Gold Foodies – Blogs

Hello and welcome to Gold Foodies with me Malik Obady on women's radio station. So Gold Foodies is the show where we talk about everything food we love eating so why not talk about it? On the show we bring out restaurant reviews, we talk about the latest food trends and we even get some special guests on the show to chat about international cuisines and the coolest current food related news in the world. WRS women's radio station, Voice of women worldwide. Today on Gold Foodies we'll be talking all about food blogging and I've got some special guests with me today. Suad. She is a food blogger from all the way from UAE Abu Dhabi. She's got her own website and I'm really excited to chat to her about all about food blogging and she'll be giving her tips on how to start up as a food blogger yourself. I'll also be talking to Dina Ayoub all the way from Lebanon Beirut and she'll be talking about how Instagram is such a powerful tool for food blogging. But before that, I've got some really cool food news that I want to talk about. There's this amazing new trend called the Croiss sushi. Yeah, it's that weird. I mean it sounds weird and it looks weird and I'm pretty sure it tastes weird as well. So the croissant sushi, called the cross sushi is basically where a croissant is stuffed with a sushi and it's been invented by this new American bakery called Mr. Holmes Bakehouse. Right. And they're quite famous for their inventions, their crazy inventions. They've also got this invention of the CRO muffin and it's like a cross between a muffin and a croissant. Yes, I know it sounds crazy, but this is the newest trend. It's the crust sushi and everyone's going crazy about it. So they're already selling it in a couple of chains around the world. They've got some stores in San Francisco and California and they've also got one in South Korea and Seoul and it's slated as a Californian croissant. So if you go to the store, if you're ever in America or in South Korea, you can get it yourself and call it the California Croissant. It's basically a sesame seed topped pastry with smoked salmon inside, wasabi, pickled ginger nori, seaweed roll and it comes served with its own soy sauce packet as well. Pretty cool. I mean, I don't know what sushi lovers will Think about this. Or croissant lovers for that matter. But people have mixed feelings about it on Twitter. When I went on to Twitter, I was actually amazed by all of the opinions that people had. So one person even tweeted, if you are interested in consuming the cross sushi, please unfollow me now. And I found that hilarious. But Mashable dubs it as the could be next food trend of 2,020, 2018. So I'll leave it up to you guys to think whether you want to give it a go or not. I definitely want to try it just to see what it's all about, but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna. It's gonna make me feel a bit sick. I love sushi as it is and I love croissants. Don't know about bringing them together, but we'll see. I'll give it a go and if I do, I'll let you know. Welcome to women's radio station, the voice of women worldwide. So I do glitter for a living. Coming up next on women's radio station wrs. Women's women's radio station. Hey, this is Jessie and I'm a life architect. So what has made you say effort enrage or effort enjoy this week? I love listening to women's radio whilst driving in my car, my sport and me. Listen online on your smartphone and on your computer. If you wanted to find out a little bit more, do go to our website, womensradiostation.com okay, so I'm on air now with Sawad and Sawad is a food blogger herself. Soad, how are you today? I'm very well, thank you. Thank you for being on the show with me today, Soad. Thank you for having me. So, Soad, where are you from? Where are you based right now? Tell the listeners about yourself. I am from the uae. I'm from the uae, United Arab Emirates. And I'm based there as well, you know, born and bred here. Awesome. It's a bit hot there, isn't it, compared to where we are here in London? Basically, yes, basically. So tell the listeners a little bit about what you do as a food blogger. Okay, so I'm actually a working mom of two. I have a full time job in communications. But I started this food blog on the side and it's just something that I grew passionate about. I would say about four years ago, which is when I first got married actually. I guess growing up I was very used to hearing people compliment my mother on her food and cooking. She has a natural talent in the kitchen. So it was, like, very well known among family and friends. And it was also common that people would cross oceans craving food. But I was never interested in that aspect of food and cooking much. But when I got married, I didn't know where to start. I knew the basics. I knew how to, like, boil pasta or, like, make eggs, but I didn't. I didn't know how to put a meal together. So that was a mystery to me. And obviously I was still at that honeymoon phase. I wanted to impress my husband, but I also didn't want to disappoint my mom. So I called my mom, and she was, like, talking me through dishes step by step. And I began experimenting and I realized that I actually, you know, enjoy doing this. I. I enjoyed cooking. I enjoyed the process of making food. So after a while, I moved on to Pinterest. I began experimenting, and I guess in terms of blogging, you could say it all started on Instagram. So I was basically just taking pictures of my. Of food I'd make at home and post it on my personal account. And people, Instagram is such a huge platform these days for food blogging, isn't it? I feel like everyone now can consider themselves a food blogger thanks