4 ms·

I like the idea. The "mommy blog" problem is real, I think a lot of it is people trying to create a brand for themselves, but honestly I don't care a bit about

by Nursie 5y ago

I like the idea. The "mommy blog" problem is real, I think a lot of it is people trying to create a brand for themselves, but honestly I don't care a bit about where you first tried this, who you met, what they were wearing or how your evening went. I also think that sometimes that's to do with copyright - it seems you may not be able to copyright just a recipe, but you can copyright all the rest of the narrative around it. I'll check your site out...

rgoulter 5y ago
I wonder if it's just two different approaches to the world. In a transactional approach, I'm looking for the recipe; and just giving me the recipe (plus some useful tips for how to prepare the dish) is useful. "mommy blog" preamble is useless. In a social approach.. food inherently exists in relation to people. -- Maybe it makes more sense in person to talk about the context of the meal you cooked, and it just doesn't translate to search engine result pages?
- chipgap98 5y ago
  I don’t know anyone that enjoys the long blocks of text on recipe blogs. It’s not just the presence of the text that’s an issue but the fact that it buries the actual recipe at the bottom of a giant page so they can cram more ads in.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    Hah, of course, the ads! It's not just building a brand, or copyright, it's the income stream from advertising. I really am shockingly naive sometimes :)
    - woojoo666 5y ago
      I heard it's also for SEO purposes, more keywords to show up in search engines
      - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
        More time spent on the page, is the SEO benefit.
- Nursie 5y ago
  Sure, and I do read food articles with lots of character sometimes, particularly from chefs or reviewers/critics on fairly mainstream/large sites like the guardian. But I do that when I want to read something whimsical, informative or entertaining. 99% of the time, if I've found someone's cooking-blog it's because I want to cook something specific, right now! I guess the annoyance is someone trying to sell me on one thing when I really want the other :)
derbOac 5y ago
Maybe I'm in the minority with this but I prefer the introductory text. It often provides a bit of explanation and context to recipes. A recipe itself is worth little by itself, it's the annotations and suggestions and so forth that are useful sometimes. There are badly written blogs, or manipulatively structured websites, but writing introductions per se isn't bad. To be honest, the "mommy blog" epithet comes across as sexist to me. No one would level that label at Kenji Lopez Alt or David Lebowitz but they use the same format: https://www.seriouseats.com/classic-smashed-burgers-recipe https://www.seriouseats.com/classic-smashed-burgers-recipe https://www.davidlebovitz.com/quiche-lorraine-recipe-recette/ https://www.davidlebovitz.com/quiche-lorraine-recipe-recette... You might object and say those are different because they're well-written and informative, but then isn't that my point? There's nothing wrong with a "just the recipes" website — to each their own, and some things are useful in the right context. But there's also nothing wrong with a website that explains the recipes and tells a story along the way. You might not be interested, or it might not be that well-written, but that's the way written communication has always worked for eons.
- guhidalg 5y ago
  I would consider those two "mommy blogs", though I will stop calling them that and instead use "food blogs". No offense against mothers, everyone has one. Some people like the format of food blogs, most people don't. Every single person I talk to about CookTime immediately mentions how they love there is no backstory, context, literary prose they have to scroll through to get to a recipe. We are already solving the problem of too much food blog text on a page.
- Nursie 5y ago
  > A recipe itself is worth little by itself, When I'm looking for a way to cook a particular thing, the recipe is worth everything, and anything around it is simply a waste of my time and attention. > No one would level that label at Kenji Lopez Alt or David Lebowitz but they use the same format. You might object and say those are different because they're well-written and informative I'm absolutely not going to say they're different because they're well written and informative - if I'm just looking for the method and ingredients for a particular dish that I already know I want to cook, right now, which is 95%+ of my interaction with recipe websites, their text is equally useless and obstructive. You're right 'mommy blog' might be the wrong term here, and may even be sexist, but it absolutely is a blog and honestly, I don't care. I'm here for the ingredients and mechanical instructions. > there's also nothing wrong with a website that explains the recipes and tells a story along the way. There's nothing 'wrong', it's not some grave sin to create such a thing, but it's certainly far less useful and not what I'm interested in. > that's the way written communication has always worked for eons. Sure, but I'm not looking for communication, I'm looking for a way to make quiche with as little distraction as possible. I'm making dinner, not reading your site for fun.
astura 5y ago
I really don't care for it either, mostly because the shitty JavaScript the site it plagued with takes a million years to load and half breaks the site. However, I think the sheer popularity of this format means that someone lies it, even if not me.
- guhidalg 5y ago
  Just wanted to clarify, is the the shitty javascript the CookTime javascript or the other website's? We're not the best frontend programmers, any feedback is welcome.
  - astura 5y ago
    Shitty JavaScript on the "mommy blogs." They are text with a few pictures - JavaScript should be extremely minimal on that sort of site. I wouldn't very much mind all the extra text if the JavaScript didn't interfere so much.
- brimble 5y ago
  > However, I think the sheer popularity of this format means that someone lies it, even if not me. Search engines like it. That's the entire story. There's good long-form recipe content, but nearly all of it's only there for SEO reasons. Most of these sites just make up the "genuine" stories so they have something for Google to chew on. No-one involved, reader or writer, cares about it, except search engines.
pipeline_peak 5y ago
It feels melodramatic to call it a problem, but I agree it's very real and very annoying. Sometimes the actual recipe and the instructions will be scattered all around with a blog post in between. https://www.recipetineats.com/thai-green-curry/ https://www.recipetineats.com/thai-green-curry/ This is a perfect example, while the introduction is informative and she doesn't go into great details to describe how she can "whip up an easy peasy tuesday night meal for her hubby". In the middle of cooking, I found myself on my phone, hopping back and forth between the measurements and the actual instructions trying to make sure I don't scorch anything. If I recall, reader mode stripped away important annotations that were embedded in CSS. The nail in the coffin being lots of annotations that I missed because I went the store bought paste route and didn't carefully read to see I was supposed to use 1 tbsp of fish sauce and not 3 like the homemade route.... I admit that was my fault, but it could've been organized easier and platforms enforce that consistency. I'm sure some people don't believe me and I come off as whiny, but I challenge you to follow this lol..... Not to humiliate myself, but the level of visual boiler plates and JavaScript crap plagued on these run of the mill dynamic pages is akin to a porn site. And of course that's how high traffic sites operate, people want/need money. I look forward to aggregated recipe platforms. They're straight to the point and commentary is segregated. As others have said, recipes are usually not original content anyway. I think there's a common preferrable layout for recipe pages and it goes: Recipe > Instructions > Optional Summary

