Reflections, Recipes, Little Black Books and Hunglish
When I began blogging in 2015 I joined Food Bloggers of Canada and attended their annual conference in Montreal. I made (and have maintained) great connections with talented people across the country and went to every conference until they stopped.
New bloggers continue to join but without the face to face experience, relationship-building has (for me at least) been challenging. With the goal of connecting new and veteran bloggers I wrote several “Where are they now?” features for the FBC website.
Most bloggers I know are thriving – entering the world of videos, running cooking classes, writing books and in some cases doing radio and TV segments. Everyone seems interested in monetizing though the money now seems more linked to TikTok and Substack - a newsletter that (may) charge subscribers. From our chats, I learned that I am not the only one who has slightly neglected their actual blog. Surprisingly some are even shutting down their blogs, finding other ways to channel their enthusiasm for food.
With the exception of becoming a published food writer, I have not evolved as much as my blogging friends – but building an audience and monetization were never my goals. I still get many visitors – over 7,000 last month (with Hungarian Hurka sausage a top hit). In the world of blogging my numbers place me in the Little Leagues. No matter. I consider Kitchen Bliss to be a legacy blog where family and friends can find recipes. (Having said that, I look woefully at a few family recipes that I have still not added. I had better do that before the next Birthday Blog!!)
When someone asks for a recipe I simply direct them to the blog. I hope that some family and KB food traditions will continue without the need for a Gravestone Recipe. If you don’t know what that is click here.
I’m sitting here surrounded by printouts of new recipes I’d like to try. Sticky notes mark pages of interest in my cookbooks. That collection keeps shrinking as I have given many away lately. I decided that keeping cookbooks that have not been touched in years is nonsensical.
My blog has become my “personal recipe book.” Entries are the things I make most often and all I have to do to find the recipe is open the website.
Yes, I am a “recipe girl.” Faced with only ingredients and cooking tools I have enough experience to cobble together something edible, but the truth is that I have committed few recipes to memory. As long as a recipe is on paper or in a book, I scribble all over it as I fiddle with ingredients and techniques, but once I’ve “nailed” the recipe, I add it to the blog and that’s how I make it.
My Mom also followed recipes except that most of hers were on 3” x 5” index cards. She was not from the era of women who cooked without recipes and (surprisingly) neither was my Grandmother – sort of… True, she had no recipes for savoury dishes but baking requires precision and for that she had her little black books.
I’ll digress briefly to talk about her Hunglish. I cannot conjure up a memory of her speaking English, but she watched TV and must have understood that. We always spoke Hungarian when together. So what’s “Hunglish”? It’s the odd combo of Hungarian and English words written in her own idea of phonetics. Deciphering some of her recipes has been a challenge. The trick I discovered was to read the recipe or word aloud, listen and then the “aha” would strike.
What helped is that she stayed true to Hungarian phonetics. Hungarian has pronunciation rules that are strictly observed - unlike English.
From “The Language Nerds”
Source is UK - adds a twist to pronunciations
In contrast, here are some examples of Hungarian pronunciation rules: "sz" is the English "s" sound; "s" is the English "sh" sound; "cs" is the English "ch" sound.
Take, for example, my Grandmother’s use of the word “pant”. Why mention trousers in a recipe? Well, she would have pronounced it as “pawnt” and with her Hungarian accent that was how she said “pound.” None of the following are Hungarian words so I offer her pronunciations and the translations:
Beken Pader = bekin pawder = baking powder
Ajszing = eye-sing = icing
Kek = kayk = cake
Csizkek = cheesecake
Flafa = Fluffo (shortening)
Paj = (p)eye = pie
Pesal = peshall = special
And the only savoury recipe in her book – midlov = meedlove = meatloaf
There’s a quote attributed to T.S. Eliot – “We don't actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace.” I feel her presence whenever I look through her black books.
How do people today keep their recipes? Bookmarks in cookbooks? Bookmark websites? Drop me a note about how you keep/organize your recipes!
Another year of bliss in the kitchen has elapsed. A high point was making over 500 cookies for my niece’s wedding shower. Some kitchen experiments were meh and others sent me down rabbit holes – e.g. researching gelatin in connection to the iconic Shrimp Dip recipe. There was a lot of sausage-making and a few successful bread making sessions.
I shared my dining-out adventures on Instagram, wrote several food articles for Hamilton City Magazine and countless food stories in my bi-weekly (free) newsletters. (Sign up here!)
A highlight of the year was our trip to Budapest. I promise to blog about that food adventure soon.
Next year will mark a decade of blogging. One day I will decide that the cost of running the blog is not merited and I’ll download and print all my recipes – and maybe disappoint the folks who visit Kitchen Bliss each day.
Meanwhile, I am thankful for all those who do blog. Most recently, while researching Massaman Curry, I was grateful for the 6 million sites sharing variations of that recipe– haha. Obviously, I only looked at a few of those sites. They helped me cobble together a recipe that matched the flavour profile I was looking for. I’ll post that recipe soon!
Happy Birthday to Kitchen Bliss and hugs to all who cheer me along on my food writing journey!