TheFoodGeek.com is a part-time project by the Food Geek, Brian J. Geiger. The purpose is to increase his knowledge of food and cooking by teaching it to others, because you’ll find out what you don’t know about something so much faster when you’re trying to explain it to someone else. Plus, people I know ask for a good way to learn about the cooking and so on, so I figured, “Why not make a web site.”

There are a few ways I intend to present information. The first is the Case Study, which is the big, “serious” write up about a particular food, technique, or piece/class of equipment. These will be long, reasonably thorough, multi-part, and will almost certainly have a bunch of recipes related to it once it’s done. Of course, I’m not an expert in all aspects of cooking, nutritional anthropology, history, biology, chemistry, physics, nor anything, really. I suspect some of you are experts in at least one of those fields, so I would be ever so grateful if you would register with the site and post comments letting me know if I got something right, wrong, or was justifiably taking artistic license on a particular topic.

The next way is the Quick Note, which is a small, one part item about a topic that’s on my mind, but either has been covered in much greater detail, or will be in the future. Another way is the Link, which will be a link to a web page about something of interest, with perhaps an explanation or comment from me.

This is a web site, not a book, nor is it a magazine. I will be taking advantage of the dynamic nature, which means that if I’m caught in something that is wrong enough to warrant fixing, I’ll fix it. If it’s minor, I won’t even mention it. You would not believe the number of times some of these articles are edited within the first 10 minutes of it first being published. If it’s somehow serious enough to warrant it, I will make a note on the page that I used to say one thing and not another. If you’re interested in historical content, it’s possible that one of the various webcaching services will have a copy of the old version. If I do make a book, then you can treasure my mistakes forever. Here, you’ll have to enjoy them while they last.

I swear that I will never push a product that I do not believe in. I may reference or link to a product that I think will have some sort of appeal to the audience that I would never use, but I will never recommend the use of something that I either do not use or would not use if I had the $25,000 to spend on it. If I have reservations about a product, I will tell you what those reservations are. This means that, if I ever do get advertisers, I will not change my editorial content to suit my cash flow (a process the kids call, “selling out”). By the same token, when it’s appropriate, I will almost certainly try to get advertisers or sponsors that match with my interests. Of course, if I go with an automatic ad service such as Google’s adsense, then I will have limited control over what ads are displayed.

If you want me to review a product, please drop me a line. I’d be happy to give it a spin. I make no promises on what the review will say, but I will make it as honest as I know how.

I would be happy to take on additional writers and contributors, when the time comes. If it comes before the aforementioned advertising, it would certainly be volunteer work. Resume building, portfolio padding volunteer work, but volunteer work nevertheless. At this point, you have a better chance of getting to write if I know you, but I’m happy to look at writing samples and entertain ideas. The site is made for multiple contributors, so I would like to take advantage of it at some point.

If you have any questions, please contact me.