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This week's Wednesday Food Section of the Sacramento Bee has a cover article on food blogs featuring Simply Recipes. My mom is even quoted on the first page. This website grew out of a love for my parent's terrific home cooking; I can't express how delighted I am to see them acknowledged in their hometown newspaper. Last week we hosted Mike Dunne, the Bee's food editor, and Owen Brewer, the Bee's food photographer, over to the family home for a chat about blogging, the spirit of recipe swapping, experimentation, and passion that food bloggers share, and for a taste of one of my favorite dishes - oxtail stew. I admit I was a little nervous in anticipation of this article. I mean, putting a suit on and talking to a journalist about your company's products is one thing; opening the doors to our home and sharing family stories and recipes is quite another. Thankfully, Mike wrote a what I think is a terrific article, capturing the spirit of what we and so many other food bloggers are doing.

Highlighted in a sidebar to the article are some wonderful food blogs, which if you are new to food blogs I highly encourage you to check out:

Becks and Posh
Chez Pim
Chocolate and Zucchini
Gastropoda
Saute Wednesday
Slice
The Amateur Gourmet
The Food Section

There is a more complete list of food blogs here on the site at Food and Cooking Blogs from Around the World.

In a separate article in the same food section of the Bee, Mike Dunne gathered some tips for starting your own food blog: In a fog about starting a blog? Web sites that can set you up. Mike interviewed Rebecca Blood, the author of "The Weblog Handbook," for some tips. Rebecca recommends that if you want to start blogging to start with a free service, such as Blogger. I don't exactly agree. If you are unsure about the whole blogging thing, getting your feet wet with a free service can a good place to start. But, if you know you want to create a high quality blog, I think the best service to use is Typepad. For a nominal $5 per month fee, you can be up and running with a beautiful weblog with power features and a built-in active food blogging community. (This is not to say that there aren't some terrific Blogger food blogs; there are. I just prefer Typepad as a service.)

Rebecca also encourages new bloggers to post everyday. Actually I think it is more important that you post quality than quantity. If I felt I needed to post every day I would soon burn out on blogging. If you focus on posting what you love, you will naturally post more frequently. Acknowledging others in the community is important. If you link to others in your postings, believe me, they will notice you, and sometimes return the favor.

Many many thanks to Mike Dunne, Owen Brewer, and the staff at the Sacramento Bee for their work on this delightful article!