5 Reasons Why You Should Start Food Blogging

If you've been spending a lot of time looking at food blogs, let me tell you why you should finally start your own.

1. You'll meet new people from all over the world.
There is a huge food community out there. Like ginormous! And the support that foodies have for each other is fantastic. They have the funniest and most entertaining anecdotes. So if you're feeling lonely, you're just a step away from making some great new friends.

2. You'll get to go to fun parties.
Okay okay, that doesn't automatically happen. After I started blogging, people have invited me to food events because to them, I'm a 'food person'. I've never been a gourmet person and experiencing it has brought food to a whole new level for me. Quality vs. quantity.

3. You'll start cooking healthier (hence eating healthier).
I find myself more particular with my ingredients. I shop more at fresh markets, buy free range eggs, eat more vegetables etc. I like to know what I put in my food rather than buying pre-made food and guessing. I like having more colours and variations just because it makes it unique. I experiment more. I can go on and on about this but it might become 10 reasons instead of 5.

4. You'll make/ eat things you've never made/ eaten before.
I've never made pastry from scratch. I've never made ba chang (Chinese festival food). I've never had rhubarb in my life. Food blogging is the perfect excuse to start.

5. You'll see the beauty in food.
I no longer look at food just as food. When I'm taking food pictures I make sure that it looks sexy. So sexy that you want to eat it. Okay, let's keep this friendly for children. Food photography is definitely the most amazing part for me. I just cannot wait to make something look beautiful to be put on screen. Ah ... eye candy.

Review My Post

You want to know something weird? You get paid for reviewing a post on my blog.

It's true, you get paid - $7.50 to be exact - for writing something on my blog in YOUR blog.

I know, it's crazy isn't it?

This is a new program by PayPerPost (PPP) which I was talking about a couple days back. When you click on the badge below and sign up with PPP, you get some extra cash. Ka-ching!

What do I get? Well... I get a review from you :D

So, how do we do this again?

Get Free Money (serves 1)
--------------------------------------------------
Ingredients:

• A computer/ laptop
• An internet connection
• A blog
• Some wits
• A dog or a cat
  

Method:

1. Click on the badge below.
2. Sign up with PPP (free, and if you write about them, you get a further $20 - ka-ching, ka-ching)
3. Write a post on your blog reviewing a post on Twenty Something & Cooking (e.g. could be a recipe that you liked / disliked, something interesting I'd said... whatever)
4. In your post, please include a link to this post. (**Veryyy important**)
5. Give your dog / cat / fish a belly rub and wait for the money to pop into your bank account.

Too easy.

Click here:

The Chefs in My Life

Since the day I was born, I have always been surrounded by food. My grandmother, or ah ma in Chinese, was the matriarch of her family. She was one lady not to be messed with. Mom and the uncles would reminiscence about the days how ah ma would punish them. If a child had misbehaved, Everybody would get it. Ah ma would make grandfather climb into the room at night while everybody was asleep, unlock the doors from inside so ah ma could go in and give a lashing they'd never forget.

Those post-war days were hard and food and money was scarce. The only way a little 5-feet-something woman knew how to bring her 10 children up was to discipline them with a cane.

Fortunately, for me, she was warm and loving to all her grandchildren. I only remembered good things about ah ma. Whenever she come and stay, she'd busy herself in the kitchen and incredible smells would be oozing out from the oven/steamer/stove.

Mom and almost all her siblings took after my grandmother (Note: and maybe a little bit of her temper). My aunts would sit around and talk about cooking like they were discussing world economy. I never had any interest in it, for me, it was bird chatter. But I like to imagine, a child's mind is like a sponge and we absorb things around us anyway and all the food-making chatter planted in me 20(something) years ago has finally blossomed.

My sister was the first to put the food talk into practice. And I believe of all the children, she is the best of the best. While she used to bake for us, she now bakes for her children and their friends. Seriously, those monkeys would eat nothing but her cookies. You'd have to pry their mouth open to eat anything else. Right now, she's Mom's apprentice. Mom's training her up so her monkeys will always know Malaysian food the way we do.

The men in my family loves a good cookout themselves. Dad's allowed in the kitchen only on special occasions because Mom doesn't agree with his style of cooking. Dad can also be extraordinarily fussy with his food. Many times, before the dish is finish, they'll end up blue in the face (which they're infamously known to do - and it's funny now come to think of it hehehe). My brother, helmet head in pix {3}, used to entertain during his bachelor days. Now with a toddler in tow, he lets someone else do the job.

