A Year In The Bachelor’s Test Kitchen

You may recognize the picture above from my Mother’s Day post back in May. Now that I’ve been doing this blog for a whole year, I’ve started revisiting some of the recipes I prepared in the last 52 weeks. I made this same pork loin for a viewing party for Georgia Tech’s bowl game, and amazingly, it still worked! I’ve always maintained that the greatest value offered by food blogs is their database of recipes. If you find a food blog you like, it’s probably because the writer has taste in food similar to yours and publishes recipes that you enjoy cooking. As much as I have enjoyed creating this blog over the past year, it will never really be more than a work in progress. I will keep cooking and chronicling the (decent) things that I make, and hopefully this website will become a helpful resource for cheap, hungry people with high standards.

One of the most important aspects of this project for me is the photography, and one of the main things I’d like to improve is how my food looks as I take pictures of it. The problem is, I usually make recipes that only serve one or two platefuls of food, and I am planning to eat the food while it is still hot. Some recipes, like the recent beef stroganoff, are tough to make attractive without some pretty complex styling, and as much as I wish I could dress everything up in burlap and fancy serving dishes, it’s not really practical for my budget or actually eating the food. The biggest factor I’ve improved is my camera. The blog started with my old roommate’s fancy Nikon point and shoot, but I’ve since upgraded to a Nikon D3200. For Christmas, I was lucky enough to get 50mm prime lens that should considerably improve my photos. I will also hopefully get better as a photographer. Below, you’ll find a gallery of my favorite pictures from the past year. Thanks for reading!