Practicum Post # 5: Time Spent

At this point, I am at my 5th blog post and have easily spent well over 15 hours engaging in these cooking communities. It is easy to get drawn back into even when I am busy with school and work because I am constantly getting emails with fellow community members commenting on posts that I've commented on, which then draws me back to the site. The Serious Eats Facebook page always posts comments in the newsfeed that show up when I'm procrastinating on Facebook. I have both been friend requested by multiple people on Discuss Cooking, as well as friended a good number of members that have been incredibly helpful in my experience of interacting and learning more about everything from cooking to appliances. My primary engagement in these communities has been asking questions and making general comments on posts that I find interesting. Though with my low levels of cooking experience and lack of expertise sometimes its hard to chime in with something work while. So as of recently I have just been taking advantage of receiving advice from an incredibly large knowledge base. Although Serious Eats is much more mainstream and integrated with social networking sites, I actually prefer Discuss Cooking with its more basic and old school feel. With Discuss Cooking I feel as if i have a personal expert on any category imaginable instantly at my disposal. I have had several conversations with members of Serious Eats, but the responses are primarily one-liners that members fire off in a few seconds. Discuss Cooking members on the other hand, are willing to sit down and write out several detailed paragraphs. Although a rare Serious Eats response is shown in a screen capture shown below. An older gentleman answering my question of essentially, healthy quick meals for busy lifestyles (College). He proceeded to send my an endless list of what he told his granddaughter when she started college. Just goes to show how nice and helpful some people are, needless to say, Ken G and I are now Serious Eats Friends.

More to Come Soon!