by Nursie 5y ago

rgoulter 5y ago

I wonder if it's just two different approaches to the world. In a transactional approach, I'm looking for the recipe; and just giving me the recipe (plus some useful tips for how to prepare the dish) is useful. "mommy blog" preamble is useless. In a social approach.. food inherently exists in relation to people. -- Maybe it makes more sense in person to talk about the context of the meal you cooked, and it just doesn't translate to search engine result pages?

chipgap98 5y ago
I don’t know anyone that enjoys the long blocks of text on recipe blogs. It’s not just the presence of the text that’s an issue but the fact that it buries the actual recipe at the bottom of a giant page so they can cram more ads in.
- Nursie 5y ago
  Hah, of course, the ads! It's not just building a brand, or copyright, it's the income stream from advertising. I really am shockingly naive sometimes :)
  - woojoo666 5y ago
    I heard it's also for SEO purposes, more keywords to show up in search engines
    - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
      More time spent on the page, is the SEO benefit.
Nursie 5y ago
Sure, and I do read food articles with lots of character sometimes, particularly from chefs or reviewers/critics on fairly mainstream/large sites like the guardian. But I do that when I want to read something whimsical, informative or entertaining. 99% of the time, if I've found someone's cooking-blog it's because I want to cook something specific, right now! I guess the annoyance is someone trying to sell me on one thing when I really want the other :)

derbOac 5y ago

Maybe I'm in the minority with this but I prefer the introductory text. It often provides a bit of explanation and context to recipes. A recipe itself is worth little by itself, it's the annotations and suggestions and so forth that are useful sometimes. There are badly written blogs, or manipulatively structured websites, but writing introductions per se isn't bad. To be honest, the "mommy blog" epithet comes across as sexist to me. No one would level that label at Kenji Lopez Alt or David Lebowitz but they use the same format: https://www.seriouseats.com/classic-smashed-burgers-recipe https://www.seriouseats.com/classic-smashed-burgers-recipe https://www.davidlebovitz.com/quiche-lorraine-recipe-recette/ https://www.davidlebovitz.com/quiche-lorraine-recipe-recette... You might object and say those are different because they're well-written and informative, but then isn't that my point? There's nothing wrong with a "just the recipes" website — to each their own, and some things are useful in the right context. But there's also nothing wrong with a website that explains the recipes and tells a story along the way. You might not be interested, or it might not be that well-written, but that's the way written communication has always worked for eons.

