Top Ten Moments in ES History: Year One

Endless Simmer is one year old today! Can you freaking believe that? It seems like only yesterday we were brainstorming pun names and telling our friends about this hypothetical “blog” thing. It’s been a pretty amazing year, and we really appreciate all our readers coming along for the ride. If you’ll allow us just this one post of self-indulgence, we’d like to take a minute to relive the Best Moments in ES History: Year One. For our long-time fans, enjoy a walk down memory lane, and for newbies, check out some of our all-time fav posts that you may have missed.

10. Gansie gets drunk; invents live blogging Top Chef

During Season 3 of Top Chef, Endless Simmer provided you with next-day recaps, as many other blogs do. But on one Wednesday night this Winter, gansie wandered home from the pub, discovered Top Chef 4 was about to premier, and decided our readers just couldn’t wait until Thursday morning for our must-read insight. Thus a new genre was born: live-blogging pre-recorded episodes of reality television shows. In the beginning, it was just gansie informing a non-existent audience that “Padma’s boots are to die” and “Spike could be hott,” but by the end of the season, we were welcoming huge groups of readers and even saw some celebrity guest lurkers (see moment #3). Stay tuned to ES and who knows what totally unnecessary innovation we’ll come up with next. I think I hear a clamor for Live Blogging Iron Chef America, Live Blogging Sunday Night Dinner Parties, and Live Blogging Repeats of Rachael Ray’s Tasty Travels at 3am

9. JoeHoya’s first comment

On July 6th, 2007, at 12:30 a.m., we were overjoyed to find we had one of our very first comments from a non-friend/family member. It was a classic: “Does it make me just a little bit more of a foodie than you if I know that it’s spelled “bulgur” wheat? And does it make me an ass that I bothered to post that?” In fairness, he concluded the comment “And, now that you hate me, can I also say that this is a great new blog that I’m looking forward to visiting frequently!” He wasn’t kidding. And so an ES star commenter was born. The next year would be filled with friends and family repeatedly asking us: “Who the hell is JoeHoya? And why does he know everything?” Thank you, JoeHoya; no other ES commenter has even come close.

8. “I am going to cut that girl”

Our first brush with stardom came a mere month into our blogging tenure, when the prettier half of our editing team was mysteriously nominated in Fishbowl D.C.’s annual hottest media types contest. Realizing the huge marketing potential of such a moment, we quickly started talking shit about gansie’s competition. In the most dramatic moment of said shit-talking, the frontrunning “hottest media type” got a little angry at our joke that she was clearly cheating, ruminating on her own blog that she was “going to cut that girl who called me a cheater.” Thankfully, no one was cut, and for the record, it turned out she actually was cheating.

7. Padma Lakshmi reads ES every day

OK fine, that might be an exaggeration. Just a little. But it’s kinda-sorta-possibly true. A few months back, a good friend of our contributor britannia ended up interning for a Manhattan publicist that does work for ES Icon Padma Lakshmi. When the publicist asked him to print out blog posts about Padma for the star to read, he of course mentioned that he knew the folks writing Endless Simmer. “Oh yeah, we’ve read them before,” replied Padma’s PR flack. So for all of you who comment not-so-nice things about this extremely talented chef, curb it, OK, because Padma is always watching.

PS – Hi Padma!

6. 80 proof gets a new camera

We were fairly proud of our first five months of blog posts, but 80p def took us to a new, semi-profess level when he started snapping pics with his new Christmas-bestowed camera. Sure we were snarky before, but now we’re artsy too. A blogosphere-world double whammy.

Next: Top 5 Moments in ES History: Year One

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