Project Food Blog: Ready, Set, Blog

Meet Kim. Kim would like to be the next Project Food Blog Star. You see Kim at left at one of her favorite beaches in all of New England up in Ogunquit, Me. It's her love of New England and all its delicious offerings that's inspiring Kim to take part in this competition.





Project Food Blog is a competition offered up by foodie and blogging website FoodBuzz for which I'm thrilled to be a Featured Publisher.

This is Challenge #1, explain why you have your blog, why you slave away for it, why it inspires you, and why you have what it takes to become the next Food Blog Star.

Lighter and Local is my path to sanity, plain and simple. My days are filled with the craziness that comes with being a local television news producer. My day begins and ends fast furious with the day's news, cooking provides the solace in the middle that allows me to slow down. Cooking should be enjoying, not dreaded at the end of every day.

Yup, that's me in the brown at right on Election Night 2008. It's nights like those that drive me to the kitchen.

You know why? Cooking is creative, it's passion. News is a passion too, but the end result, well, it's just not as tasty as what comes out of my kitchen. I often tell my co-workers that cooking and baking is methodical, it's slow. It make you stop and think about what you're doing, how flavors will come together. That, my friends, is why I started this blog, to share the final results and the journey it takes to get to wonderful and delicious food.

The other reason I began Lighter and Local is to celebrate New England's fabulous raw ingredients. Every season here allows for farm finds, amazing local artisans, and food bloggers that are using them all to come up with exquisite final products. I scour farmers' markets, farms, tiny shops, my own backyard for inspiration as to what happens in my kitchen. I try to celebrate the amazing network of local bloggers in my community every single day. They are what drives me and gives me the next great idea.

I'm also here to remind my readers that local food doesn't have to be connected to catch phrases. It doesn't have to be trendy. Local food can be cheap, fabulous and without pretense. You don't have to solely shop local (though kudos to you if you do). You can mix it in with staples from the normal grocery store and keep the price low. Local food should be happy, taste fabulous, support your local community and economy. That is also what this blog is all about.

So why should I be the next Food Blog Star? I have no pride here. I'm a cook, in my greatly-in-need-of-a-renovation kitchen, just trying to figure out what tastes best. I'm still learning, growing, and admitting my mistakes. I'm simply trying to take the simplest and best of raw, fresh and local ingredients and teach myself and others that something fabulous can come out in the final product. I'm committed to helping grow my community of bloggers and reminding all out there that the community is truly the reason we all got into food blogging. Yes, it was to showcase all our hard work behind the stove; but it was also to find the people are share the joy of the perfect cake to the learning experience of a failed stew. This is a journey, not a destination.