Yes, so food, is in our blood and it's something I, too, plan to pass on to my future children. It's a passion worth keeping in the family and probably to anyone else who cares to listen. :D

{A word of appreciation to cousin A for sending me these lovely photos that otherwise might be forgotten}

A Penny for Your Post

If you spend as much time as I do on the internet you'd start wishing for every time you logged on, someone paid you. Seriously, with all the oil prices going up, why not get paid to blog? Its good have some extra cash in your wallet to get around and get more groceries for your food blogging obsession.

I found out there was a website PayPerPost who pays bloggers for reviewing products or services. A blogger can be paid from $5 to $35 for one post. ONE POST! Isn't that fantastic? I don't know about you but I was jumping out of my pajamas when I found out (Yes, I do get excited very easily). Make your first blog post about PerPerPost itself and they will even pay you $20! (Just to give you an idea how much some of PPP's bloggers are paid, the all -time highest earners earns around $19,000 to $22,000)

I used to work in the magazine business. I never had time for myself or my family. My friends hardly saw me and well, let's just say it was a busy unremarkable life. It could be good fun and my bosses were great but when my mom got sick, it became clear to me that I could spend my entire life chasing stories and not have precious moments with my loved ones.

From then on I started looking for ways to have a fulfilling life. Life's too short to be not being there for your self, the people you care about and the miracles of life. So I chose to have time and time to spend doing things that I'm passionate about.

I love writing and photography. I certainly love food - eating and cooking it. This is what this blog is all about - following ones heart and throwing in something edible once in a while. And if someone wants to pay me to blog about my passions, wellllll... even better. :) I won't be one to complain.

Look at me. Getting all windy about my life. I got carried away like a reminiscing old granny. Anyway, go ahead and check it out. It could be for you, or it might not be. Either way, it's going to pay for my next food post :D (Apple Pie - recipe courtesy of a certain cousin).

get paid to blog

Come & Say Hi

To all our readers,
Thanks for dropping by (we know you're there). We like to hear from you so please leave a message/ comment/ feedback after you've scrolled through our posts. We loveeee to hear from you so that we'd feel encouraged to blog some more - hey, everybody likes to feel appreciated once in a while. So don't be shy and drop us a note to tell us if you like our blog, or not. We can take constructive criticisms. :D

Let us know who you are and we'll be happy to drop by your blog. Thanks for coming by again and we hope you like what you see so far.

Happy Cooking!
Monkee

When Did You Last Give Yourself Flowers?

When was it? Last year? Five years ago? Never?
I used to have a housemate who bought herself flowers from time to time. Another girl and I thought, what a waste of money. To tell you the truth, I think we were just jealous.

Where's self-love in our society? You say self-love and someone goes 'What'd you say? Self-love? That's like kissing yourself in the mirror. Ewwww...'

Buy yourself flowers.

Don't wait for your/a man to buy them for you.

Life isn't going to wait for you till that happens.

A meteor might just hit you in the head.

Or somewhere worst.

So go, go buy yourself some flowers.

Go forth and be happy.

Learning

I'm not a very picky eater. However, there are certain things that I do not eat. One of them is tomato, especially the raw ones! Back home, I used to pick out the slices of raw tomatoes from my burger/sandwich and pass them to my dear friend, Gillie whenever we had meals together.

My family and friends would occasionally receive cockles from my plate of char kueh teow. If I were to eat alone, you would see a row of cockles lining up nicely around my plate as I picked them out while eating. :D

The only time I ate bananas was when I had banana split or banana fritters. Somehow, I never ate it on its own. And there is absolutely one thing that I do not eat. Egg yolk!! *yuck* The only time I had to eat it was when it's scrambled or steamed. That's just because I couldn't pick it out! *grrr*.

Ever since I came to Melbourne, I've learned to enjoy different kinds of food. Thanks to my guinea pig and cooking experiments, I've become more adventurous and started trying food that I did not fancy in the past. I've begun to use tomatoes in my cooking. They actually taste quite good! In fact, nowadays I have them raw too. ;) Gillie will not be getting slices of raw tomatoes from me anymore. :P

For the first time in Cheeky history, I actually finished the salted egg yolk in my ba chang (made with Monkee) the other day. It's not too bad. I wonder why I didn't like it in the past. I guess I shall be eating the salted egg yolk from my mooncake (to be made with Monkee? ;)) in the future too! At the moment, I think I'll still say no to runny egg yolks! *run*

Eggplants, baked beans, oranges.. I'm slowly learning to like them. And maybe, just maybe, I might try some durians when I go back to Malaysia for a holiday trip. haha.

