New Voices

The wheel in the sky keeps on turning. I don’t know about you, but I kind of hate the onward marching of time.

Sure, it’s great to have the change of seasons and all. As winter starts to relent maple syrup starts to flow. Then come the ramps, fiddleheads, and chives. Soon, real vegetables like asparagus dart out of the ground. Before you know it, there are spring peas and the first tender beets and carrots of the season (to replace the woody ones from winter storage). Perhaps the climax is sweet corn, summer fruit and tomatoes before the chilly nights start rolling in. Then it’s autumn squashes and apples until we start loading up on winter storage vegetables to get us through the next eight months of mud and ice.

But as time lurches forward, things change. The Capital Region food blogosphere today does not resemble what it did when I first started this project. Some people left the region, others took more demanding jobs which cut into their free time, a handful just burned out, while most just faded away.

That’s why it’s always refreshing to see some new voices join the chorus. It’s also great to see older blogs revitalized with a renewed energy. With that in mind, I’m hoping you will check out the following.

Ladies and gentlemen, please say hello to To The Capital Region and Beyond!! I do not know anything about the mystery woman who writes this, but everything is divided into two categories, Fun and Feed. Naturally, I’m most interested in the Feed posts about food. Man, she writes a lot. That’s a great thing. And she’s already been to Low Beat’s brunch. If the blogs you have been following haven’t been terribly active, this is a great solution.

Gorgeous Goodness has also been blogging since January and is remarkably prolific as well. She writes more about her home cooking adventures. Since discovering her blog last week, I’ve been quickly drawn in to comment. I’d comment more, but sometimes too many comments from the same strongly opinionated local blogger can be stifling. More comments from that same blogger’s readers on the other hand, might be just the opposite of that. Check it out. Maybe you can help answer some of her recent questions.

While not exclusively about food, Things to do in the Albany, NY area is a thoroughly inspiring Tumblr page. It would be nice if I could figure out how to actually leave notes on someone’s Tumblr page, but I guess that’s the burden of being old. I bet my kids know how to do it. Anyhow, one of the things she lists is Absinthe from the Delaware Phoenix Distillery, which I totally love. So props to the mystery woman who writes this crazy thing for finding some truly great stuff.

Is it me, or do the Times Union Blogs seem to be fading? Kristi left the building and On the Edge was handed off to other bloggers. Did you even hear anything about the Best of the Capital Region 2014? Voting is already over, and as far as I can tell it got a lot less internal promotion on the TU. Plus whatever video ads they’ve been running on the platform have not only been hard to mute or pause, but also seem to slow the loading of the page and make navigating the blogs a frustratingly difficult experience.

Steve feels like he’s posting less on Table Hopping these days. He and I may disagree on a handful of issues, but he does have the largest platform in the Capital Region to talk about food. It wouldn’t be to anyone’s advantage if that contracted. Just yesterday he asked a question of his blog readers and the same question on Facebook. The blog returned only a small handful of responses while Facebook produced an avalanche of answers. This has me concerned about what’s happening with the Times Union blog platform.

Fortunately, Bill Dowd and his Notes on Napkins has come back with a vengeance to pick up where the Times Union is dropping the ball. And according to him, they are dropping the ball all over the place. It’s good to see this back on blogspot after taking a brief hiatus.

Please drop by these blogs sometime today and say “Hi.” We need more voices out there, and every bit of encouragement helps.