All The Pretty Dishes

This blog seems to have one steady reader in my friend T, one reasonably frequent reader in my school-buddy N, and occasional readers who flit through every now and then but have been kind enough to subscribe to the feeds. I seldom hear from anyone but the first two, but when I do I'm happy to say I mostly hear nice things. It is a bit galling, therefore, when an impertinent twerp I've met once takes a cursory look at the blog, uninvited, and informs me that my blog is a failure because it lacks the most important component of recipe blogs--a beautiful, food-pornesque, made-for-marketing layout.

Although from my ivory tower I make a habit of royally ignoring such twits, it occurs to me that perhaps I didn't broadcast my mission statement loud and clear, and people less a-twitter about my layout might have expectations from this blog that will never be met. So, let's have an honest mouth-to-ear about what this blog is, and emphatically is not.

This blog is not fancy. It is not sexy. The knowledge of this blog will not enhance your strike rate with desirable people. The author of this blog does not understand calorie-counting. This blog does not aspire to and shall not one day be made into a glossy (or shoddy) cookbook. This blog, being a non-entity written by a non-entity, will never make buckets, or even teaspoons of money from advertisments. Consequently, this blog is unlikely to receive chain-store sponsorship-cuddles, preventing it from giving away dressy, expensive kitcheware on first Sundays of all months beginning with the letter Q.

What this blog IS, is a compilation of recipes for people of straitened or stretched means. It uses cheap, ordinary and fresh, unprocessed ingredients usually available on both sides of the Atlantic. It is an useful guide to feeding yourself well, without shelling out half your income on dining-outs and ordering-ins. Although it snorts contemptuously at diet-food and keeps a respectful distance from the vegan lifestyle, it tickles your tastebuds and keeps you healthy, provided you get out and about a bit and don't rest your pretty posterior in front of a computer all day long (as the author of this blog does).

This blog also believes in an energy- and fashion-efficient kitchen, simply because aforementioned author is not used to anything else. All behind-the-scenes washing-up is done by hand, using minimum water. All utensils are made of unpretty but dead practical steel or cast-iron, and everything required can be covered under: wok, skillet, saucepan, metal strainer, good sharp knife, wooden spatula, perforated metal spatula (a speciality of cultures that deep-fry often and don't use kitchen towels to soak excess oil), and maybe a cutting board+potato peeler.

Now that we've made the nature of this blog unmistakably explicit, please tailor your expectation to it. And if your concern for my electronic 'success' tempts you to advise me on designers I should hire and marketing firms that will cut me a good deal to make this blog go viral... be so good as to sod off.