Good Monday to you Dear Readers! It has been a while since I made a “10 Things You Should Know About Food Bloggers” list and truth be told this list has been sitting in my Moleskine for months waiting for me to transcribe it. The problem? My messy writing which would put any doctor to shame. I managed to decipher my swirly loops and without further ado, may I present you with my next 10 Things You Should Know About Food Bloggers!
1. Forget Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous (unless by narcotics, you mean an addiction to sniffing freshly ground spices), the foodus bloggerus has to check oneself into Cookbook Rehab. That is, the addiction to buying and collecting cookbooks rendering shelves buckled as a result and credit cards depleted. We may not even cook from any of them of course which is the somewhat startling truth as others may ask why we bother buying them but like an addict, some things are just hard to resist. And yes this includes cookbooks that are in French even though we can barely read the language and will spend hours typing it into an online translator in order to cook the recipe.
2. An addiction to butter. Sugar may be one thing but if you don’t have a sweet tooth, butter traverses the sweet and the savoury. For those of us who grew up on margarine (and let’s face it, a lot of us did as it was touted as the new, spreadable wonderspread when our parents were making our sandwiches) going back to butter is like having a new sense of taste opened up. It’s the fifth sense aka the sense of butter.
Mmm butter…
3. The Food Blogger is often wary of health tests, particularly those testing cholesterol as above mentioned addiction to butter and copious sampling may supply us with alarming results. So make like an ostrich and bury our heads in the sand ignoring the creeping pounds and expanding waistline.
Click here to read the full story
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
April 19th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
Last year I went to a launch party for Russian Standard held by a Russian Billionaire. Now please understand that I don’t start off every post with a line like this and billionaires aren’t my usual folk. It was held at one of the most expensive places to hold a function (on the North side of the Sydney Opera House under a huge marquee). Models in fluffy white hats slinked past and hors d’oeuvres laden with caviar and sashimi wafted past in lavish amounts. At about 9pm the Russian billionaire arrived and left a few hours later citing an early breakfast with Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch as the reason for not staying out later.
I wondered to myself, how do they know each other? Do billionaires join a secret billionaire club and was rule No.1 “Please photocopy all bank statements and post them to us for verification”? And sure he may know Rupert but how does he know the kids and most importantly… what did they serve for breakfast? Caviar may seem a little extreme for an Australian breakfast (and he probably bathes in the stuff) but toast with jam or cornflakes seems like you haven’t quite made an effort for your international guest.
Click here to read the full story
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
April 18th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
Dear Reader, I have a special competition to make your mother (or you!) feel like she has been truly spoilt. I’m sure you all know Baci chocolate, the Italian chocolate that means “Kiss”. Made in Umbria, Italy where they’ve been made for the last 85 years, these little balls are filled with gianduia nut chocolate and whole hazelnut before being encased in dark chocolate. Each silver wrapping has 1 of 150 different love notes.
One lucky reader (or their even luckier mother) will receive a rather lovely gift in the mail with $200 worth of Baci chocolate. This includes:
Just part of the prize!
Click here to read the full story
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
April 17th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
Dear Reader, allow me to share with you a little fact that you may not have known about Austrians. Austrians were known as Bull Washers (or Stierwaschers). The story goes that apparently in 1525, the castle was besieged and they needed to pretend to the outside world that they had plenty of food. They only had one bull and to make it look like they had plenty to eat with lots of bulls they painted their one bull different colours to throw potential invaders off the scent. Of course what happens after they painted the bull is that they had to wash it hence the term Bull Washers. And did you know that the owner of the Red Bull energy drink company is an entrepreneur from Austria called Dietrich Mateschitz?
Carpe Diem
One of his investments is a bar and restaurant called Carpe Diem opened in August 2005. In the downstairs bar you can have cocktails and food served in cones – what they call fast finger food with a difference. The concept was to have food that people could eat quickly and easily (hence I suppose Carpe Diem or “seize the day”) so that it was fast food but not sacrificing their health (although it must be said there’s some sense of irony as the bar is rather smoke filled). Tonight we are indulging in a rather exciting progressive dinner: our entrees, mains and desserts will be at different restaurants across Salzburg that are all within walking distance. We walk into Carpe Diem and it looks stunning, clearly there has been a pretty penny spent on outfitting it. Patrons are young and in front of them sit cocktails and cones. The menu is divided into vegetarian, fish and meat and there are non cone like selections as well. And please forgive the photos, the restaurants were rather dark!
Char with creamy spinach and truffle foam served in a curry cone E6.50
Click here to read the full story
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
April 16th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
Coco Chanel once said “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off”. Whilst I appreciate Coco’s sentiment, it’s something I’ve never been able to do. You’ll catch me leaving the house lit up with jewellery looking like a Christmas tree. It’s this lack of self control and discipline that I think led to me almost leaving the house looking like a pirate the other night and it’s one where I am attracted to sparkly things like a magpie.
Click here to read the full story
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it with your friends?
April 15th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
What is NQN up to now? 
NQN on Facebook
RSS
