June and July 2021: YEAR 1 IN REVIEW AND UNFINISHED BUSINESS
In less than two months, The Kitchen Scholar will be a year old. Surely, a paper anniversary is too superficial to celebrate, but surviving for one year is nothing to scoff at, especially for a start-up media platform. After all, the most difficult challenge of sustaining a food and cooking website under sole proprietorship lies in the momentum of churning out high-caliber and educational content for every monthly theme. Even the process of conceiving the monthly theme in the absence of an deliberative editorial panel is already a difficult task in itself.
For this reason, I decided to have The Kitchen Scholar hold ten monthly themes annually with the last two months allotted in catching up for the previous months wherein I find the amount of content to be insufficient. Minimizing the number of monthly themes gives me enough time to think of new themes in the future without scrambling for one at the last minute. After all, the hobby of food writing needs to be fun for me rather than inflict burdensome stress from overthinking.
Let me recap the Year 1 that was. The Kitchen Scholar began its first two months honoring two members of the holy trinity of American gastronomy, Julia Child, the muse who inspired me to cook and learn new recipes, and Craig Claiborne, who turned 100 last September 2020. The third month explored Georgian cuisine, often incorporating the basic flavors of cilantro, walnut, and marigold, or a mixture thereof. Chayote recipes from different cultures around the world took the spotlight thereafter, followed by warm bowls of soup offered by the Helvetic Confederation. The website commemorated the centennial legacy of Pierre Franey in January 2021 before cooking the papal dishes of the Vatican in time for Lent. Then, the website featured cookery of unconventional meats, poultry, and seafood and baked goodies that sweeten the Scandinavian coffee break. Finally, pasta dishes named after Italian professions became the tenth theme. All in all, the first ten months have been substantially productive, contentwise, with 69 recipe entries.
My writing mood, however, was not consistent every month. Some months are more prolific than others, which is why I find the latter unfulfilling in terms of the quality and quantity of thematic content. Hence, I scheduled every June and July as the make-up dates on filling the void of recipes in those past months. Consider the addendum of recipes for the two months akin to a double issue of a magazine, which the website is adopting its template from. With 11 entries, the annual total of recipes for the first year brings up 80, which I can optimistically hope of surpassing in the next year. Cheers!
