by Jessica Hilberman of Oakland Goods
It's all in the mix—that's the abiding philosophy behind the blog Eggbeater
from pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon. But to call Lydon a pastry chef is to oversimplify both her talents and her interests. Lydon is a teacher, a pontificator, a farmer's marketer, a photographer of vegetables and culinary artifacts, a poet, an advisor, and, oh yeah, a maker of delectable desserts.
Lydon's home online is as likely to feature a recipe for cardamom chocolate chunk cookies
as a definitive list of chef's pick-up lines, a restaurant review, a notice for one of her upcoming classes, or a long treatise on just about anything. It's this aspect of her writing that sets Lydon's blog apart. Eggbeater isn't just another food porn site for readers to come ogle images of tantalizing berry-filled pies
and piles of peaches (not that we aren't all for a good peach pic). It's a recipe book, a notepad of cooking tips, and a personal diary.
A new entry could bring a poem, a shout out to a friend, or a reflective essay. And every essay is personal—Lydon's award-winning blog is about food, but it's also very much about her and the things she's thinking about. By extension, it's about things the readers should be thinking about, and that means it's about us and our choices and tastes. Greeted by a new post on Eggbeater, we imagine Lydon weighing her ingredients as she sits down to write her next scathing commentary on the sustainability of the restaurant industry
. Like her desserts, we know that with each post she will craft something delicious.