An unpleasant incident and a concern

Someone has publicly accused me of 'getting inspired' by her recipes as a means of finding a solution to my 'Writer's Block'. I don't know if anyone has faced a similarly embarrassing problem in the food blogosphere. It’s taking me a lot of effort to bring this out in the public, so that people who have faced something similar can give their advice on the matter.

The person gave me a link to her archives for me to find out how I have lifted her stuff. The only common recipes I could find were the ones involving bread, eggs and curd rice. After all people in the food blogging world do have similar interests and somewhat similar ideas. And since when have bread, eggs and curd rice become anyone’s copyright? Bread and eggs are universal and curd rice is the life-blood of every South Indian. And then, there are trends-there was a ridge-gourd trend, now I see a Ven pongal trend. Priya of sugarandspice in her venpongal recipe has graciously mentioned names of others who have posted a recipe for the same. In my case, I would have done the same, had I actually spotted the aforementioned recipes in someone’s blog earlier. I have absolutely no intentions of stealing someone’s thunder, let alone recipes

I love cooking, and I can humbly say that it is a God given gift, and that any permutation-combination I’ve tried, the results have never been un-edible. It’s the love and passion that goes into making ‘food’ out of just ‘ingredients’. And the same love and passion goes into writing about them. In such a scheme of things, when someone accuses one of ‘lifting’ recipes to cure a Writer’s Block, it is extremely hurting. At this very moment, I have over 50 pictures of various recipes that I want to blog about. I actually wish I develop a Writer’s Block sometime so that I can take a forcible break from blogging. Because, the love of cooking and writing combined, is turning out to be a time-eating proposition-and a very enjoyable one at that.

I definitely admit the fact that I have visited the concerned person’s blog off and on, but probably didn’t stop to comment. That doesn’t mean that I’m anti their blog. Come on- we visit about atleast 10 blogs a day, on an average and spot 2-3 new recipes on each. It is not really possible to comment on each and every recipe that one spots. And not leaving a comment doesn’t mean that we are giving any less credit or praise for that person’s effort. Also, the sitecounter that most of us have on our sites- will tell that I visited a particular blog, and if I left my connection on, on one particular page for over an hour while attending to chores, it can’t probably mean that I have spent that much time on one site trying to rip-off content from the archives. If the person had a sitecounter for those particular recipes that she’s talking about, she would have realized that I have never ever visited those pages, until today. That too only because she pointed it out.

At this point of time, I would like to appeal to all the friends- to tell me how we can protect ourself from such allegations which are emotionally disturbing than anything else. It is not quite possible to visit each and every food blog before we post entries to make sure no one else has posted a similar entry. So what is the solution?

To the person concerned: I’m sorry you felt the way you did about me-I only wish you could have asked me personally or raised your concern instead of jumping to that conclusion. Personally, I know my high level of integrity and I owe no explanations. But what I can do to assuage is this. I can assure you that you will never see my IP address / blog name on your site-counter henceforth-so that you can be sure that anything I post is not a result of getting 'inspired' by you.