One thing still puzzles me though.. why would someone who eats everything, refuses to eat celery? I like it. Hmmm..

Is there something that you do not like to eat as well?

Quote of the day ~ Learn from Yesterday, Live for Today and Hope for Tomorrow ~

1000 Apologies

My fingers were itchy.

Blame it on overactive flea-bitten monkey fingers.

In my honest enthusiasm to re-decorate the blog, I deleted some 'minor' details that was previously attached to it like, for example, other food blogger links *eep*

So, if you like your link to be put up under "Other Food Bloggers"- write us a comment under this post and we'll put it up. I promise to chain my itchy monkey fingers. It'll behave. You won't see any fiddling around again ... well, at least... not so soon.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. Gomenasai.

Something About Nothing

Ever since I was a little girl, I've dreamnt of watching fluffy ballerinas in their pointy pink shoes flying on stage, jumping like African antelopes into the arms of some equally agile creature with buns-of-steel (Note that the buns-of-steel idea came after puberty). I dreamnt of living in a foreign land and seeing foreign things that would set sparks in my head. New smells. New sights. New experiences. New wonders. I wondered what it would be like to be sitting under a tree that had shades of red, ocra, magenta, burnt orange and bright yellow. I imagined days sitting in front of a fire on a cold winter night.

... And two blokes in front of me talking about football.

Well, not really the latter. Just happens that my flatmate's walked in with his mate talking in ... a very foreign way. Strange to my ears obviously. Normal to this country.

I'm happy. Very happy. There's much to be thankful for. Good family. Good partner. Good friends. Good wine. Good food. Oy, there's lots to be thankful for.

Sure, things don't always work my way but you know it usually works alright in the end. I don't know how. I don't know when (and trust me, sometimes I wish I do know when). But life works in an amazingly interesting way. This blog did. Well, me baking. Pfft. That's really weird. But I'm happy. Take good care people. I hope you're happy too.

Love,
Monkee Girl

The Third Twenty-Something

Hie!

I'm the third twenty-something. I've never been one to cook or bake much. Till 2 years ago when I decided on a whim that I would bake for a living. Fast forward 2 years later, here I am. I still don't cook much but I haven't stopped baking since. I bake mostly everything. From cakes, to cookies to pies. I can't say I am innovative as I'm quite worried about screwing things up. So I normally follow recipes to the T.

So If you're looking for daring one-of-a-kind recipes, please refer to the other two twenty-somethings down there. If you want sure fire solid recipes, I'm your gal.

Oh, I also have a almost 2 year old. (This is me giving excuse for not posting much in the future, upfront)

Another Twenty-Something Meets The World

Hi everyone! I'm another tweenty-something. Today marks my first entry in the blogging world! *bow*

This is my first attempt at blogging. Hmm.. we shall see how long I can keep up with it, for I have been known to many for being lazy.

There's a first time for everything. And for the first time in my life, I have began cooking!

I've been running some experiments in my little kitchen, trying out simple recipes (appreciating simple things in life) and creating some of my own (disasters - don't worry, no deaths reported so far!)

After discovering the wonderful world of food blogs, I've been inspired to share my experiments here :)

So, watch out world! One more twenty-something's gonna cook up a storm! (or not) :P

Quote of the day ~ Sharing is caring ~

Twenty Something & Cooking

I'm twenty-something. I'm out of the house. Which means I'm armed with a wok, a pot, and a baking tray. Watch out world! This could be a disaster.

I speak for all the 'struggling' twenty-somethings out there, who are out of the nest and into a frying pan. Learning the ropes of stir-fry, pan-fry, pot-fry and hand-fry.

I'm constantly looking for new and, let's-never-forget, easy recipes to try. Anything that takes too much of preparation is out the window.

I'm twenty-something. It means I'm impatient, I'm economical (not cheap) and I want it to taste damn good.

About me:
I did some food styling for a magazine years ago because the editor thought it was a good idea to:
(a) cut cost
(b) exploit my creativity

Of which, I must say despite the whines and complains, enjoyed tremendously.

So now, having read and inspired by all you food bloggers, I'm going to do something radical - put my two-cents worth of kitchen adventures for the world to see.

Get ready to salivate!