… lounging on powdery beaches with the scent of plumeria wafting through the breeze. I’m in Hawaii for the week. Regular posting will resume next Wednesday — thank you for reading and hope all is well with the rest of the world.

Much has been said in recent weeks about the ethics of food blogging, and the whole debate seems to have come to a head with Eater LA and it’s debacle in posting an anonymous tip that defamed downtown LA wine bar The Must. It starts here at Eater LA with the anonymous tip, then ends up here in a letter from the restaurant. And if that’s not enough, here’s a great story by Elina Shatkin of the LA Times that sums it up, with some commentary on the ethics of anonymous sources. So, are anonymous sources ethical?

That conversation is just one side of the multifaceted ethics debate. In another angle, people are wondering whether reviewing freebies or doing paid posts are Kosher. In this BusinessWeek story (mentioned in Shatkin’s piece), Douglas MacMillan writes that the FTC “wants bloggers to disclose when they’ve been wooed with cash or freebies from companies they cover.”

The notion of full disclosure is standard practice in journalism. And there are reasons for it. It’s the best way to combat bias, and it informs the reader of anything they may consider shady. I’m happy to see there are lines being drawn in the food blogosphere, and it will be interesting to see how it all ends up.

To help food bloggers along, there’s this fantastic code that was dreamed up by two fellow food bloggers. Then there’s the EGullet code of ethics.

Both of these codes are similar to the ethics codes of the Association of Food Journalists. This is the one I follow, but that’s not to say I don’t have a few things to learn as well.(Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for more.)

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I’d like to write a book.
There, I said it.

That’s something I’ve had trouble admitting to people, for fear of them saying something like “You? A book? What makes you think you’re interesting/knowledgeable/talented enough to write a book?”

But after the Symposium for Professional Food Writers conference, I don’t have trouble telling people this anymore. After you sheepishly admit something like that to Michael Ruhlman himself while at dinner one night, you kind of get over your fear. His responses: “I wanted to write a book when I was your age, too,” followed by, “About what?” and “Why?” Hmm.

Well, I want to write about food. I want to write about food and memory and life and love and all that. Memoir-style. Because I’ve been blessed with a multiracial background, with a loving mother stuck in the ways of pre-war Vietnam, who tried to raise her child in that old manner in this new country. Because there’s a lot to explore in this often hot-blooded mother-daughter relationship, both culturally and personally, that I hope can help other mother-daughter teams out there understand their own relationship dynamics.

Even more, because there’s a story in my Irish/Italian father, too. He’s a lover of Mexican food who told me that he believes he’s an alien from another planet, sent to Earth because his brother wanted to be king of said planet. My father apparently was next in line for the throne. A year later, I would meet him for the first time in 22 years.

And because I believe food heals. Not in the way a person temporarily binges away depression, or in the medicinal or nutritious way, but in that can’t-put-your-finger-on-it, soul-calming way. If you let it, it will assemble you back together and make you whole again. People really need to know that food can do this. It’s certainly done this for me.

I kinda wish I wasn’t embarrassed to detail this to Ruhlman when he asked. I said something along the lines of “I don’t know, I have time; I’ll figure it out.” He probably would have given me some great advice. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for more)

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