Lindsay and her sweet husband, Nich in their adorable kitchen that I am coveting. I stole this photo off of Lindsay’s Facebook page. 

People have asked me how I got so lucky here in Portland. The truth is, I really don’t know. I will say that Twitter had a lot to do with it. Twitter landed me my job.  Twitter introduced me to this lady and this one and this one. Really. Twitter has done some great things for me, professionally. As hesitant as I was to jump into the whole crazy universe of 140 characters, I am so glad that I did. Twitter also introduced me to Lindsay. And I am so, so, so glad it did. If anybody would have told me that I would be making friends off of Twitter (of all things), I would have told them that they were insane. After consistantly @-ing for a couple of months, we finally decided to meet for coffee and her energy is infectious. As soon as she left, I knew that I wanted to be friends with her. It just so happens that not only are we friends, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for her drive and I find her so motivated and so smart and so lovely, that you just can’t help but want to spend time with her. 

Lindsay wears many hats (as you will read over the next couple of days). She writes a very popular food blog. She caters. She’s on the board of the Montavilla Farmer’s Market. She does craft services. She freelances for Plate & Pitchfork. She’s a wedding coordinator. And an event planner. Oh and she has a full-time job on top of it all. Are you tired yet? Me too.

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Like me, Lindsay moved to Portland from Southern California, in the need of a fresh start and a bit of an escape from the life she had created after college. She was working in marketing and advertising for an indie record label and had finally realized that she had enough of the LA lifestyle and she moved to Portland in the hopes of something different and to be closer to family. 

She ended up meeting her husband, Nich through her sister since they attended college together. Nich saw her love of cooking and he encouraged her to start her blog. So, two years ago, for Christmas, he purchased a digital camera for her and filled her stocking with all sorts of cooking tools for her to get started. 

“It was the nicest Christmas present ever,” she said.

It was that Christmas present that led to this.

All photos courtesy of Lindsay and can all be found on www.rosemarried.com

I make my distaste for food blogs fairly well known. Food blogging tends to fall into a few different camps - the super healthy blogs that use really exotic hard-to-find ingredients that typically don’t have nearly enough flavor or seasoning or the food blogs that focus on the most unhealthy food porn-y things that you can shove into your face or the food blogs that don’t really feature recipes but are more like ‘here are a bunch of processed items that I mix together to create some sort of weird frankenfood that will probably kill you.’

Let’s just say I was relieved to find Lindsay’s blog. Lindsay cooks the way that I do. The vast majority of her recipes are healthy, but not absurdly so and they are always well seasoned (thank you, Lindsay).

Because of my ‘I’m really tired of food bloggers’ stance I asked Lindsay what she was tired of. 

“Bacon. Cakepops. Southern Food revamping. And fusion in general,” she replied. 

Before you get too upset over the bacon comment, if you don’t live in Portland - you may not understand. Bacon and pork belly and pork as a whole is center stage on every. single. menu. It’s super delicious, but it is possible to get tired of pigs, I promise. I wouldn’t have believed it either, before I moved here. 

“I’ve always had to have a creative outlet - somewhere where I could have a voice. In PR and marketing, I worked so hard to make other people famous and noticed, but I was always behind the scenes. Food blogging has been an interesting transition for me,” said Lindsay. 

Lindsay has been blogging for two years now and her blog reaches over 10,000 unique visits per month. She might be changing things up slightly over at Rosemarried though.

“I’m really interested in telling a story through food. I have lived in Alaska and Mexico and really all over the place - I really want my food to tell a story and become more than just recipes on a screen,” she said. 

Because we have such a similar food philosophy and I was curious about why she wasn’t thrilled with the reinvention/reintroduction of Southern food, our conversation wandered on Paula Deen. 

“It’s not surprising. But, it’s so incredibly sad. I really think that her diagnosis illustrates a harsh reality about where we are as Americans in regards to our health. I’m disappointed that instead of really dealing with diabetes, she has taken the easy way out and made a deal with a drug company. It’s disheartening,” said Lindsay. 

(There is no real way to cut this off naturally, so I am doing it in the most unnatural way possible. More Lindsay tomorrow, I promise).