Legal Research

The Friday Fillip

By Simon Fodden

Smart Matt Mullenweg. He’s the founder of Automattic, which runs WordPress.com and supports WordPress.org (whose publishing program makes Slaw possible). One of his recent ventures is FoodPress, an aggregator of the best foodie blogging on WordPress.com. It’s got great content?at no real cost. Smart, as I said.

The content is worth a look, if you’re at all involved with food beyond simply eating to live. As with a lot of food porn on the internet, much at FoodPress depends on the quality of the photographs (there’s even a Favorite Food Photo Archive). That strawberry has to glow; the roast has to glisten. Now if you should ever want to send the family a really good picture of that birthday dinner or that perfectly plated salade niçoise, you might take a moment to learn a thing or two about the art of food photography. You could start with Darren Rowse’s Food Photography ? An Introduction or, from the same Digital Photography School site, Food Photography Techniques and Tips by Jonathan Pollack.

But if you’re a “touch, don’t look” sort of person (or “touch and look”) you’ll want to head into the recipes to find something? good. And I have to say, the range of possibilities at FoodPress should be large: just under 400 bloggers are “featured”. Trouble is, their work is squeezed through the narrow funnels that FoodPress offers: Featured Posts and Today’s Specials; nowhere on the main page is there a search function or a link to an archive of former features. This is strictly a skimming of the flow, perhaps, with no intention to create depth — or, given that FoodPress is so new, there isn’t any depth yet. (Because I know how WordPress works, I entered the URL for a search (http://www.foodpress.com/?s=searchterm), and up came a promise that they’re working on their search function.)

That said, here you’ll find recipes for spiced lentil walnut burgers, hoisin-glazed pork with roasted red peppers, coconut chilli butternut squash soup, and ? more.

Most of what Matt’s touched has turned into stuff of good value, and I imagine FoodPress will wind up gold as well. So consider subscribing and going along for the ride.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on November 05, 2010 (boomark / email).