to Instagram. Exactly. And if it wasn't for Instagram, I would have never sort of progressed into making my own website or even starting a. I wouldn't call it a brand, but like having my own, like, brand name, Baby spatula and so on. But I was getting. I was getting more and more queries from people I knew and didn't know about recipes of certain dishes I would post on my personal account. And after three years of doing that, people started encouraging me to just start my own food blog. So that's what I did. That's amazing. And you. I mean, managing a food blog in itself is kind of like a next step up from Instagram, isn't it? So I wanted to ask you, what are the perks then of having a food blogging website? But also what are the difficulties that you face with having such a huge platform, you know, where you're posting your recipes and you're talking, you're interacting so much with your audience. I think the biggest difficulty is maintaining the pace of posting recipes and keeping the interest of the people that are following me. Because the food blogosphere, if you want to call it that, is huge now. I like that. And there's. And we're like. We're like this one big community. And if you don't stay, you know, on top of things, then people get bored easily and they'll just move on to the next food blog. So I think that was my, that's my biggest challenge until this day. I'm still trying to, I'm still kind of struggling with that because like I said, I do have a full time job and I'm a mom. So it's just sort of balancing all of it and not not making it into a, like, not, not not changing, like, not not removing the enjoyment that I have for cooking and for food and making it into a chore. Because at the end of the day, this is something that I am passionate about and I love to do and I don't want that feeling to go away. Right. And I understand there must be so much pressure that comes with the fact that you're doing this at being a mum and a full time worker, having this on the side as well. It must be so much pressure. And like you said, that difficulty of maintaining it and keeping that the same regular audience to come to your website, that's amazing. So I wanted to know what then, what would your advice be to anyone that would be starting up as a food blogger? What would you tell them if someone was just, you know, taken on Instagram or wanting to start their website even? How would you advise them? I would say just, you know, do what you love, try to. I'm a huge fan of to do lists. I try to stay organized because I have so much to do as well. If they do have a lot on their plate and they also want to do this, then my advice to them is organize your time. Always try to enjoy what you do. It doesn't matter what people think. At the end of the day, this is for you. So I highly recommend that take the step, maybe start small, start on Instagram before you start your own website. Start on Instagram, post your recipes there, build a following, a follower base and then move on from there. That's great advice. I feel like I'm ready to start my own food blogging website now. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. Thank you. So our listeners can find out more about you on your food blog. It's linked ladyspatula.com isn't it? Yes, it's ladyspatula.com or you can follow my Instagram account, ladyspatula. Amazing. So all the listeners, if you'd like to find out more about Suad, you can head to that website, ladyspatula.com or follow her on Instagram. Like she said, ladyspatula thank you so much Suad for chatting with us today. Thank you. Thank you again for having me. A city law firm. We are leading innovative and multi award winning solicitors in London. But why choose us? Well, unlike traditional law firms, we think outside the box. 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That's over 12 million people living with IBS every day. Suffering alone with IBS can be devastating and can lead to feelings of isolation and severely impact people's working and personal lives. It's a complex and life changing condition with symptoms varying from person to person and may include crampy abdominal pain, alternating bowel habits, diarrhea, constipation or both, bloating and swelling of the abdomen, excessive wind and the need to rush to the toilet. By donating just £2 per month to our charity, you can join the IBS Network community, speak to our specialist medical experts, help yourself and others like you to live well with IBS. Find out more by visiting our website at theibsnetwork.org or call us on 011-427-23253. Welcome back to Gold Foodies. You're listening to Women's radio station. I'm Malik Obedi and we're talking about food food blogging. We have just spoken to Suad who was talking about her food blogging website and now we've got Dina on the show. Hi Dina. Hello. How are you today? I'm good, how are you? Amazing. Thank you so much for being on the show with me today. I'm really excited to chat with you about Your new food blogging, especially your Instagram. I love seeing what you're posting because they look so delicious. Thank you. Always makes me hungry. So, Dina, tell the listeners a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What are you doing now? Basically, my name is Dina Ayub. I'm Palestinian and I grew up in the uae, but I moved to Lebanon to pursue my undergraduate. So I lived here for about three and a half years. Now I'm graduating this year and basically last semester, me and a bunch of my friends decided to start a food blog. We were just sitting there one day and we were actually scrolling through the pictures we have on our phones and realized we have enough content to make a food blog. So we didn't