guhidalg 5y ago
I would consider those two "mommy blogs", though I will stop calling them that and instead use "food blogs". No offense against mothers, everyone has one. Some people like the format of food blogs, most people don't. Every single person I talk to about CookTime immediately mentions how they love there is no backstory, context, literary prose they have to scroll through to get to a recipe. We are already solving the problem of too much food blog text on a page.
Nursie 5y ago
> A recipe itself is worth little by itself, When I'm looking for a way to cook a particular thing, the recipe is worth everything, and anything around it is simply a waste of my time and attention. > No one would level that label at Kenji Lopez Alt or David Lebowitz but they use the same format. You might object and say those are different because they're well-written and informative I'm absolutely not going to say they're different because they're well written and informative - if I'm just looking for the method and ingredients for a particular dish that I already know I want to cook, right now, which is 95%+ of my interaction with recipe websites, their text is equally useless and obstructive. You're right 'mommy blog' might be the wrong term here, and may even be sexist, but it absolutely is a blog and honestly, I don't care. I'm here for the ingredients and mechanical instructions. > there's also nothing wrong with a website that explains the recipes and tells a story along the way. There's nothing 'wrong', it's not some grave sin to create such a thing, but it's certainly far less useful and not what I'm interested in. > that's the way written communication has always worked for eons. Sure, but I'm not looking for communication, I'm looking for a way to make quiche with as little distraction as possible. I'm making dinner, not reading your site for fun.

astura 5y ago

I really don't care for it either, mostly because the shitty JavaScript the site it plagued with takes a million years to load and half breaks the site. However, I think the sheer popularity of this format means that someone lies it, even if not me.

guhidalg 5y ago
Just wanted to clarify, is the the shitty javascript the CookTime javascript or the other website's? We're not the best frontend programmers, any feedback is welcome.
- astura 5y ago
  Shitty JavaScript on the "mommy blogs." They are text with a few pictures - JavaScript should be extremely minimal on that sort of site. I wouldn't very much mind all the extra text if the JavaScript didn't interfere so much.
brimble 5y ago
> However, I think the sheer popularity of this format means that someone lies it, even if not me. Search engines like it. That's the entire story. There's good long-form recipe content, but nearly all of it's only there for SEO reasons. Most of these sites just make up the "genuine" stories so they have something for Google to chew on. No-one involved, reader or writer, cares about it, except search engines.

pipeline_peak 5y ago

It feels melodramatic to call it a problem, but I agree it's very real and very annoying. Sometimes the actual recipe and the instructions will be scattered all around with a blog post in between. https://www.recipetineats.com/thai-green-curry/ https://www.recipetineats.com/thai-green-curry/ This is a perfect example, while the introduction is informative and she doesn't go into great details to describe how she can "whip up an easy peasy tuesday night meal for her hubby". In the middle of cooking, I found myself on my phone, hopping back and forth between the measurements and the actual instructions trying to make sure I don't scorch anything. If I recall, reader mode stripped away important annotations that were embedded in CSS. The nail in the coffin being lots of annotations that I missed because I went the store bought paste route and didn't carefully read to see I was supposed to use 1 tbsp of fish sauce and not 3 like the homemade route.... I admit that was my fault, but it could've been organized easier and platforms enforce that consistency. I'm sure some people don't believe me and I come off as whiny, but I challenge you to follow this lol..... Not to humiliate myself, but the level of visual boiler plates and JavaScript crap plagued on these run of the mill dynamic pages is akin to a porn site. And of course that's how high traffic sites operate, people want/need money. I look forward to aggregated recipe platforms. They're straight to the point and commentary is segregated. As others have said, recipes are usually not original content anyway. I think there's a common preferrable layout for recipe pages and it goes: Recipe > Instructions > Optional Summary