Cityline Featured Blogger: Dara and Erin from How To Eat

These two dietitians make food fun and accessible with their down-to-earth foodie blog.

There are so many fabulous bloggers out there, and we want to highlight them on Cityline.ca. We’ll be profiling different lifestyle bloggers from month to month — they might write about food, fashion, beauty, décor, parenting, entertaining, gardening, you get the idea! For July 2013, we’re putting the spotlight on the mouthwatering food blog How To Eat. Run by Dara Gurau and Erin MacGregor, these two dietitians make food fun and accessible with their down-to-earth blog. Here’s our Q&A with Dara and Erin:

When did you start How To Eat and what was the inspiration behind starting the blog? How did you come up with your blog’s name?

We debuted the blog just over a year ago in June 2012 and last week published our 100th post! We have always shared a love of food and a passion for sharing our food experiences, recipes and cooking tips with friends and family.

We wanted the blog to be a venue where we could inspire others to get back into the kitchen, reconnect with real food and cook simple, healthy meals at home. The name How to Eat came from wanting to simply show people the “how tos” of cooking and eating well.

noodle-salad

How did you two come to working together on this blog? How do you share the workload? What do you love about blogging with a friend?

We became fast friends while working together as registered dietitians in a large teaching hospital in Toronto, so even our professional training has roots in food.

Before How to Eat, we each had our own food blogs. We quickly realized it was a lot of work to keep the blogs going solo, so we thought we would join forces. At the time, Dara was living and working in New York for a year, so when she returned How to Eat was born.

To share the workload we have made a commitment to each publish a post once per week. We try to post on the same days each week so our readers know when to expect new content. Sharing the workload works really well for us.  Since we both work full time, it can be difficult to post something on a consistent basis when you blog on your own. It’s also great to for sharing ideas and taste testing each other’s recipes.

We love great food photography and yours is gorgeous! Do either of you have any photography training? Can you share a food styling tip with our readers?

Neither of us has had any formal training, but Erin is definitely the more passionate amateur photographer. The very best food photography tip we’ve ever received is to take advantage of natural light whenever possible.

pancakes

What do you hope readers get from visiting your blog?

We hope visitors are inspired to make time for simple home cooking. We feel eating well can include all foods, but that using fresh, whole ingredients and cooking them yourself should be a priority. We want to see our readers create their own meal plans and grocery lists and throw away their take out menus (or use them less often).

The best feeling is when we get a comment or e-mail from a reader, especially a “non-foodie”, telling us they have made one of our recipes and loved it. It’s wonderful to know people are learning from us and eating well as a result.

Tell us about a post (or two!) that you’re particularly proud of and want to share with Cityline.ca readers.

Erin: One of our first posts has proven to be one of our most popular, and one that I am most proud of, my How To: Lunch Burritos. It’s a recipe for vegetarian black bean and rice burritos that are pre-made, individually wrapped and frozen for lunches.  A homemade frozen burrito at a fraction of the cost and absolutely packed with nutritious and delicious ingredients.

Dara: Some of our posts are focused on tips to help make meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking easier. One post that I’m proud of is the How To: Kitchen Tip – Weekend Meal Prep post. It provides a couple simple things that can be done over an hour or two on the weekend to help get a healthy dinner on the table or pack a healthy lunch during the week. I received a lot of great comments and feedback from readers who found this post so helpful and useful.

What are some other blogs you love reading?

Smitten Kitchen: Fabulous pictures, love her story. So easy to relate to and not one of her recipes has failed us.

Pioneer Woman: She is just hilarious!

How Sweet Eats

Closet Cooking: A fellow Torontonian

Joanne Eats Well With Others

Two Peas and Their Pod

burger

What’s your top advice for other bloggers?

Keep blogging! Try to post consistently, whether it be twice per week or twice per month. Be yourself and be sincere. Use your own voice when writing. If you are truly passionate about something and you write from the heart, it will come through in your posts.  You want readers to relate to the “real you”.

We want to hear from you! Do you know a blogger we should feature on Cityline.ca? Maybe it’s you! Email us at submissions@cityline.ca and include “Cityline Featured Blogger” in the subject line. And don’t forget to include a link to the blog! Look forward to hearing from you!