What a ride....

There is a bunch of mixed feelings inside me today. I am happy, surprised, humbled, excited, everything. Just cant believe that I am about to hit my one year mark in food blogging. And as they say, whenever you hit a milestone, do look back at the road behind to acknowledge what exactly youve achieved and learnt on your way, that is exactly what I want to do today.

It was exactly 12 months ago that I wrote my first blog and reading it today makes me literally smile. With so many typos and grammatical mistakes, the post appears so childish to me now but that also reminds me how clueless and naive I was then in the world of blogging. After all, it wasnt a planned activity and was only supposed to be a way to share my culinary knowledge with a few close friends who had been keeping my phone busy for hours asking for the same recipes again and again. So, I decided to catalogue them all at one place. And once they were out on the web, I had nothing against sharing them with the entire world. But as I said, since it all began just like how I start most things in my life, i.e. without any strategy and thinking much about the consequences, there was nearly no traffic other than the family and relatives in the beginning. Even today, my space might not be visited by the largest audience but its still an improvement on how it was a year ago.

I didnt know anything about a Facebook page, Pinterest or other social networking sites until I found out that being a self published writer I needed to have more platforms to promote my blog. Soon after making public profile on numerous sites and joining few foodie communities, the results started to show in my favour. And its certainly getting better with each passing day.

Its nice to see the positive changes that my blog has gained during this year but its even more satisfying to see how I myself have grown over this entire period. This place has not only been important to me because I was getting recognised and popular, but because this little slice of Blogger gave me a voice - it literally provided the inner cook in me a reason to come out and get to know the world from a different eye, from the eye of a food anthropologist. It gave me a creative outlet to express and share my ideas, inspirations, experiences and projects that I would have never done elsewhere.

All in all, I am truely grateful for the time that I have invested in this platform and specially for the strong tribe of online connections that I have been able to build through it. Without all these awesome friends, it wouldnt be nearly as much fun.

So here I am folks, exactly one year later, saying THANK YOU to each one of you for your visits, support, encouraging mails and all the lovely comments that youve been leaving here and on my FB page.

P.S. To celebrate my first blogiversary, I am adding a new label containing my PERSONAL favourite posts, dont forget to have a look into all of them.

Hope you too will enjoy the ride (and the cake, ofcourse;) as much I did.

Love you heaps,