You know Bryant Terry as the author of several vegan cookbooks. He’s also a James Beard and NAACP Image Award-winning chef, and an educator known for his activism to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. And most recently, he became the editor-in-chief of a new Ten Speed book division called 4 Color Books. Now he’s looking for [Read more…] about New Book Editor Bryant Terry is Looking for Authors
Paula Forbes Likes Cookbooks that Treat Cooking as Part of Daily Life
Do you know about the enthusiastic cookbook newsletter called Stained Page News? Its author, Paula Forbes, worked at Eater and Epicurious as an editor. She reviewed cookbooks for around 10 years before she started the newsletter in 2018. She moved back to Texas to write a cookbook about Austin food.
Her newsletter has 10,000 subscribers, and comes out [Read more…] about Paula Forbes Likes Cookbooks that Treat Cooking as Part of Daily Life
8 Best Practices for Food and Travel Writing
By When I started out doing food and travel writing, I had a freelance journalist’s dream job. I lived in Europe, and wrote a weekly food column for an American newspaper abroad. I was completely free to choose the topic and recipes.
My column started out at 500 words. But a few months later, it expanded. First it was 1,000 words, then 2,000, counting the recipes, too. No longer just a column, it filled an entire page in the newspaper every Thursday.
During the 7 years I worked for that paper, I wrote 350 stories about food—European, American, and Asian. All of them included one or more recipes. Since I covered a range of [Read more…] about 8 Best Practices for Food and Travel Writing
How to Avoid Cultural Appropriation in Food Writing
A guest post by Nandita Godbole
Recipe writers and content creators frequently struggle to understand cultural appropriation. To some, cultural appropriation challenges the old ways of doing things. Others wonder why food writers lose their jobs over it. They question why it is important. Is it?
Here’s my understanding of cultural appropriation and how to avoid it as a food writer:
1. First of all, what is cultural appropriation?
Wikipedia describes cultural appropriation as “The adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity.” For me, it also means [Read more…] about How to Avoid Cultural Appropriation in Food Writing
Win a New Edition of Will Write for Food!
I’m excited to announce that the fourth edition of Will Write for Food: Pursue Your Passion and Bring Home the Dough Writing Recipes, Cookbooks, Blogs, and More is available for pre-order. It will publish on May 25, 2021.
And you should definitely win a copy from me. Just leave a comment below.
Can you believe that I’ve written four editions of this book? Sometimes I want to pinch myself. Especially since they have [Read more…] about Win a New Edition of Will Write for Food!
7 Tips for Making a Cookbook — and Keeping Your Sanity
By Jennifer Kurdyla and Abbey Rodriguez
Do you dream of turning your blog (or collection of index cards) into a cookbook? Or maybe you already have a publishing deal in place? Regardless, so much goes into making a cookbook that you won’t see in the finished product. But like recipes themselves, there are ways to make the process easier.
The two of us spent 2020 creating Root & Nourish, our new cookbook focused on herbalism for women’s health. The pandemic threw us some major curveballs, but even in normal times, making a cookbook reveals lots of gaps in preparation, knowledge, and experience. [Read more…] about 7 Tips for Making a Cookbook — and Keeping Your Sanity
Tons of Tips to Improve Your Food Styling
By Pascale Beale
Food photography and styling is all about seduction. When someone looks at your image, you want them to think, “That looks so good, I want to eat that, now!” So, before taking a photo, think about two key elements that will improve your food styling:
- Which medium is the image for? This will dictate the shape, style and composition. Instagram works best with square shots, which would impact your styling choices, for example.
- What story is the shot telling us? Your choice of background, props and plating style will help to tell that story. A shot of a dish cooked outdoors requires a different set of props and styling than a photo of a dessert.
Once you establish the key elements, here’s how to improve your food styling for blogs, social media and cookbooks:
1. Pick one: natural or artificial light.
Good lighting is the most fundamental part of food photography. It literally shapes the food. You can have the most beautifully plated food, but if the light is wrong, the dish will look flat and unappetizing. Shoot with either natural (my preferred choice) or artificial light. You cannot use both.
I shot this salad (used as the cover of my cookbook, Salade II) with indirect natural light, which accented the different textures of the white elements — cheese, platter, and servers — in the dish.
As acclaimed food photographer Eva Kosmas Floras says:
“Never mix two different color temperatures in the same photograph (i.e., artificial + natural light). You will end up with blue or orange parts of the image, or both, and it will have a very strange effect on the final photograph.
“If shooting in natural light, (it) has different color temperatures [Read more…] about Tons of Tips to Improve Your Food Styling