"FoodBlogging" news and stories

Aperitifs. Photo: Darren // DA Creative Photography, Flickr

• Bypass strong cocktails and strong wines in favor of aperitifs, a tasty way to prep one's palate for dinner.
• All about composting.
• Kansas City teen James McCausland balances a construction career with a passion for baking.
• A critic loves the wine tasting and elegant cuisine at Capital Grille.
• The world of K.C. food blogging is expanding; here's a close-up of one snarky blogger.
  
• A spotlight on local farmers' markets.
• Recipe: Asian Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken and Crisp Wontons

Tomato and Olympus camera. Photo: Emily Farris.

These days, food porn seems almost to be giving the old-fashioned kind a run for its money. Everyone with a digital camera and an appetite fancies him or herself an amateur food pornographer, which is to say there's a lot of bad food photography out there alongside the good stuff.

Camera companies are catching on to the trend and trying to make a buck, with digital point and shoot models that are manufactured with food photography settings, like this Olympus which has a "cuisine" option, and this Sony, with its "gourmet food" mode. Chances are good that if you purchased a camera recently, it has some kind of food photography option and you don't even know it. If your food photographs are less than porntastic (like the tomato shot here), it might be worth your while to consult your camera's manual or look online to find out.

If you don't have a food setting, don't rush right out to buy a new camera that does.

One pro shutterbug's opinion, after the jump.

It's a dangerous world out there, folks. Should we add food blogging to that list of things to watch out for? That's the question posed by Leslie of The Weighting Game.

Leslie got a letter from a reader who originally asked this question about food blogging being addictive and possibly some kind of eating disorder. The reader had started a food blog, but soon realized that it made her obsess about food and actually "hide what (she) was eating from the internet." She has since stopped blogging.

Although I follow plenty of food blogs myself, I've never run across the type of blog that The Weighting Game and its commenters are talking about, the kind that is more of a food journal than a food blog. I personally think there's nothing wrong with sharing photos and recipes and having serious or fun discussions on food related topics. I do think this a great question to ask ourselves, though, so what is your opinion on food blogging as an eating disorder?