This past Friday, Communications Officer Elylse Ferland posted an interview of foodiePrints' team on Chicken Feeds, "the blog for the Chicken Farmers of Canada."

Food Blogger Profile: foodiePrints
We last met the Chicken Farmers and Ryan Anderson (who invited us to do the interview) at an Ottawa food blogger event at the Urban Element (424 Parkdale Avenue). It featured Ottawa Citizen food editor, Ron Eade.

Ours is Chicken Feeds' third food blogger profile, a seemingly monthly occurrence. The first, blogger (unsweetened.ca and CEOT blog) and author of Cheap Eats Ottawa/Toronto, Alexa Clark (@alexaclark), in January. The second, fellow Ottawa food blogger, Wing King (@lordofthewings) of the Lord of the Wings blog in February.

That said, we are very honoured to be profiled with such great food bloggers. We frequent the Lord of the Wings blog and I carry the most recent edition of Cheap Eats Ottawa with me in my knapsack.

Thanks to Anderson and Ferland for choosing to include us.

Our transcript of the interview follows after the jump.

Particulars:
Urban Element
424 Parkdale Avenue
(613 722-0885

More after the jump...

With spring just a day away, Ottawa has seen some beautiful and unusual weather the past few days. Can you recall a March in which there was hardly any snow left on the ground? Or, how about days of endless sunshine? Nope, I didn't think so!

With the majority of elementary and high school students enjoying their March Break, I have seen many of them walking around Hintonburg and Wellington West Village in their spring/summery clothing. Many of them were just coming out of the bakeries with cookies and sweets in their hands while others had ice cream and popsicles. I myself have been walking around Wellington West Village in my bright red shorts and my Canada Olympic t-shirt during the afternoons (started running again) and dreaming of a delicious cold bubble tea. With such warm and gorgeous weather, I am eager for spring to come.

I love a good cold snowy Canadian winter, but there is just something about spring that makes me very excited. The days are longer and warmer and waiting at the bus stop for a bus seems less of a chore. Or perhaps it is the knowledge that spring means that the public will soon be able to purchase and taste locally grown fruits and vegetables.

Growing up in the suburbs, spring meant it was time for my parents to buy bags of top soil and for them to decide what crops and plants they wanted in their garden. My favourite childhood memory of spring were trips my family and I made to the ByWard Market on Saturday afternoons. There, my parents would take us from vendor to vendor, examining lots of beefsteak tomato and zucchini plants. Over the years, my parents added chives, strawberries, green onions, green beans, winter melon, fuzzy squash, bitter melon, potatoes, and more to our backyard garden. With so many varieties of vegetables, both Asian and non-Asian, I had my own farmer's market at my disposal.

I understand now that years of watching crops and plants grow from little seedlings to luscious foods have contributed to my love of cooking. Watching my parents nurture their garden has made me appreciate all the hard work that goes into growing one's own food. Although Don and I live in a building, I will be celebrating spring by planting my own garden of herbs and tomatoes on our balcony. And, I will be one of the first people in line at the farmers' markets once asparagus is available! I can't wait for the full arrival of spring!

And so foodiePrints readers, that is my spring story. Now it is your turn. What are your favourite childhood memories of spring? How do you celebrate the new season? And, what are your favourite spring foods?

Right now, I should be working on a draft for a lamb pho recipe to submit to Eleanor Hoh (@wokstar) of the Be a Wok Star blog to participate in a "#Pho buddies" food blog event this Sunday. However, I came across a Globe and Mail opinion editorial (op-ed) piece by journalist Margaret Wente that seems rather poorly informed, "Why are bloggers male?"

Why are bloggers male?
Source: Globe and Mail

Shortly after the Globe and Mail twitter account (@globeandmail) tweeted it, it enraged many on Twitter. Several, thanks to Ottawa's Joe Boughner (@joeboughner), have responded by listing favourite female bloggers and their corresponding blogs under the #xxbloggers hash tag.

In her op-ed piece, Wente made the following generalizations, among others,

1. blogging is "more of a guy thing"
2. the blogoshpere is male dominant
3. women are not interested in "spitting out an opinion on current events every 20 minutes"
4. girls don't have "male answer syndrome" so in school (particularly math class), they don't "shoot up their hands first"
5. women are not interested in "mental jousting"

I am not sure what to think about her piece or its intention.

Please note I have played devil's advocate before with some more than likely intentionally inflammatory words blogged by author and chef, Michael Ruhlman. Be it his "don't write if you can help it" or "foodies don't cook", I believe he is goading people to write better and learn how to cook, respectively. Both benefit him and the food community.

Conversely, Wente does not seem to be intentionally inflammatory. What benefit would a member of traditional media have to encourage more women into the blososphere where there are already many established and respected female bloggers; encourage bloggers to blog less frequently and with more breadth when blogging is already seen as a less "immediate" vehicle for expression; or encourage women to develop aggressive and impulsive behaviour in online communities when it is already difficult to cultivate trust? So, why highlight a gender inequality issue where there may not be one?

Let us define what a blog is. According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary

a blog is a website that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.

Source: Merriam-Webster Online

Accordingly, the word was added in 1999. Today, blogging has arguably expanded to include other media besides text (still the predominant form). There are video blogs (vlogs). There are photo blogs (photoblogs). There are audio blogs (podcasting). With the advent of Twitter and Facebook, there is also micro-blogging. Though, I feel it somewhat violates the definition as micro-blogging is conversational in nature, more transient, very lacking in context, and rather difficult to reference.

