Lettuce Eat Kale Celebrates First Birthday

Humor me here, dear readers, as I take a moment to look back on a year of lettuceeatkale.

Can you believe 12 months have passed — give or take a day or so  — since my first post?

LEK has gone from birth to barely sitting up, to crawling and walking. No night terrors along the way. Just one post shy of 100 and over 1,000 comments.

Slowly but steadily I’m building an audience for my musings on school food,  kids and cooking, urban homesteads and growing greens.

As well as posts on food in books, films, politics, on the street, and in our homes. Food foraging, food justice, frugal food folk — all here as well. And giveaways too. And a bunch of other stuff.

Fittingly, yesterday I saw my traffic reach it’s highest numbers yet. I suspect my post on Jamie Oliver might have had something to do with that. Timely and all. My pieces on choosy chowhounds and lunchbox suggestions have been popular. So was my defense of Alice Waters against unfair attacks in The Atlantic.

But sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to which blog offerings attract a following. Musings on granola, favorite food films, and how to be a good dinner guest generated a wave of interest. Go figure. (‘Fessing up to food indiscretions, on the other hand, people eat that stuff up.)

I’ve had fun writing about my friends, making new ones in the food and blogging world, and meeting food folk doing worthy, interesting, and downright groovy things.

Since I started this online experiment I’ve been asked to contribute to the food politics blog Civil Eats and the hyper-local site Berkeleyside.

I’ve received kudos for posts on persimmons, growing the next generation of chefs, and professionals who pursue their culinary passions after hours, among other subjects, over at Food News Journal.

The New York Times Bay Area Blog even had nice things to say about me.

Enough horn tooting. I’m sure some of my posts have missed the mark but let’s not talk about those today.

Today, we celebrate. You can start singing now.

Coming this year for Lettuce Eat Kale:

• My own hosted site. Honestly. Truly. Any day now. Just you wait and see. You’ll be the first to know I promise.

• A Lettuce Eat Kale Facebook Fan Page (Mostly so my professional friends don’t have to wade through photos of my kid to get to the food stuff.)

• A six-figure book deal, movie contract, and my own reality TV show. Doubtful. Just making sure you were paying attention.

Now it’s your turn. I’d like to hear (I think) what you have to say about this site. Why you come here, what you’re looking for, what you like, what’s missing, or what you want to see more of.

Not fishing for compliments here (though I’ll happily, and hopefully graciously, accept them) just want to spend some time mulling over how my baby might look a year from here, with a little help from my friends.

Blowing out the candle now…

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