Alice of margaritas and mad hatters went off to the Elliot Bay Book Company on Sunday in order to see Alton Brown (of Good Eats Fame). He's been on a national tour to tout his new book I'm Just Here for More Food. If you've never been part of a book tour, especially Cook Book book Tours, there's a book signing which gives you a chance to ask a question or two.

Alice took advantage of that:

I asked him if he was going to have time this year to update his weblog more often.

His response?

He said that the weblog had seemed like a good idea, but once it got started, he realized, what more could he really say in it, and does the Internet really need another food weblog anyway? There are so many food blogs out there, just going blah blah blah.

Okay, I admit I'm going to get a bit defensive here, but truth be told, Alton's weblog was never really a food blog per se. I would say that it was more of celebrity blog of a person who has Television show about food.

The "blah blah blah" comment? I actually agree with him on that point. There are some pretty horrid food blogs out there, just as there are some pretty horrid political blogs, personal blogs, movie blogs, etc, etc. Conversely, there are a fair amount of wonderful food blogs out there. As with any medium, quality can be judged almost on a bell curve. The amount of exceptional usually equals the amount of horrid, with everyone else sort of falling in between.

However, I think Alton misses the point just exactly what food blogs can do. You can give links on the current news of food industry. You can write essays about how food affected your life. You can create a repository of recipes for others to refer to in the future. Alton's site rarely, if ever, did any of those.

Is all of this "blah, blah, blah"? *shrug*. I don't think so. I do know that I'll miss Alton's voice in the blog-universe, whether or not his site is a food blog or not.