Ramblings – Fervent Foodie

Hello, old friend.

September 5, 2024 3 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I briefly thought I had lost all of my old blog photos from 2010 and 2011. It’s been years since I posted on the blog, and frankly it’s not something I think much about day-to-day. But one day I was making guacamole, and I googled this post as I’ve done dozens of times before, and was stunned to find the photo of the stained post-it note with my guacamole recipe was no longer on the site. There was just a tiny little box where the photo used to be, but the photo itself had vanished. Not just from that particular webpage but from my website entirely. What followed was about 3 hours of panic and frantic customer service messaging, a deeeeeeeep nostalgia dive into my old posts, and a quick decision to axe my old hosting service (bye bye Bluehost, thanks for the heart palpitations).

Reflecting back on this from the safety of having my site and cherished guacamole post-it photo restored, I’m not surprised that the thought of losing all those grainy oh-so-poorly focused photos was so upsetting. The blog was such a major part of my life for over SIX years–maybe the MOST major part of my life? But somewhere in graduate school, I lost that connection. This was partly due to moving to a new city and partly due to graduate school trying to end me. But also because it felt like food blogging had changed, like it had become mostly about achieving influencer status, and that is just not my scene. I just want my own little space on the internet to share the things that I’m excited about and have it be totally OK if me and my mom are the only ones who ever read them. I’m not sure what this means at the moment, but I hope it means I’ll find some inspiration to tap back into the creative parts of my brain (the ramblings posts were always my favorites). Feel the excitement of pounding out a blog post when an idea strikes. Maybe even dust of the old DSLR.

Ramblings

It’s complicated.

February 28, 2019 6 Comments

When I was a freshman in college, I often carried a rice crispy treat in my coat pocket. I had a little black pea coat that I bought for next to nothing with my American Eagle employee discount. It wasn’t even the slightest bit warm, but it had perfect treat-sized pockets, and unless I forgot, I had a rice crispy treat on me. It makes me laugh, looking back, that I would choose such junk as a daily snack, but it’s also a reminder of simpler days when the words “healthy” and “calories” didn’t exist in my headspace. Days when I had a piece of pie practically every day because the dorm buffet always had pie and how do you say no to pie. Instead of health, my focus was on hunger and doing whatever I could to avoid THAT feeling.

Ramblings

#OperationLunch.

March 28, 2018 4 Comments

Seven years ago, I wrote a blog post about Ladies Who Lunch, in which I expressed a desire to find a group of ladies to, you guessed it, have lunch with. It was around this time that I adopted my Say Yes to Lunch Policy. The policy stemmed from my first birthday in a new city, on which I didn’t know a dang person in town. I blindly sent an email to a handful of food bloggers that I stalked on Twitter and asked them if they’d join me for a birthday lunch. And guess what? THEY CAME.

After that birthday, I implemented a new mantra: say yes to lunch. If someone asked me to lunch (or coffee or dinner or drinks) I just said YES. Even if I didn’t know the person, or thought we’d have nothing in common, and ESPECIALLY when I really just didn’t want to go, I said yes. Similar to going on a blind date, having lunch with a stranger can be a little… shall we say, scary. The thing that surprised me most about these lunches was that although the other person was often feeling just as awkward about the whole thing as me, they (just like me) were seeking a deeper connection, a friend, a lunchtime tribe. The truth is that in this era of hyper-technology and go-getter syndrome (I just made this term up and subsequently self-diagnosed it), many of us are “busier” than ever and missing having in-real-life friends. It’s not just a matter of loneliness, it’s a matter of real, raw, personal connections.

Over these last two years in Columbus (holy cow how has it been two years?!) I haven’t been proactive on my mission to lunch, and with the semester winding down, I think it’s time to refocus on this ever important goal. This summer, I’m setting a personal goal of inviting one new person to lunch each week. Maybe I’ll even write about it here on the blog. Whatdya say friends? Will you join me in #operationlunch?

THIS COULD BE US:

Ramblings

Seven Year Bloggiversary.

June 5, 2017 5 Comments

Each year, on the anniversary of the date I started this blog (the bloggiversary, if you will), I post a recap about all the cool things that have happened in the past year. There were years when I did several food segments on the morning news and years where I traveled across the country for the blog, but this past year was sorely lacking in these types of exciting life events. It was instead a year of stress and challenge, a year that frankly isn’t much fun to reflect on.

