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Monday, February 28, 2011

Planet VeGMeL week - Round up

This week couldn't be complete without writing up a summary and explaining in greater detail what it has been about. Katie Carrot wrote a post recently about how she felt she was failing at her blog and only a month into starting mine I noted that my posting frequency was dropping off slowly and steadily down to about twice a week. I wanted to keep my momentum going strong so I wrote down some goals and ideas and put one of them into action straight away - Planet VeGMeL week.

I have been enjoying reading and cooking from blogs (local and abroad) for a few years now and a part of me yearned to start my own whilst another part told me all the reasons why I shouldn't. You have never really enjoyed writing, especially something that will be read by others, you don't have a decent camera and know nothing about food photography, you don't have the time, and so on... So although I had wanted to do do this for such a long time, the things that really pushed me into it were my new kitchen and recently having converted from vegetarian to vegan.

When veganise this was started, I wasn't very organised and there were no goals or plans for what I was doing. The most difficult and time consuming thing for me is the writing component, this was another reason for putting Planet VeGMeL week into action immediately as I thought that the constant posting over a week would help me out in this regard. My food photos are another area that I want to work on improving, so another one of my goals is to upgrade my camera in the future and look into a short course in photography, hopefully with an emphasis on food. Does anyone have any advice/experience about this?  

I'm pleased to say that the week went really well, it gave me the opportunity to make a lot of recipes that had been stored up for some time and keep the posting going on a daily basis. On the first day, I had a sudden fear of things that could go wrong throughout the week. 
Thankfully there were no cooking disasters and there wasn't a single recipe that I disliked. Apart from a minor memory card hiccup and not being able to taste properly due to a cold for the first 3-4 days, the week went fairly smoothly. 

The stand-out recipes of the week which are most likely to be repeated and in no particular order were Spanikopita from Easy as Vegan Pie, Char Kueh Teow from Vegan about Town, Lentil Tacos from Where's the Beef and Lemon Tofu "Chicken" from In the Mood for Noodles. It was such an enjoyable week cooking from all of your blogs and trying something new every night. Cindy commented that there is more than enough on VeGMeL for an energetic blogger to do a whole month of posts and I totally agree with her on that!!!

That's it for now, I'll be back very soon with some of my own recipes to share... 





4 comments:

  1. Gosh, you shouldn't feel too bad about getting into a 2 posts/week habit - most bloggers struggle to keep even that much up!

    Even so, I can understand that a project like this one keeps the momentum going - and it's fun for the rest of us to keep up with too. :-)

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  2. Thanks Cindy, maybe I should focus on quality rather than quantity! The bloggers that have impressed me most over the last couple of years are the ones who continually post great recipes/reviews about 3-4 times a week, like you and Michael. ;-)

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  3. I agree with Cindy that 2 posts a week is doing really well!

    I am no expert at food photography though I have learnt a few things about it over my years of blogging but sometimes think an SLR and some proper course would help me out too. I have seen some great advice on the web about food photography - which is a good start - I have links to some of these at the end of this post if that is helpful - http://gggiraffe.blogspot.com/2008/05/planet-of-blogs.html

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  4. Thanks so much for your advice and info Johanna!!! I will definitely check out your post and the links for some assistance in this area. :D

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