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Best Blogger Sue Green!

July 9, 2012 in Uncategorized

Tags: Food blogs, foodies, Sous Chef, Sue Green, video clips

When we decided to honour who we deem to be our best bloggers by producing their own video clips and page of honour on our website (and giving them some valuable experience in front of some cameras), we never realized how hard it may be for them. What we take for granted and regard as a day’s work may be terrifying for some people, regardless of being celebs in their own right.

Indeed, nobody can deny the fact that Janice Tripepi and Sue Green (plus a few more peeps we have our eye on!) are true celebs in our realm of blogland. But working in blogland means one mostly sits in privacy and is safely and comfortably obscured from prying eyes while behind our PCs or laptops. (Actually, I often work in my gown and slippers and nobody in their right minds could ever, possibly call mine ‘lingerie’ or even nightclothes or sleepwear … ) Yes, one normally works calmly and privately … until a television crew grabs you and smears eyeliner around your eyes, pokes at your boobs to get then ‘just so’ in their v-neck aprons and sticks a little Prestic face onto a camera and asks you to ‘talk to the people out there’ so that they can establish your ‘eye-line’ … which nine times outta ten is not remotely near the centre of the lens like any normal person would expect. The only sympathy one gets is the offering of Calmettes or Rescue Remedy (in some cases both) and somewhere after hours of shooting, a glass of wine in the hope of settling the nerves.

Well, the other day (amidst the lead-up excitement of the fabulously successful Blogger’s Indaba), we did it to Sue Green, our beloved Sous Chef. She was in Cape Town (like Janice Tripepi was when we shot her clips) and we thought “Why not now?” And we did it and what a joy it was!

Sue was incredibly nervous but, like a trooper and a pro, she got in there and she did it. She did it well, she did it with humour, she did it with tenderness and above all, she did it with sincerity. We proudly share her clips and recipe with you.

Visit Sue’s Best Blogger page here.

At her best!

April 17, 2012 in Uncategorized

9 Comments »

Tags: best blogger, cooking videos, Food blogs, Italian recipes, Janice Tripepi

How often do we see, hear and discuss amongst each other the (too) many cases where, for the sake of publicity, low stats from those who “fit a certain bill” as criteria get rewarded? And in spite of us knowing for sure that if we reward low stats, we will get low stats, we often see the best achievers not getting the credit and acknowedlgement that they deserve.

So after meeting a couple of bloggers and becoming their avid fans, we decided to use our website to do something visilble with them, literally. We just figured that unless a blogger wins an award, we seldom see and hear them, yet they continue to consistently write engaging posts before the first birdsong is heard in the suburbs so that we can read their blogs with our first cuppa. They are the people whose tried and tested and often authentic recipes we cook and serve and relish and often even, take the honours as our own. They are the people who finance the ingredients, the camera and the Internet connection to bring us their hearts and souls on happy platters … And so they are the people who we chose to honour as our Best Bloggers. We offered them our entire professional broadcast quality crew and gear and edit suite with top editors and any ingredient they wish so that they can cook their most beloved four or five meals and we can produce video clips so that their fans and followers can see them in action and our readers and subscribers can see some of the best food talent in action. From now, you will regularly see some very familiar (and not so familiar) names popping up as our Best Bloggers.

We chose Janice Tripepi as our first Best Blogger for many reasons – but when we analysed them, we saw that they all boil down to one thing: intent. Janice is a giver and that is her only intent with her blog – to give and share her knowledge, her skills and her pleasure and joy that she derives from food. She is a Wiki-eatia for food and can discuss the various regions of India and its cuisine as she can discuss the various joints of a rabbit and how to prepare it with equal ease. She can talk about cheese and wine and salt and herbs and spices like I have not heard a chef does and then she can cook. Oh, can she cook! Usually television food is not edible but the day we shot her five video clips, she had our crew stand in silence at the first taste of her Sugo di Scampi. To cap it all, her posts are excitingly written, sometimes even romantic and always with love for her family. Her recipes work, they smack of Italian flair and flavour and even if her name did not appear on her posts, one would be able to recognise the big, generous heart of Mama in them. A mama who wants to please and nurture and does so with love and integrity.

Without any further ado, here is Janice in action. Enjoy!