Random stories about my food/cooking blog

Vietnamese version (bản tiếng Việt): click here!

The blog was created thanks to the encouragement from one of my lovely friends, after she has been “tortured” by my food photos. She decided to encourage me to make a food blog so that the whole world would be “tortured”with her. And here we are, Just A Nerd Who Loves Food.

In the early stage, I was so excited. I wrote a lot. September – October of 2021, new posts were uploaded quite frequently (almost new posts every 2-3 days). However, life was not that easy. There were busy months that I needed to focus on school work, March – April 2022 for example, I literally “abandoned” the blog. Returning after the short break, I was kind of lack of motivation as it was like starting all over again. I told myself that I should work harder, should plan it better, should have both English and Vietnamese posts so that people can read/view with ease. I downloaded the WordPress apps on every mobile devices I had so that I could write anytime, anywhere. Write during lunch break, write while on the train, write right before sleep… To remind (and somewhat pressure) myself to write, I dared to “schedule” those incomplete posts so it was like, hey girl you have to write for it to be uploaded on time!

Stressful? Yeah, somewhat stressful… Now every time I cook something, I need to take photos of the steps, not just the final product, to improve the quality of the post. I’m not used to it, but in the public interest, cheerfully accept the latter. Happy? Yes…! I love good food and cooking, and I am even happier when people enjoy my food! Am I weird though?

Recently I’ve done some little upgrade to the blog. I was recommended to have recipe cards in my post so that readers can skip the lengthy texts. I “manually” modify the code for the subscription pop-up so that people know where the button is, without scrolling all the way to the bottom (my friend complained about that). I also tried to place ads on the blog to earn some tiny bits. I was in joy, but also in worry whether it is annoying to others…

(Regarding the ads, Google Ads initially decline to place ads on my site because it assumed that my content was repetitive, due to the fact that the original English and Vietnamese-translated posts had same photos. A bit hurt there…)

One month to the one-year anniversary of the blog, I intend to hold a Giveaway event. I’m almost done with all of designed products. The Giveaway gift would include TWO (2) most-viewed posts on my blog, ONE (1) informative article on stock/broth, TWO (2) new and exclusive recipes. They are all designed with a theme of scientific journals just for this event, and because I am totally a nerd. Which journal theme(s) will be in this gift then????

I was more anxious these days. I was, indeed, full of excitement when completing the gift as I literally wanted to show the first draft to everyone. But now I am nervous on people’s reactions to it, what if they don’t understand (or have a hard time to understand)…? I am frustrated with WordPress and its plug-ins for not being able to restrict the content to followers without asking them to log in/sign up to a WordPress account. My request is simple but the plug-ins could not satisfy that…yet. Frustrated!

I am interested in food documentaries, chef’s stories or the science in cooking (for example, what is baking soda and how it works). In the future, I am gonna have them on my blog, make it the unique vibe and the title of the blog: Just A Nerd Who Loves Food.