Is the world truly in need of another food and lifestyle blog? A question I have been asking myself over and over again for the past year or so. Millions of blogs are out there, some of them highly successful providing their writers with a generous income, others doomed to die a slow and silent death for they are abandoned and forgotten about after the initial enthusiasm. Why would I even consider to try and create a blog that will somewhere along the way fall between those two extremes?
To try and find an answer to this burning question, I’m going to take a short trip down memory lane. The emptiness of this website may suggest that is all shiny and new, but appearances are deceptive. I first started this blog in the summer of 2016. Back then, I was in desperate need of a place to share stories from my life that weren’t related to big life events like graduation, getting married, or having children. The only thing anyone cared to ask about. Back then I was not familiar with the concept of a blog, and I don’t recall how I got acquainted with it, but once I found out this online journal existed it seemed to be what I was looking for. I failed miserably at writing a journal all my life, but perhaps the possibility of other people reading my stories could provide a reason to keep coming back. In addition to that, at the time I didn’t eat onion and garlic and I was a bit fed up with the bland and boring food that kept appearing on my plate when eating at other people’s homes. So I wanted to provide some inspiration for when I was invited over for dinner.
Late one night I came up with a name, registered the domain, installed a theme, and off I went: creating recipes, learning food photography and editing, sharing the stories I needed to share but nobody asked me about. And then I fell ill. And with exception of some revivals, this tiny corner of the world wide web withered away. Not surprising since I wanted to write a food blog, but I hardly ate for eighteen months. It’s not an easy feat coming up with recipes if just the idea of eating makes you want to hurl – sorry for the visual. Also, I didn’t particularly feel like writing about what was going on, because there was no clear explanation of why I had this bad reaction to food in general. It turned out, after quite the long trajectory of an elimination diet, that I can’t tolerate about thirty types of fruit and vegetables. Their similarity lies in the type of sugar they contain – also known as FODMAPs – or in these tiny things called lectins. But more on that at a later point in time.
So, is the world truly in need of another food and lifestyle blog? I don’t know, but I do know I am. More than ever I need a place to collect recipes that don’t upset my body and that will hopefully help others on their journey to adjust to a lifestyle in which they have to avoid similar ingredients as much as possible. Furthermore, I have to learn to love cooking again. I used to have so much joy in preparing food. But that joy has been replaced with anxiety, a fear that the pain in my intestines returns. I want that gone. I need it gone. So this website is now a place for me to find that joy again with gentle experiments and learning how to cook from scratch.
I hope you will follow me on this journey, enjoy the ride, and share your stories on here as well. Over the past years I found a great deal of comfort finding recognition in the stories of others, and I hope to provide that to you too. So don’t hesitate to leave something in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!
