Admonishment

I've been admonished for treating my blog like a website. I have been accused of only posting recipes. Yesterday at the Western States Rhetoric and Literacy Conference I read a PowerPoint slide that said "Blogging is about Conversations."

Ok. Guilty as charged. I mainly post recipes here so that I can say to my family--"Oh, you can find the recipe on my blog"--so that I don't have to type them up and email them to every person who asks, "Can I get the recipe for this?"

Sometimes I feel like I spend so much time thinking about work, which means thinking about writing and pedagogy and reading and grading papers and defending the F I gave to a student with a 6th grade vocabulary and 3rd grade spelling skills, and getting published, and going to conferences, and buying plane tickets that I just don't have time to think of witty wordsmithing for my blog. In fact, I guess I use my blog for recording something I don't really have to think that much about--cooking.

Of course, for some reason, my recipes never work out when I make them at home for my parents. I swear to this day they have never had a meal prepared by me that tastes good. Things always get messed up when I cook at their house--spices go awry; I try new recipes that fail; things burn. There are people in at least four states and two countries who would tell you I've cooked the best food they've ever had, but my parents always seem to get the bruschetta that went wrong, the stuffing I decided to fill with garlic cloves, or the risotto to which I added tumeric instead of saffron. Someday I'd like to cook a meal for them that goes just right. I'd like it to be like the dinner party I had in August, with the melon soups and the squash lasagne.

So...what do you write in a blog? I guess I don't really know, since I've been doing it wrong all this time. Oh well. I'll try harder.