Returning home to New Rochelle after a four-month run as an official spokesperson for Barack Obama”™s presidential campaign in southeast Ohio, Reginald Johnson decided to try his hand at something totally new: blogging, specifically about his passion for food.
“I came back from Ohio, took a sigh of relief when I saw the New Rochelle sign on I-95, and thought, what am I going to do now?” Johnson, who provides public relations services for area nonprofits via his company, White Plains-based TurningPoint Communications LLC, said. “I had just come off this roller coaster ride. I don”™t know enough to be a chef, but I started looking at ways to explore a creative outlet for my love of food. I wasn”™t ready to go into it full steam, so I thought about it for a while.”
Johnson spent some time learning how to program a blog and use his newly-purchased camera before launching CeramicCanvas.com, “a recipe blog dedicated to celebrating beautiful and simple foods and making them accessible to home cooks.”
Since it was launched last month, the site has had an active and rapidly growing base of readers in 74 countries around the world ”“ a pleasant surprise for Johnson, a budding photographer who takes crisp, colorful photos of his fresh-cooked meals to post on the blog.
“I”™m such a novice that someone e-mailed in and asked what F-stop I used to photograph the doughnuts,” Johnson said. “I had to look that up and admit that I use the automatic settings on the camera.”
Besides the photography, the personal stories and interesting tidbits Johnson blogs about with each recipe are draws, including tales of eating glazed doughnuts as a child growing up in Alabama.
Johnson said a key to the site”™s success is its commitment to keeping its readers engaged and encouraging them to ask questions and leave comments ”¦ and they do.
If he makes a new post, Johnson estimates the blog gets 700 or 800 hits a day. When nothing new is up there, the site still gets about 400 hits. And “with more than 1,700 hits alone, the blog”™s recipe posting for French crepes cake with chocolate meringue frosting has found its own fan base.”
He currently updates the site twice a week, but Johnson plans to start posting recipes three times a week as the site grows and becomes monetized. Â
“Within the next few weeks I will start to monetize the site so it can bring in income,” Johnson said. “I just signed a contract with a national food advertising organization and they”™ll put national food advertisers on the site.”
Johnson is also inspired by the diversity of the food offerings in New Rochelle, which matches the diversity of the people in the city.
With more than 140 cookbooks lining his bookshelves, Johnson hopes to have his own someday. Until then, he will continue his work with nonprofits and the occasional political leader, although he is probably not up for another presidential campaign.
“A mayor”™s election is coming for New York City this year, and I imagine I”™ll probably get tapped to work on one of the campaigns,” Johnson said.
