Disclaimer : This post is definitely going to be a long read with a bit of ranting so please bare with me 🙂
My Food blogging journey started at Chennai in February 2010. I had quit my full time IT job, became a Home Maker and amidst all the new responsibilities, I was looking for a way to create an identity for myself. Seeing at my interest in cooking, my husband suggested to create a blog. I took the first two letters from our names (REkha & SHiva) and then started this www.resh-kitchen.blogspot.com. The blog is very special to me because I consider this as my baby 🙂 Though it might sound a bit dramatic,that is the best way to describe how much the blog means to me.
I wanted my blog to be a fusion of authentic South Indian food along with other international cuisines as well. There is always this popular myth that vegetarians don’t have much options to eat. I wanted to break that myth. Being brought up in a typical conservative South Indian Brahmin family, my mom and grandma used to pamper me and the other kids in family with lip-smacking homemade food. And then after marriage we(me & S) started exploring different varieties of vegetarian food,different cuisines. Whenever I eat out, I make it a point to try recreate the dish at my kitchen with my own twists and tweaks. That increased my confidence level in cooking and also I felt a sense of accomplishment.Also I strongly feel that each and every cook should trust their instincts. The reason is even though the measurements,cooking timings are mentioned precisely in a recipe (that can be from a website or cookbook) we still have to keep an eye on the whole process and if necessary we have to make few changes according to our convenience.
At the early stages(of blogging) when I observed the blogging world closely, I noticed so many things that scared me a bit. There were Blogging Marathons,events,recipe contests,giveaways,promoting their food related stuff on all forms of social media,constantly being active online, trying to share recipes in various common platforms to get recognized. It was much more a competitive field than I expected it to be. I understood one thing that if we have to become a Successful Blogger you need to spend more time, work much harder to create unique yet attractive content and give 100% of your energy until you achieve the goal.Few might disagree to this point but am just talking from my point of view. It is based purely on my observations.
But due to my personal priorities and some health reasons I couldn’t dedicate much time for my blogging. So I made up my mind in such a way that let’s not focus on numbers, visitor stats or the comments you receive for a post. Rather to just keep learning, trying new recipes and updating the blog at my own pace. There were lots of ups and downs in life but I never gave up. I consider this space as my own kingdom. I feel like I have achieved a very little something when my close friends and family shares positive feedback about a recipe they had recreated from my blog. They regularly appreciate my work, give their inputs and reviews of my recipes which acted as a motivation factor.
In the meantime we moved to London in August 2014 and lifestyle was a bit relaxing here compared to India. I started sharing my food pictures on my Instagram account. This platform paved way for me to interact with many food enthusiasts around the world. There are people who don’t have a website of their own, they don’t blog religiously but the pictures and recipes they share have inspired me. Now I realize one thing, that I don’t have to feel inferior on whatever I am doing. As a food blogger whether I make it big or not, I don’t know.But that will not stop me from doing what I am passionate about.
At the corner of my heart I always had this guilt feeling about not taking my blog to next level.
- To create a proper professional layout for the blog
- Trying to update more recipes related to Baking bread and Cakes
- To pay attention to minute details of a recipe
- Write in an elaborate way about the whole process that went into making a dish
- To share as many as kitchen tips, some useful kitchen hacks as possible
- To purchase a DSLR camera and to take quality pictures (finally bought it in Dec 2015)
- To reach out to more people and the list goes on..
Since August 2015 I was checking out wordpress and other platforms to move from blogger.One fine evening I stumbled upon this post on my favorite blog Saffron Trail and zero’d on to CT. For a blogger like me I felt this is an appropriate platform which would help in reaching out to large audience and would help me to change the layout of my blog to a professional level. After a lot of back and forth email communications, finally the blog is live now!!
Thank you Cherian, Roli and Ramya of CT team who made it possible. Thank you for answering all my queries patiently and help me out in this transition.
Feeling so happy and contented. Am sure this ReshKitchen 2.0 is definitely going to be bigger and better. The platform has only changed but my love for food forever remains the same 🙂 🙂
Dear readers, keep supporting me in this journey. Thank you for encouraging me throughout. I hope I won’t disappoint.