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(Check out my 5th-year and 6th year anniversary posts!)

I did go on a press trip to Hocking Hills in January, during the Whole30, at which I was served brownies for breakfast, to which I was forced to politely decline. OH THE HUMANITY. Honestly, I focused more on fitness than food this year, which I believe helped me from completely going off the deep end. Well, that and my new obsession with Trader Joe’s plantain chips. Soooo crunchy.

This year I thought about changing the name of this blog, as I have done off and on over the past seven years. I picked the name “fervent foodie” on a whim, and it’s never seemed to fully capture what I hope for this space. I guess that’s probably how my parents feel about naming me Mary, when clearly I’m more of a Zoe. I mean, that’s what that online quiz I took said.

My most popular post over the last 365 days was my Buffalo Chicken Dip recipe (originally posted in 2010, most popular blog post, SEVEN years running). Come on people. This is followed closely by my Charlotte Foodie Guide and this HIGHLY informative post on how to make leftover pizza taste like it was just delivered.

I’m still not eating meat, and sure as heck don’t miss it. Except sometimes when I see a turkey sandwich with avocado and sprouts or a big fat meatball. Or smell some North Carolina pulled pork. Other than that, I totally don’t miss it. This year I also learned that despite all the exercise and healthy eating I cram into my days, my cholesterol is high. This makes absolutely no sense. I’ve temporarily omitted eggs and shrimp from my diet. The verdict is still out on whether this unscientific experiment will make a difference.

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When I started blogging back in 2010, I posted about 3 times a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner every dang day. This past year? I posted about once every three months. That’s grad school for you. The truth is, blogging takes a lot of freaking time. More time than most people have, actually. And I believe that’s why so many people are shifting to micro-blogging platforms (like Instagram, for example).

My lack of blogging this year freed up some time which I ironically used to start the Columbus Food Bloggers group. With the help of Erin (the Spiffy Cookie), Jordan (Midwest Foodfest), and Stacy (Eat Pretty 614), we’ve connected nearly fifty Columbus foodies and planned more events than I can recall. Our definition of the word “blogger” includes Instagram-only foodies (those micro-bloggers I talked about earlier), which is wonderful, otherwise I’d be kicked out of my own group for lack of posting.

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Last month, I spent a weekend in Charlotte (the city I moved away from last year), and as I headed south on 77 and the skyline finally creeped into view, I was hit with a sharp wave of sadness. I guess it’s sort of like when a relationship ends for valid reasons, but you still love and care about that other person. It’s easy to push it from your mind when you’re keeping busy, but there’s no avoiding that punch-in-the-gut feeling that hits when your paths do happen to cross.

Ramblings

Good enough.

March 28, 2017 7 Comments

Though I picked the name “fervent foodie” for this blog, those of you who’ve stuck with me over the last 7 years of intermittent blogging know that healthy living is a huge part of my life, and is a theme that trickles into the posts on this site. This is one of those posts. [Looking for something to cook? I recommend Potato Pie. Because potatoes are always the answer.]

I am writing to you from my desk on campus. It’s the last month of the first year of my PhD program. I have just four weeks to go. And man. WHAT A YEAR this has been.

As I talk to more and more people who have successfully navigated PhD programs, I’m learning that it’s completely normal to feel like you’re not good enough. And that this feeling won’t go away. EVER. They call it the Imposter Syndrome. We all feel like we’re not smart enough to be here, that we were accepted by mistake, and we’re all worried that eventually everyone else will find out how dumb we actually are. These feelings are not unique to PhD programs, of course. When you surround yourself with exceptional people, the bar is often too high to touch, no matter how much effort you give it.

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When I started the PhD program, I knew it would be the hardest thing I’d ever attempted. More challenging than finishing my undergraduate degree in three years or kicking the CPA Exam’s booty. Or studying for the GMAT til midnight each night for months on end. More challenging than working in Big Four Accounting or pursuing my Masters while working full-time. I knew all of this, yet I had no benchmark to prepare myself. I went into this year as I do all of life’s greatest tasks — with my head down and my eyes locked in on success. The problem here is that unlike other obstacles I’d tackled, there is no tangible, well-defined measure of success in a PhD program. And that, my friends, was nearly crippling for me.

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