Site Inspection
San Francisco-based food blogger Heidi Swanson recently had a post about potato gnocchi on her blog, 101cookbooks.com. Swanson learned to make the dumplings from her friend Francesca's mother, who was visiting from Genoa in the spring. The recipe, appealing, personal, and tested to perfection, is typical of what goes onto Swanson's blog. "I post the food that I love and the recipes that intersect my life," she says.
Launched in 2003, 101cookbooks.com is named for the number of books that Swanson, 34, had on her shelves. She had just quit her job as the founder and editor of the now- defunct teen girl website ChickClick.com. "I was thinking of [my] site as kind of an online notebook," she says. "I never expected it to be so popular or public." Now she gets 900,000 page views a month and has a new cookbook -- "Super Natural Cooking" -- and a posh position as a producer for the Robert Mondavi-sponsored Taste3 conference on food, wine, and art.
Swanson's posts, like many blogs, are breezy and informal. She is a strict vegetarian but her cooking often reflects hearty Mediterranean classics, including lots of pasta, beans, eggs, farmers' market vegetables, and whole grains. The food is clean and simple, for the most part easy.
What makes Swanson's blog stand out is exceptional photography, thoughtfully composed pictures that put other food blogs and even most magazines to shame. The reader sees everything Swanson makes in stylish tableware. Dishes like ravioli salad with asparagus, peas, and pine nuts make use of seasonal ingredients and look stunning. There are fun drinks like mini buttermilk berry milkshakes and lots of baking, from an elegant cherry gratin to homemade thin mint cookies.
Swanson majored in visual arts at the University of California, San Diego, which accounts for the clean design of her site. She updates it every few days with new photo s and recipes. On the phone, she explains that there is no contrived styling or all - day shoots (though her work is in major magazines, including Vegetarian Times and Glamour).
Most of the time she shoots with a digital SLR, a 50mm lens, and light from her kitchen windows . "I shop at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market on Saturday," she says. "I buy beautiful stuff, I don't style to death, and I don't cook things to death." She essentially cooks, photographs, and eats.
To read Heidi Swanson's blog, go to 101cookbooks.com. 