Hello. Happy Monday! It’s been a minute, and things are looking a little different around here.
I’m here to say I’ve packed the bags on The Proper Binge and have moved onto Substack. To the blog I say: It’s not you, it’s me.
Over the last 11 months, while the world was lit-er-ally on fire with racial injustice, a global pandemic, political insanity and generally a low hum of anxiety blanketing the world, I watched as my instagram feed full of Real Food Bloggers pivoted constantly, continuing to crank out content (both genuine and manufactured) to fill our feeds with soothing images, sourdough recipes and comfort food. In those early days of March and April 2020, this felt like an opportunity to hop on board, really crank it up. Where am I going? Nowhere. What did I have? TIME! My Pinterest page quadrupled in traffic without even touching it. People were home, and people were cooking.
Yet faced with this opportunity of more eyeballs on phones than ever and more people cooking at home than ever-- the most I could bring myself to do when it came to my very own website (that I pay for mind you) was close the browser, roll my eyes and spin around on my kitchen stool and continue to obsessively menu plan my weekly meals (now including LUNCH of all things, give me a break) in my little black notebook for my once-a-week-trip to the grocery store. Gone were my weekly cocktail recipes and my planned Instagram posts. In its place? Having a beer with Chris while we walked the dog at 4pm (our only outlet!) reading cookbooks cover to cover, sharing recipes with friends over group text or email, and unexpectedly (but not surprisingly) getting way better at cooking in the process. I’ve never cooked from the hip so much in my life. I felt like my agency in the kitchen (which already was pretty high) was ratcheted up and suddenly unburdened by the notion of content I was improvising more than ever, exploring new cuisines, and quite honestly the last thing on my mind was writing down the recipe to share on my food blog. My hobby felt more like a hobby again and less like an obligation.
But then here I was, still wanting to share food, but not share it in a Food Blogger sort of way. Emails that landed in my inbox about SEO, Growing your Followers, “keeping your instagram grid consistent” and planning your content strategy made me want to participate less and less. On top of this change of heart, my actual job - you know, the one that pays me? Not the other way around-- had shifted and I was busier than before, so not only was I no longer alone in my house during the day to make weird meals at odd hours to take pics in “good light” but I just didn’t have time for recreational cooking for the sake of a blog. A website takes maintenance. Hosting costs, branding, imagery, tags! It sounds so obvious to type it, but after all that, I simply realized I would rather make a recipe to feed my family-- A nice tasty, Wednesday night recipe--actually EAT it, and then share that instead of trying to make 5 extra meals a week just for a picture.
So I decided to simplify. Maybe it’s my ego or maybe it’s my enneagram, but I still want to share the food, recipes, cookbooks, music and other things that are inspiring me. What I don't want to do is schedule my instagram posts or apply any real strategy to what I’m sharing. It’s too much and it’s clearly not for me. I want to share food with my friends and my family and anyone else who would like to join along the way. I want to write simple recipes for my kids to reference as they get older and learn to cook for themselves and I want to continue to look to cooking as something that brings pleasure, accomplishment and enjoyment, not obligation and frustration.
So for now my goal is to try to send out one newsletter every other week-ish here on SubStack and you can find my whole archive from The Proper Binge here too. That website? It’s alive for another year because of course I renewed the host in January pre substack epiphany, but you’ll find new content landing easily in your inbox with other recipes I’m into, what I’m reading, listening to-- and a recipe from me too.
Thanks for joining friends, see you here again soon!