love the light as more light means better photos. Eating dinner at 4pm? Sure, no problem, the light will be good then. Similarly, you’ll also find us seated near the window more often than not as the light is better there and we only use Flash in extreme circumstances or in closed blogger-friendly company.

2. We’re shy and hate to be stared at, especially while we are taking photos. However if it’s something exciting, we retreat into a haze and snap away uncaring. That’s called the “Paparazzi Brangelina moment”, when we descend into a frenzy of snapping.

3. Most people react to romantic lighting positively. Not the food blogger. We will utter things such as “crap, not this moody, romantic lighting again. What about my photos!”. Because as you know, it’s all about the photos

4. We love to share food. The equation is straightforward: the more food shared, the more food sampled and the more we can write about.

Hmm, how do I get the piece back in without them noticing?

5. If invited somewhere, we’ll usually bring something as it gives us an excuse to make something for our blog. However this is not catch free. A cake might have a slice taken out of it for photographic reasons although it may be put back into place. Try not to stare and pretend the piece wasn’t cut. Please. We feel weird enough as it is.

6. We love to choose where to eat out. Please let us choose – food is our life and we will painstakingly research places. We may also send through copious links and print out menus. It’s a compulsion. Just take them smiling and back away if you need to. Oh and trust us, the place may look weird/seedy but the food will be good.

Food-the ultimate gift

7. If you ever want to give a gift, give food. Something unusual, hard to get or exotic is wonderful. Or something fresh from your garden. We are easy to please. I swear I thought I wanted Choos until I got a roast rib of pork as a gift.

8. Dinner out with us in a restaurant is an experience. It can either go well and can be an interesting experience or it can go badly. Embarrassing sometimes if you aren’t used to the excessive photo taking. But it’s never boring. Badly is when a chef comes out to yell at us for taking photos or something similar. Good is when you get an extra dessert or when the chef comes out to say hello or explain how they’ve made something.

Yes we took pictures of the bread and butter…

9. If you dine with us, you’ll learn the art of patience. Yes we even want to photograph the bread and butter. Food is better a bit colder right? Or so we’d like to convince you.

10. It’s hard once you get into the habit, for us to not take photos of the food that we eat. I’ve only eaten out once and not taken a photo. And it hurt. Similarly, when I was watching an episode of Mad Men the other week, I was so engrossed in watching Peggy having dinner with her date and their drinks arrived and I wondered why she didn’t whip out a camera before drinking it and so my hand reached out to get my camera. Yes, it really did.

Tell me Dear Reader, do you have any other keen observations, either as a food blogger or an observer of one?