Mallory, why did you start another newsletter?

I know, I know. This is my second newsletter on Substack and technically the fourth or fifth one in my long history of Starting Side Projects. But I resolve to make this one less about journalism jobs and more fun and personal-ish. Comes out when I have something to say. Less capitalism? I hope so!

You might even call it a foodsletter…no? OK, I’ll see myself out.

To understand why this newsletter exists, read below.

Confessions of a (sort of) Food Influencer

Flashback to 10 years ago.

On a whim in December 2013, I started a food blog called Couch Potato Cook, because I was trying to freelance (and failing!), cooking a lot, watching a ton of TV, and wanting to distract myself from a Bad Year that was about to get Worse. Everyone kept telling me to start a food blog, because this was the novelty Tumblr era, where a clever blog could get you a book deal, a TV pilot, or both. LOL none of that happened to me, but I did write about some fun stuff, like Dumb Starbucks, a tour of the Irwindale Sriracha factory, and volunteering with a food non-profit.

In October 2014, I started the Instagram account @couchpotatocook on another whim while volunteering at the LA Sriracha Festival. I just wanted a place to start my online presence anew after a traumatic year and I got way more than that.

In the years after, the food IG grew beyond my wildest dreams. I lived like a Food Influencer^TM during the Early Influencer Era. I ate many free meals, had some videos and photos go viral, interviewed chefs for my now-dormant blog, landed a few cool sponsors, made good friends, got invited to food festivals and press trips, and even wrote for a few publications about food. It was a dream come true for a broke freelance journalist since it got me bylines, supplemented my income, and literally fed me.

But then my freelance journalism career turned into full-time corporate journalism and media jobs with non-competes, side business forms, and needing clearance to take on sponsored trips and meals. I didn’t particularly like being micromanaged like that, but I did like having a steady income and health insurance. As a capitalist compromise, I started solely featuring food I paid for, since I was now making decent money; now I could support small businesses, rather than take freebies.

Then there was the social aspect. People got so weird when I told them about the IG and then they saw my food IG’s follower count (I’m not mentioning it here; look it up for yourself), treating me like I was some type of famous. For the record, it’s not that many followers in the grand scheme of things, I am not famous, and that kind of attention makes me uncomfortable (weird for a Leo, I know). I just wanted to share my love of food and showcase some cool restaurants and some people who tried to cozy up to me for free food invites and, well, because of the followers. Others snubbed me and acted like I thought I was better than them; if you know me, you’ll know I’d never think that about something as silly and superficial as a follower count on Instagram…or the schools I’ve gone to or where I’m from or any of that stuff.

Ironically, the main thing I learned from being a (sort of) food influencer is that social media isn’t real life; it’s a social construct.

Yes, having a lot of followers is nice and gave me a wonderful community when I needed it. But a large follower count can’t fix your real-life problems, health issues, or debt. Fun fact: I gained a ton of weight eating out all the time and it exposed a chronic condition I eventually received a diagnosis for after a long year of trial and error. Don’t cry for me, Argentina; the truth is now I’m on medications that make me feel a lot better.

But that side of the story doesn’t sound as fun, does it? You’d prefer to hear about The Influencer and not Mallory.

So for several years, Couch Potato Cook became my little secret. I didn’t tell anyone at my most recent corporate job and the pandemic made that easy because I didn’t meet my colleagues in person until years later. I bit my tongue when we talked about food and restaurant recommendations in Google Meet. I just nodded and smiled when my colleagues kept saying I was good at coming up with ideas for, and later managing the union social media accounts. I told myself it was just easier this way.

But when several colleagues and I went to Stockholm together for a work trip in 2022, I wanted that food content on my IG. I needed it. And I needed them not to dig into the shared dishes until I took my pics. So I knew I had to come clean.

On the first night, in front of my bosses, I nervously blurted out to the entire dinner table: “I need to take photos of the food. I have a food Instagram. I’m annoying and I’m sorry!!”

And you know what? It felt good to say it. To be my whole self again: an annoying dork who takes photos of the food. I’m not sorry.

Since then, I’ve become a freelancer again and, somehow, a part-time professor. I’ve started cooking again during my adjunct summer break and hope to continue. I’ve learned to love food again, not just for likes and shares and making videos go viral, but for me.

I revamped the website recently; I used to be ashamed of my old content (we’re noticing a pattern here, right?), but looking through it lately, it’s some of my best work — especially my guide to eating after a root canal (or in my case, 2!!) and this post about my experience on the autoimmune protocol diet, quite a challenging time in my food life, but one I’m glad I documented in retrospect.

I’d also been toying with how to revive The Brand in its 10th (!!) year.

• A podcast? I played around with that idea for a bit, since my previous job, college teaching gig, and freelance audio work have turned me into The Podcaster. It never felt right, though, and I don’t like it when people constantly pigeonhole me as The Podcaster, as if I haven’t done 5 million other things worth noting during my 41 years on this Earth — including being The Influencer, The Freelancer, The Editor, The Professor, and The Journalist. To partly quote Walt Whitman, my experience is large, I contain multitudes.
• Make a TikTok? Reader, this elder millennial is trying.

Then, in June, it came to me in a dream, like a cliche. I dreamed I made Couch Potato Cook: The Newsletter and I loved it. I had fun with the newsletter format. After I woke up, it was an idea I couldn’t shake because I’ve missed writing about food outside of pithy IG captions. Hell, I’ve missed writing to be read, long sentences, clever CaPiTaLiZaTiOnS and all. After all, newsletters are the new blogs.

I wrote this piece right after that dream and then…did nothing. I got scared of wHaT pEoPlE MiGhT tHiNk. Regretfully, I got distracted. But to paraphrase the great philosopher Taylor Swift, it slipped away into a moment in time. And as I keep saying, I’m in my 40s now and it’s true — when you run out of eggs, you also run out of fucks to give.

So now here it is and it feels like a homecoming to The Brand without Corporate Oversight and bringing more Mallory into it than just The Influencer.

If you met me any time post-2019, let me re-introduce myself: Hi, I’m Mallory. I love food and I have a semi-popular food IG and now this newsletter. I’ve also been Yelp Elite for 6 years. I have far too many side projects and often take on more than I should, but when terrible things happened in 2014, I started anew and it taught me not to waste this one wild and precious life.

Okay, now I get the Couch Potato Cook part of the title, but what are the “Other Adventures”?

If you know me, you know I think of life as a series of adventures. I don’t like being tied down, trapped, or limited…especially by my own project. “Other Adventures” gives me an out to write about whatever else I want here.

It’s my newsletter; I’ll do what I want.

Are you done yet? This thing is over 1,000 words. Is it always going to be this long and navel-gazing?

No! Give me a break; something I created is about to turn 10 years old and I feel a little nostalgic about it.

Sometimes I’ll talk about food shows or movies I’m watching (like The Bear, if the next season is better). I’m dying to write about all the Texas barbecue I ate in Austin in August.

Did you make this newsletter so you had a place to write about how much you loved Texas barbecue?

Probably.

What about the “Cook” in Couch Potato Cook? Are you ever gonna cook anything outside of your adjunct summers?

Yes! I want to end each newsletter with a photo of something I cooked lately. Or close to it. I made rib eye recently (my favorite cut of meat) and my cat Butters was obsessed. (No, he didn’t eat it but he sniffed it a lot!)

Until next time.