That said, Wente claims there are few to no women operating websites that contain commentary, reflections, or the like. I beg to differ. In Ottawa alone, we have 60 food blogs at last count. Of these, I know of only 5 male food bloggers and two couple bloggers. Need I even point to mommy bloggers, some of whom double as food bloggers? Actually, there are enough dedicated mommy bloggers Mashable even has a Top 10 list of misconceptions about them. And, as fellow Ottawa food blogger Leslie (@defnotmartha) of the Definitely Not Martha blog pointed out, there is an online community for female bloggers called BlogHer. It holds an enormous annual convention.

At this juncture, I cannot come up with a way to positively interpret Wente's piece. Then again, foodiePrints is just a food blog. I am just a guy. I must suffer from "male answer syndrome." So, I must be responding impulsively to encourage discord.

In light of these deficiencies, I may have to tell my better half the posts she writes for foodiePrints isn't blogging.

Perhaps Wente would prefer we invent a new term. If b-logging is for boys, would she prefer g-logging for girls?

Update: As per Kelly Rusk's (@krusk) recommendation, I just pulled the Globe and Mail links, including the one to their twitter account. Rusk, a great blogger in her own right, explains why I could find neither rhyme nor reason to Wente's piece. The Globe and Mail is link baiting. They are purposely trying to outrage people, inciting them to blog, tweet, and include links to their site.

Imagine my surprise when I came across a tweet by fellow Ottawa food blogger Jodi (@simplyfresh) of the Simply Fresh blog that read something like this:

@SimplyFresh (Mar 17, 03:19 PM)
@FoodiePrints @RonEade - great article on @apartment613 about you!

Honestly, my response was to retype the Twitter url. I thought the web UI had somehow corrupted itself, adding foodiePrints' handle to the tweet.

@apartment613 is the twitter handle for Apartment 613, a popular multi-faceted community blog that aims to showcase the more creative side of Canada's capital, Ottawa. It gives some much needed attention to our thriving music, art, theater, and food scenes. I follow the blog via their RSS-feed and Google reader, enjoying their coverage of local events, especially their photos of live indie bands. Many photos are taken by in-house photographer Ming Wu (@ming_wu).

Sometime this afternoon, Apartment 613 blogger/editor Ryan Saxby Hill (@saxby) posted an entry, listing a handful of local food bloggers. After all, somewhat restaurant-rich and with multiple culinary schools nearby, Ottawa should be a food obsessed city.

foodiePrints on the Apartment613 blog
Source: Apartment 613 Blog

Besides us, Saxby's piece includes Ron Eade (@roneade and Ottawa Citizen Food Editor), Shari Goodman (@whisk_food_blog) (one of my favourite food bloggers), and Dominic Maggiolo (a freelancer who writes for Apartment 613). Also mentioned is the Ottawa Foodies forum, which is operated by Mark Warburton (@warby).

Suffice it to say, the post made my St. Patrick's Day. We are honoured to be listed with the likes of Eade's Omnivore's Ottawa and Goodman's Whisk: A Food Blog.

And yes, my team (Jenn) and I are pho obsessed. Another pho piece will be forthcoming shortly. This one is a recipe.

Apparently, January 29th is National Corn Chip Day in the United States, a day that celebrates the American almost addiction for corn chips. It comes with a challenge to eat corn chips for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

To mark the occasion, Scott Kleinberg of Chicago's free newspaper RedEye went looking for and found 18 of what he calls "Strangest Corn Chips from Around the World." Images of his choices were made into a slide show that is gathering a following on digg.com.

Among his chosen corn chips are 10 varieties of Doritos. 16 are manufactured by FritoLay. Two, from corn chips originator Fritos.

The 15th entry in the slide show is Doritos' Scream Cheese, whose caption reads, "I'm assuming this is spicy cream cheese flavor." It is actually a Canadian one. In fact, its name originated in a user-generated marketing contest to find a marketing "guru."

I came across the unnamed chips one work day during lunch. Curiosity got the better of my palate and I purchased a bag.

Unnamed Flavour of Doritos' Corn Chips

Ingredients

Corn Chips
Ordinarily, I avoid Doritos' corn chips since the flavouring powder contains either an artificial cheese compound or a preservative that makes me cough. Attempting to become Doritos' new marketing guru, I came up with "Fieri Cheese" and based my proposed marketing campaign on one of the Food Network's most annoying personalities, Guy Fieri. It made sense, the chips tasted rather artificial like the Doritos I have tried before. Only, this flavour had bite. I envisioned a series of commercials where Fieri goes around saying "Got Fieri", pops a chip, and breathes fire, setting various objects and national monuments ablaze. Happily, I never found time to submit the idea.

Instead, a much more deserving Montrealer named Ryan Coopersmith was chosen guru. Here was his entry:


Anyhow, I have partaken of several cream cheese-based dips, spiked with a chili puree. Each tasted far better than Scream Cheese from Doritos. Each was served with plain corn tortilla chips, two made from corn (not flour) tortillas.

If you plan to celebrate corn chip day next year, I encourage you to make your own from corn tortillas and whip up a nice salsa to accompany them. Better yet, homemade nachos (beef or chicken) with freshly grated cheese is always a crowd pleaser.