Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

Useful Tips, Interviews, and Stories to Inspire Food Writers and Bloggers

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Food Writer Busted on Free Wedding Meal

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Befriending chefs and purveyors when you’re a food writer can be perilous. Worse yet, the practice can come back to bite you in the butt.

And that’s exactly what happened to Josh Ozersky, a food writer who got married recently in New York and showed poor judgement when planning for his wedding.

The trouble started when he accepted food from his buddies in the business as  presents: free bread, dips, seafood, lasagna, strip loins, and a free place to hold the event.

Then he devoted his column on Time magazine’s website to promoting the food and purveyors, never mentioning that his buddies supplied the goods for free, and saying most caterers “aren’t really good cooks” anyway.

Another food writer, Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice, busted him in an open letter, suggesting the food and venue could have cost $24,000 and asking whether he paid. And then the New York Times did a fascinating story about not only Ozersky but the whole issue of restaurants getting an increasing number of requests for free meals.

Time got so many comments on Ozersky’s column that they [Read more…] about Food Writer Busted on Free Wedding Meal

The Blog Turns One

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Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…oh, hello there. My blog has made it to the one-year mark and I’m celebrating. Want to join me?

I know I’m a piker compared to many of you, but when I started blogging about food writing, I didn’t know if I could continue posting at least twice a week, or if I’d have enough to say (hah!).

I just looked back at my first post, and I think I’m still delivering what I promised: a useful place to read and comment on the world of food writing. I also said you’ll find  links to lots of articles and sites on food writing, and while that’s true,  you can now find more in my tweets, so people can read them right away. I had no idea why Twitter was valuable back then.

Launching the blog has been exhilarating. Here are some of the benefits, for those of you who might [Read more…] about The Blog Turns One

All the Other Jobs We Do

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Food writing doesn’t pay the bills. I hope this isn’t news to you. Sure, a few people are employed full time to write about food. Did you notice the key word? Few.

To make ends meet, the rest of us self-employed types take other jobs: cooking classes, private cheffing and catering, consulting for corporations, more lucrative forms of writing, and editing. And a lot of people have real jobs during the day and write about food on the side.

The thing is, we’re still obsessed with food. So how can we get  jobs working on what we love?

Enter two books. The first, self published in 2008 by the wickedly funny Irena Chalmers, teacher of food writing at the Culinary Institute of America, is Food Jobs:150 Great Jobs for Culinary Students, Career Changers and Food Lovers. Now, I can’t be objective about this book because I have adored Irena since I heard her speak at an International Association of Culinary Professionals annual conference years ago. She was hilarious and wise, and I vowed to get to know her.

I have, and now we are friends. I was a guest speaker at her class last year, and she published an excerpt from my book, Will Write for Food, in Food Jobs. So of course I think this book is good reading, practical, and jammed with good ideas and insights.

Coming from a culinary school perspective, Irena [Read more…] about All the Other Jobs We Do

Crazy for Produce, from Dad to Daughter

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On the prowl for food with my father, Moses Jacob, with me (on right) and my sister.

On Father’s Day yesterday, I thought about my dad, a food-obsessed poet and songwriter who loved produce more than anyone I’ve known.

It sounds funny to say that he was obsessed with produce. But my dad lived for it. He grew vegetables in our Vancouver back yard, specializing in a Chinese green called celtuce. All summer long he cut down the stalks and sliced them into juicy green batons that floated in a bowl of water in the fridge. While other kids ate Popsicles, I fished out those crisp, green stems for a refreshing treat.

In winter, he pickled turnips with beets and carrots, turning them hot pink in their tall Mason jars. We ate them at dinner with meat stews my mother cooked, brimming with bamboo shoots and peas, cauliflower or lima beans.

For dessert in spring, we ate artichokes, at least one for each of us. My father loved how, when he washed them down with a glass of water, his mouth filled with sweetness. For fall dessert, my mother roasted a pan of  sweet potatoes, cooked until the sugars wept out and caramelized in pools around the sides. They reminded my parents of Shanghai, where they purchased sweet potatoes from street cart vendors.

Even when we gathered around the television at night, my father appeared with a dinner plate piled with crisp wedges of iceburg lettuce in summer; slices of apples and oranges in winter.

When I was around 8 years old, my dad convinced a produce vendor in Chinatown to order a box of mangoes from the Philippines just for him. In the 1960s there were no mangoes in the supermarkets, and he ached for the fruit he remembered from China. Once the mangoes ripened in our basement, my parents covered the dinner table with newspaper, then brought in armfuls of ripe yellow fruit. We ate them with spoons, the sicky juice running down our faces.

My dad’s been dead for 28 years, but I carry on his obsession. He would’ve loved the farmer’s market I visited yesterday, overflowing with beets, peaches, cherries and lettuces. I’m still looking for celtuce, though. The last time I tasted it was in China,  maybe 8 years ago. It was a diamond-shaped green served in a breakfast dish, and when I bit down on it, all the memories of those stalks in the fridge flooded back.

Writing Contest: Similes Make Food Writing Fun

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It’s been a while since I’ve held a food writing contest on this blog, so I thought I’d blast out another one, just for fun. This time, let’s have a simile writing contest.

Similes are comparisons that starts with “like” or “as,” for comparing two unlike things. Why would you want to use them? You need as many tools as possible in your writing toolbox. Similes are a welcome alternative to adjectives. They’re playful, making your writing fun to read. Restaurant reviewers are particularly good employers of similes because [Read more…] about Writing Contest: Similes Make Food Writing Fun

An Artist and Her Process: No Words Necessary

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Last week I walked around a San Francisco art gallery with an artist friend. An abstract painter, Kimetha had a solo show of small oils on wood. As I admired her images, I thought about how different we were as painter and writer.

As a word person, I immediately reached for words to explain my reactions to her pieces. They remind me of bright summer light, I told her, and the movement of a slight breeze through curtains or an open window.

She nodded politely. She doesn’t think about her paintings in that way. Her process, similar to a writer’s, involves putting work down and then erasing it. She might work on a painting for a year, layering color and then taking it away to let the underpainting shine through. She uses small brush strokes, tiny edges of color. She burnishes it and sands it, just as writers polish their work.

On that late spring afternoon, she had come to say good-bye to her paintings. The show closed the next day and most of her pieces were sold. For a year’s work on this painting, she will make a few hundred dollars. That’s another way she is similar to a writer, I thought.

Kimetha  struggles to name her abstract paintings and leaves some untitled. For her, the words are an afterthought. For me, they are everything.

Are Blog Giveaways a Good Idea?

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I’m still deciding on whether giveaways are right for my blog about food writing.

On one hand, giveaways (mine are almost always books) drive traffic to my blog and bring page views to the site. Both those things are valuable. And I like to give a reader recognition and appreciation. It’s fun to get return emails from excited contest winners.

On the other hand, giveaways strike me as kind of cheesy. I don’t like putting the words “free” and “giveaway” in my tag list. I feel like I’m selling shampoo. Also, now that I have a BlogHer ad, the company restricts what I can give away to under $40, and says I can’t have a contest for anything given to me for that express purpose.

I wonder whether the people who come for the giveaway become regular readers, or whether I’m just drinking the Koolaid. Maybe it’s like when food bloggers get photos published on Tastespotting. Readership spikes that day but doesn’t stick around.

And I wonder who these people are who enter giveaway contests. Some are [Read more…] about Are Blog Giveaways a Good Idea?