pursue it. We didn't pursue it and make a plan. It was just kind of like we already have everything, so we might as well do it. And we started posting on Instagram, basically, and it ended up being really successful as far as I know. And why do you find Instagram as such a great, strong platform for you for this food blog? Why did you choose Instagram specifically to start that food blog? I think because, like, in terms of other social media platforms, because on Facebook and Twitter and everything, while there are photos, the focus isn't so much on the photos. But as for Instagram, you can kind of like play around with how the photo is, like, what does it look like, who can see it, hashtags. And it's easy, you know that the people are dedicated to just looking at your photos. And so if you had any tips for people that are starting off starting up on Instagram as a food blogger, I mean, it's such a trendy thing to do, just posting your photos on Instagram, but taking it to the next level and posting it on the regular commenting about it. I know that what you do so well is that you write the location and you write kind of describe it a little bit. And I love your slow motion videos as well. That's. So tell me a little bit about the advice that you would give to people that want to start up specifically maybe through Instagram. Well, basically, I think the best advice I can give is to kind of appeal to all audiences. Because when you have, like. Because a bunch of us, you know, like the ones we started dip and tip, we. We all live in Lebanon and we go back to UAE during vacations, but that was such a limited audience, like people who live both in Lebanon and uae. And so what we would do is we would try to target people who like fast food and people who would like Asian food. People like, we try to kind of tackle everything at once. Because if you're just like, let's say you're just a food block for fast food that can only have one audience, but if you try to target what everyone likes, then you're going to have a bigger following, like more people who are interested in your content and stuff like that. Right. And what do you think makes Dipn tip so strong in the sense that you've got kind of a whole team behind it. The difference between a lot of food bloggers are usually just them on their own. How do you think it makes your blog so different? By being a group of friends behind it. This is gonna sound kind of weird, but the criticism makes it good because a lot of the time, like, someone would be like, oh, this was like, a really delicious thing. I want to post online. Someone be like, it doesn't look that good. We can't post it. It doesn't look good, and it doesn't look appetizing. And the person would be like, I swear it's delicious. It's like, no, we can't have this. And I feel like that's what. You've got so many different people on the team, and everyone has different tastes, and so there must be so much fighting. So I feel like the end result has to look really good to all, like, at least three people. So it's gonna look good to everyone. And that, I think that's what makes it so powerful in the sense that you were just saying earlier that you have to appeal to everyone. And the fact that a team behind it helps to diversify the audience as well. So, Dina, where do you see dip and tip going in the next few years? Where do you and your group of friends see it going for the near future? Well, for the near future, we're trying to kind of expand to, like, more cuisines so far. So, like, because you see a lot of things online, like, you see Asian now is kind of being more popular, you see a lot of people going out for sushi, for noodles, for everything. But there's a lot of cuisines that people aren't that exposed to. So, for example, so, like, Thai food, like, Indonesian food, like, it's just. There's so many things like Asian gets kind of piled up under Japanese, I guess. Or let's say Arabic food gets piled up under Lebanese. You can go for more. Like, Iraqi. You can go for more Palestinian, Jordanian. Like, it's just kind of. We want to expose our blog to more niche markets of food than the mainstream ones. And for long term plans, I don't know, maybe we can travel to try food, right? I mean the blog itself is already so international. The fact like you were saying, you're based in Lebanon, you're based in Abu Dhabi as well. You've got diversity in the sense of where you're based. You're traveling between them, those two places, aren't you? So that helps the food blog to level. Okay. So Dina, thank you so much for talking with me today. I'm really excited. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for being here and I'm really excited to see you. What is going to happen for Dipn Tip? So if listeners want to follow you guys on Instagram, where can they go? Dip and tip. So ippntip if you want to follow Dina and the rest of her friends on her food journey, you can head to ippandtip on Instagram and make sure to give her likes on her amazing slow motion food videos. She's going to make you so hungry. Thank you so much Dina for being with us today. Thank you Malak. Bye bye. Thank you guys so much for listening to me on the show today. We talked with Suad and I hope you guys benefited from all the tips that she gave her amazing website as well. Definitely. Check that out. We also talked with Dina, discussed Instagram and how amazing it can be for food blogging and you can also give it a go yourself if you want to. And remember, you can download and listen to this episode and more episodes on the Women's radio station website. It's womansradiostation. Com. You can also follow the station at Women's Radio Stn on Instagram as well.