Project Food Blog Challenge 1: Ready, Set, Blog!

Exciting News! I?m competing in Foodbuzz?s Project Food Blog, a search for the next food blog star!

I bet you?ve noticed my new competitors widget right over there to the right, you can click on it to check out my Contestant Page. For the next 3 months Foodbuzz will host a series of challenges to find the next big up-and-coming food blogger.

There is an esteemed panel of judges who will judge each entry and deicide who will make it onto the next round. In challenge one, over 1,800 bloggers will enter and only 400 will continue on. Here?s where all my readers come in. That?s You! You can vote for me by visiting my Contestant Page (or click the widget). Voters get to decide one contestant to make it to the next round, without the judges votes. So if you like my entry, please vote for me! I promise it will be quick, and easy!

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Prompt:

Foodbuzz asks every constant to describe what defines you as a food blogger and makes it clear why you think you have what it takes to be the next food blog star? 

My journey to blogging started in the summer of 2005 when I turned 18. Though I didn?t know anyone who blogged or even what a blog was, I look back and I see how that summer I took my first steps toward joining the Blogging Foodies of the world.

I wouldn?t actually create my blog Simply Maren for four years, and I wouldn?t start blogging about food for five but that summer marked the beginning of my relationship with food. For five years I loathed eating, shopping at the grocery store, and cooking. I gained about thirty pounds my first year of college and I couldn?t accept food as a positive in my life.

Without those years of hating food and my struggle with weight and body image I never would have Google Searched healthy living and diets and stumbled across my first Healthy Living Food Blog.

That day in early January 2010 marked the beginning of my desire to love food. I immersed myself in Food Blogs, reading post after post that oozed passion for flavors and creating amazing dishes. Mostly, I wanted to love food like the writers did. I was tired of eating fast food and pre packaged entrees so I threw my little Nikon s550 in my purse and started photographing every morsel of food I put in my mouth and writing about it after.

The more I blogged the more I began wanting to cook and share my experiences in the kitchen. Every health food blogger knows and loves oats. I was so inspired and captivated by the creation of flavored oatmeal that I immersed myself in making oatmeal every morning.

These Cottage Cheese Pumpkin Oats were a success, but there were many failures along the way and many bowls of oats were deemed inedible and thrown down the garbage disposal.

Making oats were only the beginning. They taught me to be fearless in the kitchen, I began making home made pizza, baking cupcakes, and venturing out to restaurants that didn?t have chain or fast in their descriptions.

Over the course of a few months I genuinely developed a love for food. I looked forward to every meal, every baking adventure and every chance I had to discover something new. Before I knew it I was stopping at farm stands and pick-your-own berry fields. I wanted to cook so much I couldn?t afford to every day.

I love looking back and reading about my disastrous attempts at home made waffles when I need a good laugh, and re experiencing the day I fell in love with oatmeal mixed in yogurt.  That?s part of why blogging is amazing, it?s a living piece of you and a series of moments you can re-live when you need it.

Discovering my love of food gave me my life back and blogging gave me purpose when I had none. I?m the next food blog star because I?m just a girl finding herself in the kitchen through making bad oatmeal and failing at waffles because my baking soda?s expired. I?m not a trained chef, and sometimes I do eat an overly large burger from Red Robin. But passion for food and cooking have become a theme in my life and I wouldn?t be here happy and healthy without discovering blogging.

Simply,

           Maren