Remember Catherine, the girl who flirted with my friend  Marc by emailing him some of her favourite recipes (see: A Taste Of Catherine)? Well I finally had the chance to meet her (Marc and she are dating now) and man, did she live up to her Flirty Fruity Couscous Salad. (You really can judge a girl by her recipes.) Even cooler,  this brainy gorgeous girl is writing her Master’s thesis on food semiotics. How perfect is that?   I’ve asked her to guest blog in the near future and I really hope she does.

 

Inevitably Catherine and I were talking about my blog and  whether or not I should feature a recipe with each post. (I’ve been holding back on certain posts with no recipe attached.)  She said I should relax about that. Mix it up.  Surprise people. But I wasn’t sure…

 

That’s when “The Raw and the Cooked” came up.  (“The Raw and the Cooked” is a book by French structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss who uses these food terms to describe culture.)  Using this handy analogy, I decided my blog was cooked. It’s written and shaped. Stories always make a food:love connection. Photos have to be well-lit and appetizing.  Recipes titles need to be funny and punny. And posts must contain recipes.  ” I’m a cooking blog,” I argued, “so it’s okay to be cooked.”

 

But I’ve changed my mind. about this. As a professional writer, I’m trained to bake my words until there’s no nutrients or flavour left in them. This is one of the reasons I wanted to write a blog in the first place; to express what I’m actually living and feeling, not processing everything through the TV formula mill (yet another apt food analogy.)

 

So, like a crispy carrot on a veggie tray,  some of my cfc posts will be more raw, a quick thought or silly idea.  Others might even be half-baked!  And no, not all posts need to have recipes.

 

RawandtheCooked

 


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