My Life At The Stove by Alex Standen

Guest Blogger Chefaj82

Hi my name is Alex Standen and I'm here to introduce your to my blog. Right then where do I start? Well when I was asked to write an introduction to my blog "my life at the stove", I wondered what to say, or why people would want to read the blog, but without further ado hear we go. I got the idea of writing the blog after joining twitter, and with that, I started to follow other chefs to see what was going on out there and be part of the wider chef community that is on line across a number of sites.

I'm a 29 year old first time head chef living and working in surrey, and I wanted to use my blog as a way of conveying my ideas about food and restaurants not just to chefs but also to my friends, the ones that are sane and don't cook for a living, yes they think that we are all mad to work with that heat and that stress that we all do as Chefs.

I wanted to show them what you can get out of cooking and what the life of a chef is really like. Still actually deciding to write bits of my life and my thoughts down really did scare me a little, as I had always struggled with spelling and grammar. I spent a good while searching the internet, for other blogs and pages, and reading as many as I could, to see how it was done and how others conveyed their thoughts across to their audience, as no one wants to read something written without thorough, care and consideration.

One of the first blogs I followed was www.esenses.org/ which most of us know is the writing by Alex Wood Executive Chef at St Stephens Club in London, Alex's blog and has been showcased on The Staff Canteen. Whilst reading different chefs and foodies blogs I was still undecided about whether to do a functional blog, that introduced people to my recipes, dishes and techniques, or whether I should just write about my day to day life in the kitchen. In the end I decided not to pigeon hole the blog and write about what ever came to mind that day or what had got me thinking at that particular time.

So with great trepidation I opened the laptop and tried to work out what to call my little adventure into the written (well typed) world of blogs. I kept trying to come up with funky ideas or something completely different but kept coming back to "get back to the stove" which after much discussion with the lady in my life became "my life at the stove" this stuck and so we had the blog name.

Ok we've got the name but where to post it was the next thing to work out, I know there are many bloggers out there that hate blogger.com, but it is free easy to use and lets anyone have a go at sending their feelings and ideas out into cyberspace, which at the end of the day is all that your blog is, a place to voice your thoughts and ideas on something and not to change people ideals just to give them something to enjoy for a few minutes of their time and hope to engage with others, perhaps share common thoughts.

So next is to find something to post about which was not too difficult, I'd blogged that day at work about what I had been up too. When it was all finished you post online and hope people will bother spending there precise time reading it, and to my surprise people did.

The blog with time has grown from small 2 or 3 paragraph posts to full tasting menu reviews and even a book review, this has come as I have gained confidence in my writing and had people comment on enjoying the post that I make, which really makes it worthwhile and it becomes hugely satisfying.

So what is to come in the future to be honest I'm not sure we are 12 posts in, and I find more to write about all the time, we've so many more restaurants to visit and blog about, also going to try and do a few stage this year which should give me some interesting experiences to blog about and share with my followers. Right well that's the introduction to my blog I hope you all enjoy it and feel free to add you comments about post as it will help me improve my offering .

Cheers alex

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