Yesterday marked the one year birthday for In Katrina’s Kitchen. What an exciting year it has been! From the first time I hit publish I think I was hooked. I really started this blog on a whim. I thought about blogging for a few weeks and one day I came across Jenny’s {Picky Palate} famous Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies. This was huge! Epic! I mean this had to be shared with every single person I knew. So that became my first recipe posted on In Katrina’s Kitchen.

In those first couple of weeks I was smitten with the encouragement and welcome I received in the food blogging community. I have since met some very funny and talented people and I’m happy to say that I now have internet friends to add to my real-life friends. Woot!<

I really didn’t want this post to be all about me -boring!!- so I invited some of my favorite food bloggers to share their first (or early) posts with you. We all start somewhere!  Six of the bloggers featured today are either already published or are soon-to-be published.

{Click on any image to be taken to that blogger’s post.}

Sweet Pepper Relish Dip Since the pictures in my first post aren’t too too horrible I thought I would highlight a particularly cringe-worthy photo and post with you from my first few weeks. This dip is so yummy! But seriously, have you ever seen anything less appetizing than that photo? I can’t even pretend to be remotely interested in eating that. ~Katrina

All Day I Dream About Food

Homemade Yogurt It’s actually a favourite post because it was the first time I made yogurt at home and it worked so well.  The pictures sure aren’t anything to write home about, though! It was my 4th post ever and it didn’t get a single comment.  But homemade yogurt in your crockpot is so easy, it’s definitely worth a read! ~Carolyn

Bake at 350

Give Thanks Decorated Cookies When I started my blog 4 years ago, I wasn’t even sure what a “food blog” was.  My cousins and I all had “family blogs” and I had seen a few crafting/home type blogs from there.  I got the wild idea that I could start a blog and share how to decorate cookies.  As you can see, I was scared to say much of anything (not a problem anymore), and my pictures (well, picture) were (was) teeny-tiny. ~Bridget

Baked By Rachel

Easy Meatloaf I chose what I felt was one of the worst picture posts early on. This was posted in February of 2010, my fourth post ever. Who doesn’t love bland looking slabs of pressed meat by evening kitchen lighting? I think meatloaf might be one of the hardest items to photograph even in good lighting. ~Rachel

A Culinary Journey with Chef Dennis

Clams with Linguini I shudder to share this post with you, but it was one of my first posts after joining Foodbuzz, which really was the beginning of my blogging for other people…lol,  before then I didn’t even include images (as bad as they were). Here is still an entrée that finds itself on our table at home almost every week! ~Chef Dennis

Glorious Treats

My first post is the cream cheese frosting recipe I use, and I still link back to it all the time.  It’s one of my favorite recipes, and I use it often. The post is from Feb 27th, 2010.  I had a little “head start” because pre blogging I was sharing my photos on Flickr for quite a while… don’t make me show you some of those first photos! 🙂 If you were really looking for sad/bad photos, I did share a couple of my earliest food photos in this post entitled The Glorious Truth (2010). I guess we’re checking our pride at the door with this one!  ~Glory

I am Baker

Christmas Cake

{Amanda is super-busy meeting a deadline for her COOKBOOK this week! She was kind enough to let me poke around on her blog and share an old post with you as we all celebrate our blogging beginnings. I seriously could have spent HOURS staring in amazement at her gorgeous creations. I made it all the way back to 2009 and thought I would show off her cheerful Christmas Cake. Look at that smooth white surface. In true I am Baker-style there is a delightful surprise for the lucky person who cuts the first slice!}

Pass the Sushi

Cajun Chicken and Sausage Pasta

Oooh shudder….. lol! This was not my first post on my domain, but this was the first time I actually started posting regularly and made a hobby of it. The pasta really is killer, both for your weight and in flavor and I am hoping to make it again soon to update the recipe with some real pictures. ~Kita

Picky Palate

Creamy Chicken Italiano This post is from October 2007, the first month I started blogging.  This was a recipe of mine that was in a Gooseberry Patch Cookbook.  I remember taking that photo with my  little point and shoot camera at night under my microwave light, lol!  It’s so fun to see  how far we’ve all come and how much we’ve learned over the years 🙂 ~Jenny

Recipe Girl

Spaghetti Squash with Spicy Meat Sauce Jan, 2008. I set up my blog on a whim via blogspot.  I didn’t really know a whole lot about how it all worked, but soon I became absorbed in the wonderful community of food bloggers by visiting a zillion blogs and getting to know everyone.  In those first few months, I blogged every. single. day… and I wonder what the heck I was thinking!!  That was a lot of work.  Nowadays I’ve mellowed it out to 2 or 3 times a week.  I love this blogging thing just as much as I did when I started (or dare I say MORE?)  ~Lori

The Decorated Cookie

 

The Endless Possibilities of Cookies This is my very first post ever from September 6, 2008. The picture of Elvis is from my first book, Cookie Sensations, published way back in ’07 which is near impossible to find now. I started “the decorated cookie” as a platform for my web biz, Chic Cookies, which sold cookie decorating kits that I designed. Back then I was all cookies cookies cookies. Scroll through those early posts, too, for a glimpse of some groan-worthy photographs and clearly-novice blogging. Fast forward to today, and the web biz is gone and blogging took me far beyond cookies to marshmallows, cake pops, cupcakes, cakes and more. Now my next book, Sugarlicious, out next month has all of those things, thanks to my blogging journey. Another blogging bonus? All the sweet friends I’ve made. ~Meaghan

I really want to say a huge thank you to you all for reading and trying my recipes. I love to hear from you so I appreciate when you post notes or pictures on my facebook page and send me your emails. And thank you so much to all of the bloggers who took a walk down memory lane and were brave enough to let me share their first posts! Here’s to 2012!