I want to be real clear right up front here: this blog is not about hating recipe blogs. You know those pastel-colored, swoopy-fonted blogs that it’s been super trendy to talk shit about for the last couple years where Jill, mom, wife and Christian from St. Paul, Minnesota titles a post “Vegan Friendly, Gluten-Free Banana Nut Muffins” and then writes for sixteen paragraphs about her adorable son Jaxon, the miracle twins Haley and Kaley, The Husband, and their labradoodle Mitzie who suffers from anxiety and, ironically, asthma, before you reach the ingredient lists? Those are recipe blogs. Those I actually understand.
What I don’t fucking understand are the people who hate them.
Because here’s the thing, Josh. I’m sorry you had to fucking scroll for .12 seconds before you found the actual directions for this recipe you begrudgingly have to neanderthal your way through because your cousin’s coming to your parent’s house for Easter and she’s pretending to have Celiac disease and decided to go vegan for the cows but you know it’s bullshit because you saw her Instagram post last week where she was eating a $17 grilled cheese from that new food truck downtown, and your ass never paid attention when your mom tried teaching you how to cook after working ten hours teaching other little shits just like you algebra two all day long and getting absolutely no appreciation for any of it, but Jill from St. Paul, Minnesota doesn’t owe you a god damned thing.
In fact, Jill–lovely, wonderful, patient, kind Jill who sings alto in the church choir and does senior photographs for the kids at the local high school for free because photography is her passion–is doing you the best fucking favor you’ve ever had a stranger do by testing this recipe six times (which you’d know if you just read the fucking blog and been delighted by her anecdote about the third try where she mixed up the baking soda and baking powder and wouldn’t you know it? that was a salty batch!) and posting a detailed recipe for the low, low price of absolutely fucking nothing except for two seconds of your bloody time which you don’t even have to give her because you can just scroll past the blog post, Josh. And I know you’ve had a thumb cramp for the last three days that you refer to as an “Esport injury” but is just a result of your chronic masturbation since Madison left you in February for what you refer to as “being a crazy bitch” but is actually just a result of your growing cynicism about every fucking thing to the point she couldn’t even enjoy the rare date out on her own bloody birthday to your favorite bar (not to mention your refusal to go down on her when you’re sober which, if we’re all being honest here, isn’t frequent enough), but frankly, Josh, none of that is Jill’s fucking fault.
I mean, honestly, what the hell is so bad about scrolling past a few walls of text and a handful of what are, if I might be a bit forward here, professional-quality, top-down perspective photos of powder blue mixing bowls, perfectly swirled batter, and (for whatever reason) two whole cinnamon bundles despite it being neither winter nor in the recipe and half a lime? You spend more time scrolling past misogynistic rants and racist memes on Reddit while you take twenty minutes pushing out a turd that could have dropped in under three if you’d just tried Jill’s Super-Fiber, Gut-Friendly Mexican Bean Soup (which is also a blessedly free post on Kookie Kitchen Dot Com), and nobody hears a peep of bitching out of you then, Josh, do they? No, you could have spent that time on an enchanting little anecdote about how Mitzie inexplicably got a hold of and ate one of the twins’ brontosaurus socks in the backseat of Jill’s “sting grey” Jeep Grand Cherokee on the way home from the grocery store for attempt number four so they had to detour to the emergency vet where they met the sweetest little x-ray tech who was also named Jyll, but with a “y”, and it ended up turning out that the sock wasn’t in Mitzie’s stomach at all, but got stuffed down between the third seat and the extended cab, but the vegan butter melted regardless, and they were all just too tired to haul everybody’s cranky butts back to Whole Foods, so she just tried the recipe with the vegetable oil she had on hand instead and wouldn’t you know that was amazing! But no, you opted for using what little thumb strength you had left to ask “but what did she say to make him do that?” on a thread about the latest UFC douchebag to nearly murder a woman he professed to be “the best thing to ever happened to me” the week before on The Joe Rogan Experience.
Jill didn’t do any of that to you. Jill, from St. Paul whose husband works in computers but isn’t allowed to touch her blog because she’s self-taught and the one time he tried adding some CSS scripts it made all the font align to the right and in Garamond, only wanted to share a tiny piece of her life and a recipe with whoever might stumble across her SEO-ed corner of the internet. Kookie Kitchen Dot Com is Jill’s fucking blog and she can do whatever the fuck she wants with it, Josh, so shut the fuck up and just scroll past her priceless memories and artisinal photo ops for your free fucking tried and true, 4.8 star, 632 comment banana nut muffin recipe. Or just download the fucking AllRecipes.com app already like the popup suggests every three seconds. Jill has never and will never do a damn thing to hurt you, her husband, her children, her dog, or even that see-you-next-Tuesday Linda two doors over who always puts her holiday decorations out a week too early and somehow gets the same ones Jill already got the year before on clearance at the Home Depot making her look like a fool on the neighborhood Facebook page. But she knows what she’s going to do. She’s getting that blowup Star Wars snow globe out on November first this year if it kills her.
Jill is just living her best life, and I get that that can be totally insufferable, someone just daring to be happy and to love what they’re doing (fucking gag), but, my dude, you gotta chill out on the recipe bloggers. Because, after all, they are fucking bloggers, not someone you’re paying to teach you to cook and not a wine-drunk on the Food Network. Jill is a real fucking person who is allowed to do what-the-fuck-ever she wants on the internet, just like your stupid ass, so just make the fucking muffins, and after you bungle your way through them and surprise yourself with how well they came out thanks to that tip about letting the batter rest for 45 minutes in the fridge and her awesomely detailed instructions that even a chimpanzee with a spatula and only one wet measuring cup can follow, leave her a short comment thanking her for her amazing insight and thoughtful upkeep of a wonderful blog.
And go get your fucking dick checked out because a friction burn shouldn’t last that long.
A.K. Caggiano 