Liveblog: Closing Keynote: The Soul, Passion and Heart of a Chef

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Welcome to the liveblog of the BlogHer Food '10 panel "Closing Keynote: The Soul, Passion and Heart of a Chef."

Shauna (S) - Shauna Ahern of Gluten Free Girl
Molly (M) - Molly Wizenberg of Orangette
Michael (R -- for Ruhlman) - Michael Ruhlman of Ruhlman.com
Elisa (E) - BlogHer's co-founder and COO Elisa Camahort Page

E: Introduces panelists

When we had our call, the title of this session was all about putting your heart and soul into food blogging. Title is "The Soul, Passion, and Heart of a Chef". The panelists all feel they're not really chefs; they're food writers. S, tell us a little bit about the start of your blogging. Did you start out sharing so much, digging right in, from the beginning? If so, why?

S: Nice question. When I started in 2005, I had absolutely no idea what a food blog was, and I think that's a benefit. I had been diagnosed with celiac disease, and had always been a writer, and felt an urgency to share what I was discovering, joyful discoveries, and how pissed off I was. I was 38 and had been sick all my life for no reason. That urgency is what drove that openness. I had no idea people were going to read. It started with really long emails. My brother called me "a scroller", because my emails were so long you had to scroll to read them all. I put the blog up for people who didn't have time to read the emails but wanted to have them someplace to see. Then later, someone left a comment and I'd never heard of them. Then sitemeter said 56 people a day were coming to my site, but 1/3 of them were searching for "free girl". (laughter) I feel it's really important to remember that place. I still write from that place. It really is about writing letters, sharing my life, discoveries, and joy.

E: You write about joy and anger. Curious about the ratio and wonder how people reacted to the dichotomy.

S: I didn't write angry on the page. I was fueled by indignation -- maybe that's a better word than anger. At the time, there wasn't info online about being gluten-free. The message was drudgery.

E: Is that message different now?

S: Yes, I think so. The fact that you can heal yourself through food is an incredible gift. If you're going to get a disease, choose the one where you don't have to get chemotherapy. It was fueled by "gotta change things".

E: R, how about you.

R: Anger is one of the reasons I started my blog, and even why I started to cook. My books weren't getting attention. I wrote a book about pediatric heart surgery, and it got completely ignored. I was upset, and continued to be so. Then a friend said Megnut mentioned my book on her blog, so I started reading Megnut. I started to look at blogs and liked them, and thought maybe I could promote my books that way, from a purely selfish standpoint. Meg and I struck up a friendship and she said I should blog, so I started as a guest blogger on her blog. I wrote an angry post about Frank Bruni, and it got a big reaction and I started to have fun. I like answering comments, and Meg doesn't answer comments.

E: Meg co-founded Blogger.

R: I wish she'd be back blogging more. Anyway, I really liked engaging with readers, and that's why I continued to blog.

E: How did you make this decision to be really free with what you share about your personal life?

R: It's just part of my personality. I'm a horrible gossip. (*audience laughs*) My wife is appalled. It's just my nature to be open, and I think we all should be, unless we're murderers or something. My personality fits the medium of blogging. I can express opinions, readers can express them back, and I love it.

E: M, how about you?

M: I started it as an unhappy college student. I thought grad school would be a lot of reading and talking about what you read. I was studying the French social security system, an excuse for me to travel to someplace meaningful to me, Paris. I was there in the summer of 2004. The national assembly was debating reform of social security, and I was there at just the right time, and I just didn't care. I suddenly discovered this wasn't where my heart was.