Super blogger sunday: Nags of Edible Garden

This sunday on Super blogger series, we have Nags of Edible Garden.. Apart from a neat, organised and uncluttered blog "Edible Garden", Nags also has come up with an interesting Recipe diary and Food photography lessons for beginners.

EC: Tell us something about yourself and and what inspired you to start food blogging?

Nags: In my school, we had biweekly sessions called SUPW or Socially Useful and Productive Work, where were learnt cooking, baking, stitching, knitting, gardening, etc. I realised when I was 10 that I loved baking. I used to make omelettes when I was 7 and baked my first cake when I was 10. Even then, I wouldn't have thought of food blogging until I came across some blogs like Shaheen's Malabar Spices and Meeta's WFLH.

EC: You started off with a blog and moved to your own domain. How has that changed your blogging experience ??

Nags: Nothing has changed. I saw that the domain was available for 10 USD so I bought it. In fact my husband bought it for me. I know there's so much more I can do with my own domain but I still use the blogger interface and continue just like I did before the move.

EC: How did you come up with the name "Edible Garden" and how important is it in the success of the blog ??

Nags: The name just occurred to me one fine day (that's how most things happen to me) and it stuck till I made it the name of my blog. It was called 'For The Cook In Me' for a long time till I changed the name in July '08. A lot of people I met earlier still link to me as For The Cook In Me and that's fine. I don't think the name has brought in much success in relative terms but I like it.

EC: Your series on food photography was amazing..Tell us something about it.

Nags: I am a self-taught photographer. There is not a single that passes without me wanting to be better at taking pics. In fact, for some posts, I focus more on the pictures than I do on the recipe. I read a lot online and offline about macro and food photography. I downloaded and printed out massive number of documents. It was painful and I had a slow learning curve. That's when I thought sharing all of this in easy instalments would be a good idea. I am working on some more posts after a small break in that section. You can read the articles here.

EC: How important is technical knowledge for blogging ?

Nags: Knowledge when you start off is irrelevant. The most important thing is passion and interest. I didn't know how to create a hyperlink when I started blogging. Why, I didn't even know what a blog was 5 years back.

EC: How did you come up with Recipe diary concept that helps many decide on what to cook with the ingredients in hand.

Nags: I wanted to always do something extra that's related to food. With a full time job and two active blogs, I spend a lot of time online. So the natural extension seemed to be to create another site. This time, I got a friend's company to do the site creation for me. Basically, I wanted to fine tune a search algorithm where people can enter names of ingredients they have and get corresponding recipes. I am still working on that site - its more expensive and time-consuming than I expected.

EC: Any tips for new bloggers to make their blogs popular ??

Nags: Content, content, content. All else will follow. Trust yourself (and me :D).

EC: Your favourite recipe

Nags: I only favourites on the site. What I like, what I would serve you if you visited. All the flops and the bad ones are left behind firmly closed doors and don't see the light of day in my site. So here is the link to my Recipe Index. Enjoy!