FBC Featured Member: Sweet Potato Chronicles

 

Name:  Ceri and Laura

Blog name: Sweet Potato Chronicles

Where were you born?

I was born on Salt Spring Island, B.C. It’s a small island in between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. It’s on some maps! Laura was born and raised in Connecticut.

Where are you living now?

We both live in Toronto.

Why did you start your blog?

We started with a quick and dirty Blogger site in 2010. Two re-designs later and we’re pretty fancy on WordPress.

How did you decide on your blog name?

We wanted to tip our hats to our experience as journalists, hence Chronicles, and we wanted to include a super food. Kale is just not as cute as sweet potato, so there you go!

What do you blog about?

We write about the ups and downs of feeding a family. Our community wants to feed their kids healthy food but it’s challenging. We get it because we’re in the same life stage as our readers. So we share recipes but we also share strategies and, hopefully, some humour and encouragement.

What post on your blog most encapsulates you?

We ran a post early on called “The Six O’Clock Shit Show” and it featured a frittata that bails you out for dinner when everything’s going to hell. But it was so early on that the picture is one I took myself and it’s terrible. People loved that post and really seemed to love that we were being honest about how hard it is some days.

FBC Featured Member: Sweet Potato Chronicles

A more recent post that sort of sums us up is the Pancake Muffins that Laura created. We love recipes that are delicious – obviously! – but we also love them to solve a problem. So, whenever we can offer people a way to batch cook and make their busy weekdays run more smoothly, it’s always a hit. Plus, we chose these after a vote on Instagram – so really our followers chose them as a favourite.

Which post do you wish received more love and why?

http://sweetpotatochronicles.com/2015/10/fruity-pancake-muffins/

Hmm… that’s a hard one. Probably anything we published before we started working with Maya Visnyei. You can create a great recipe and write a funny, engaging blog post to go with it, but if you don’t have a beautiful photo, nobody is going to notice. We’ll sometimes go back to early posts and re-shoot recipes and kind of bring them back. A great example is the Roasted Cauliflower Salad that I initially posted in 2011. It’s a fantastic recipe and I don’t think it’s always easy to make great fall and winter salads. But my own shot of it was really bad. Now, it has a new life with this lovely shot that Maya took.

Which post’s success surprised you and why?

FBC Featured Member: Sweet Potato Chronicles

Laura created this easy app for entertaining and the traffic it gets is bananas. It’s a Pears with Goat Cheese and Cranberries – and it’s simple enough for kids to make yet it looks impressive at a party. The post got picked up by a few sites and gets shared a lot on Pinterest.

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What’s your biggest challenge as a blogger?

Our biggest challenge is balancing everything. We do a lot more with our brand than just blog. We contribute to Metro News, write books, we do food segments for morning shows, we produce Youtube videos and of course, we support it all on social media. It’s a lot and there’s only two of us!

Share a couple of your favourite food blogs to read. Why do you like them?

The top of our list is always Jenny Rosenstrach’s Dinner, A Love Story. Not only is Jenny the ultimate dinner whisperer, she’s just so darn nice that you always feel encouraged, never chided, into getting dinner on the table.

We also love Love & Lemons for their approach to healthy food. Plus, it’s so pretty!

Favourite food - care to share a recipe or a restaurant destination?

FBC Featured Member: Sweet Potato Chronicles

This Slow Cooker Butter Chicken is in high rotation in both of our households right now. It’s easy, delish and you don’t have to brown chicken at 7 a.m. to make it.

What are you working on next for your blog?

We’re developing some new video series that we’re excited about. Just as soon as we find the 25th hour in the day…

What else should we know about you that may or not be in your “About Me” page?

Our kids think SPC is really theirs. Same goes for our book, they think they did most of the work. In fact, they joke that their parallel project is, “Cooking with Parents.”

Editor's Note: Laura and Ceri are the authors of the book How To Feed a Family full of fast, simple recipes to feed your whole family.

What makes your blog unique?

We try to offer more than just recipes to our readers. There are millions of recipes out there but how to manage your time and get kids on board for healthy eating are the bigger challenges that parents face. We try to integrate strategies parents can use in everything we do.

What part of the FBC site do you find most useful?

We love all the resources but mostly it’s the sense of community that FBC brings together.

Follow Sweet Potato Chronicles on Social Media!

Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Pinterest  |  Instagram

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