One Year Old

On this day a year ago I created this food blog. One year later I have posted 103 entries and have had over 7600 pageviews.


When I started this blog I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do with it. I enjoyed reading other peoples food blogs so I though why not start my own as a way to record recipes that I cooked and share them. The best feedback that I have received has been when friends tell me that they have been inspired to cook some of the recipes on my blog.

I had no idea who or how many people actually read my blog but a few months ago blogspot install a stats feature and it was nice to know that I have had quite a few hits. According to my blogspot stats, the majority of the people who read my blog are from Australia, followed closely by America, and the 5 most viewed pages are - 


• Paella and Spanish Flavours 
• Confusion of Fusion Food – Vietnamese Spaghetti Bolognese 
• Canh Chua – Vietnamese Hot and Sour Soup 
• Xintiandi on Francis Street 
• Comfort Food #2 – Rice Congee and Pressure Cooking 

In May I tried to start another food blog called Stuff Foodies Like. Between May and June I blogged 14 points and then sort of plateaued….I came to the realisation that food blogging takes a lot of my time and it’s a lot of work trying to keep up two but in 2011 I will try to update Stuff Foodies Like a bit more.

In July I went on a holiday to Japan for 3 weeks, during our trip I took photos of almost every meal we had. I think that over 70% of my photos from Japan were of food. When I got back home I tried to organise all my photos into blog entries, here are some of my favourites –


• Nara temples and local cuisine 
• Okada, Chicken, Ocean and Mountain (best meal in Japan!) 
• Weddings, parties, anything… 
• Western inspired concoctions 
• Useful signage 


(All my Japan blog posts can be found under the ‘Other’ tab)

When I first started blogging, a friend recommended that I create a twitter account and use it as a way to promote my blog. I was pretty adverse to this idea at first. I already had a defunct myspace account and a love-hate relationship with Facebook. Did I really need to become sucked into another social networking vortex? I didn’t really ‘get’ twitter either. After a long while I came around to the idea of twitter and in August I started a twitter account http://twitter.com/blueapocalypse so that whenever I blogged I could tweet it too. My blog stats reveal that Twitter drives a lot of traffic to my blog. Twitter has also been a great way to connect with other Perth food bloggers and find out the latest food news as I follow many chefs and food publications.


In November 2010, I got a bit more serious and bought my own domain name www.blueapocalypse.com


(If you want to know why I am called the Blue Apocalypse. Read the 'About Me' section.)


As well as posting recipes I have tried to incorporate some of my other interests into food blogging. I studied politics and economics and wanted to somehow include some economic and political ideas into food and cooking. From time to time I have found a way to make it work, I have also incorporated some scientific theories.


• Donkey voting and burgers 
• Occam’s Razor and Pasta 
• The law of diminishing marginal utility and umami 
• Chaos Theory and macarons 
• The Harm principle and Pho service 

I studied game theory at uni and have been trying to think of ways to incorporate it into my food blogging. Maybe this year I will find my Nash equilibrium.


Looking back over the past year I can’t believe how much I have kept up with this blog. Food blogging has become a part of my life, I have become one of those annoying people that take pictures of food all the time… “No you can’t eat anything until I have taken a picture of it.”


If you are reading Food Endeavours of the Blue Apocalypse, thanks :)


All I ever really wanted was an opportunity to tell people to stop bastardising stir fries!