Changes Are Coming!
My Brain is Less Powerful than I Thought
It’s a new year, and we’re bringing forth some changes to the blog! We realized that with only one writer (me!), the ambitious posting schedule we’ve maintained over the last 2 years isn’t as sustainable as we’d originally expected. Y’all may have noticed this, but we hope not. I’m honestly not sure why I ever thought that was sustainable, but it’s clear I had a less realistic view of my abilities than I do now.
This isn’t just about what I can and cannot do, however. It’s also about how meaningful our literature can be for you. When we hold to an aggressive posting schedule, it gives y’all a clear message that we’re more concerned with volume than quality. That’s the opposite of what we’re looking for! In order to align our actions and goals, we don’t want to publish material you don’t see the point in reading. Y’all obviously won’t feel the need to read all the things, but we don’t want the blog roster to be a sea of overwhelming that stops you from reading.
Ask Allie
The most substantive change here is going to be to the Ask Allie column. I have several AA posts already written (I tend to stay at least a couple of months ahead of the publishing schedule), and y’all will still see those posts. But after that, the column is changing in some really big ways. No longer will we put all the questions in the columns. That’s done. Approximately 93% of the questions we publish at this point are “asked and answered” questions, where we’ve posted iterations of the same questions over and over and over again. Y’all know those answers already, and if you don’t know them then there are a lot of columns to dig through to find the answers. Or you can just email me! Remember to add more detail than you think I need, please!
What this means is that once those last, already written, posts have published, Ask Allie columns will only be published when there’s a question that’s new, original, or has something about it that I think provides new information and learning potential to y’all (and, ideally, me!). The rest will still receive email responses per usual, but simply will not see your question in the blog later on.
Remember also: you guys are not relegated to asking questions about ferments. You really can ask any food question you want to. I like not-ferment questions, too! You can ask for not-food advice, too, and many of y’all do. I have never published those life questions, and will never do so. Because they’re personal, not food.
Betty White
2022 is also a change because we’re moving forward without the venerable Betty White as our collective rock. She is missed by all, I’m sure. I didn’t want to post about 2022 changes without mentioning this fairly significant change. I’m still trying to deal with my own feeling about losing Betty White, as I’m sure y’all also are doing.
New Posting Schedule
The long and short of it is this: we will only publish one article per week, for the most part. That “for the most part” bit is because I may throw an extra in here or there, as I feel like it or see a need. I can tell you already that the first time you see more than one post in a week, it’ll be because I want y’all to see the pepper series again without it dominating the blog for over a month.
We haven’t worked out exactly what the rotation will be, but there will be seasonal reposts stretched out across months instead of weeks, so I’d expect one of those per month on average. There will be other informational or similar posts, and there will be recipe posts. Some will be reposts that I know y’all didn’t remember were written the first time (as evidenced by emails), and some will be original content.
One of my goals is to restore a balance between fermenting recipes and regular recipes, because we are currently skewed pretty heavily away from fermenting recipes. I don’t particularly care for how skewed the ratios have become, but it had turned into a necessary evil due to how long it takes to develop some of the fermenting recipes (lookin’ at you, sourdough!). Without a weekly requirement to have a brand-spankin’-new recipe, I will have time to develop more new and interesting ferment recipes.
Currently I’m working on some Coconut and Thai Curry Sourdough Crackers. These are being developed with the gluten-free coconut sourdough starter! Legit, y’all, these have been a nightmare so far. I sincerely hope I am able to figure them out! Flavor is amazing but wow coconut flour is tough when you’re used to gluten. Either way, I’m hoping to have more GF recipe options for y’all (not just coconut). I know you want them, and I want to make them, but these take the longest of all to develop. You gluten lovers (me!) won’t be forgotten, but our GF friends do need more help than we’ve given to date.
Over time, I’ll figure out an actual schedule for how this will work, and y’all will know when that’s happened because you’ll start to see more consistency in the rotation.
Jon Tyson/Getty
We Listen
We listen to your feedback. A lot of the informational articles about ferments are written in response to questions y’all ask us in email or in the Facebook group, if you didn’t know. Sometimes this is because your question was so interesting that I felt compelled to write an article just about that concept, and other times it’s because Sabrina and/or I are concerned about some of the things we’re seeing in our email. Y’all often also give me other ideas without realizing it, too; thank you! This happens because I’m a heavily associative thinker, and something you’ve said causes me to think about a tangentially related topic. So yes, your feedback matters a lot to us. Know that it matters even when it didn’t result in a scolding type article.
Jack Prichett/Getty
Inflation
We are as aware as y’all are that inflation shows no signs of letting up any time soon. We know that everyone is hurting to some degree or another. Some of y’all are hurting a lot, and if that’s you and you need some help accessing local options, hit me up. I am very good at connecting people to resources, and you should make use of that skill if you need some help. No shame in that game!
This also means I’m going to repost some resources I wrote early in the pandemic, because I am seeing in my friend circle and in my emails from y’all that these resources are needed now more than they were then. It’s important to us to be sensitive to what people are dealing with in the world around us and not to simply focus on profits, so we will be reposting some of those and I will continue to look for new spaces where I can write other tutorials on food skills you would’ve learned in home economics courses if we hadn’t gotten rid of that requirement in K-12 schools.
Markus Winkler/Getty
Guest Posts
If y’all forgot about this, and you may well have due to the infrequency with which it happens, we love it when people do guest posts! We love it so much that we’d like to see more of it happening. I have a deep love of family-centric food traditions and stories, and I’m hoping some of y’all will share yours with the wider community!
If you have a recipe or idea you want to see published in our blog, please let me know! This is a particularly great opportunity for culinary students and budding food historians, as you’ll graduate with an extra publishing line in your CV.
If you’re interested in publishing with us, all you need to do is email me your idea, when you would like it to go live, and whether you want us to make you a contributor account so you can write it yourself (with byline) or if you want to send an article written in Word, GoogleDocs, or PDF to me to post with attribution to you in the post’s title and body. It makes no difference either way to me, so go with what makes you most comfortable!
For those of you interested in Indian cuisine, we will soon have a regular guest poster, Bhavik, writing up his family’s recipes! I’m very excited for this, and especially because family recipes always come with family stories. I personally would be supremely excited to see lots of different families and cultures represented in the blog, and I think y’all would be too!
Along those lines, I am likely introduce a Granny’s Corner category of recipes at some point. I love family food traditions enough that I digitized all of Ross’ great-grandmother’s receipt books. Since I largely cook like a granny, using a bit of this and a pinch of that, I will at some point start translating these into usable recipes and featuring them here.
Brett Jordan/Getty
On our end of things, we’re very excited to see increased diversity in both the ideas published and voices featured! It should be more focused and accessible, moving forward, and we hope that the streamlined schedule will allow all of us to enjoy what’s being written even more!
Kostiantyn Li
