2011 - The year in food
Posted: Thursday 22 December, 2011
Erica Whiteman
2011 has definitely been a year to celebrate the foodie. From the popularity of mobile food apps to food-based social networking events, foodies like myself have been able to embrace their inner ‘food critic’, ‘baker’ or ‘chef’. Late last year after being inspired to document all of the cooking and baking that goes on in my kitchen, I started my own food blog – cupcakesandotherstuff.
This led to discovering mobile apps, such as Foodspotting, which combines my love of great meals and posting photos on social networks. Foodspotting isn’t just a restaurant review app – there are already tons of those around - it’s about the dishes. As a self-professed foodie, I want to know which dishes are the best and where to find them, so Foodspotting is perfect for this. In fact, I’ve turned my house into a geo-location on the social network. Once a dish is uploaded, it can be shared across other social networks like Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook and/or Flickr. Also, other users can add stars to dishes, comment on the photo quality or how great the find is.
And now I am embracing Evernote Food. This app acts as a reminder for great restaurants I’ve been to, great meals I’ve prepared and even as a food tracker for counting calories. If you’ve ever put together an amazing meal, and want to remember it for later, this app is very helpful. I’ll definitely be putting this into more use into 2012.
Food blogging conference Tech Munch, takes place in a few different cities across the US such as Austin as part of SXSW, Los Angeles, Boston and many more. And Food Blogger Connect, Europe’s leading food blogging conference takes place in London. These are two of the most popular food-based social networking events and one of these days I hope to go to them to natter about nosh with my fellow foodies. I did manage to monitor what was happening at these conferences by following their respective hashtags on Twitter.
Into next year, I’ll continue to add my kitchen creations (and other stuff) to the blog and will watch to see how foodie culture mixes in 2012. Until then, bring on the Christmas goose and Boxing Day buffet.
