CMH Gourmand – Eating in Columbus & Ohio

Well, here we are ten years later and CMH Gourmand….continues.

For the last few years, I have struggled on whether to continue with this blog, occasionally stepping back and asking myself why I do this? Readership has not been what it was during the zenith of this (and other blogs) years ago but there is still a reader base none the less. I certainly like my base better the Republican base (which scare the shit out of me). I can take some solace in the fact that other media, like newspapers, have had the same decline as well. I’ve come to equate my base as comparable to people who still collect and seek out vinyl records.

I am also quick to acknowledge (knowing there are those that would be quicker to point out) that there is much I could do, fairly easily, to grow my own base: more social media especially Instagram, a dedicated Facebook page, updating layout and graphics and such. I could start doing all types of promotion – shameless and otherwise. However, I have no interest in any of these options. I’m content for this to be a true blog in the spirit of when blogs started way back (in 1994, 1997 or (mainstream by all accounts in 2004) depending on who you ask, a web log of my adventures and thoughts.

In the last months as I have asked myself, why blog? I have not felt the need to justify the answer back to myself. My response has been “why not?”

Another solace is that the heat is off since now that I am ten years into this, I have a body of work that can stand on its own without the perceived need and pressures to continue to churn out material on a regular basis. On a positive note, I did have a bit of a rally this year and crafted a respectable number of posts including a few I thought were really good or at least at least creatively different from other things I read day-to-day. Most people would not have noticed but I did invest several hours updating, fine-tuning and cleaning up some junk in this archive over the last year.

I updated the Eating Athens and Pizza pages, I added and will continue to work on my Ohio Ice Cream page. I deleted some older posts that were no longer relevant, updated and cleaned up errors in other posts and created a new category – CLOSED – for all of the places that no longer exist. Sadly 43 of my posts are about places that are no longer open, several of which were among my favorites. Links have been updated as well as my About/Bio section. To the dismay of the Dining Duder research has continued on the Ohio Donut Trail culminating in a dedicated page for those activities. For fans of the Donut Trail, I have almost completed the southern part of the state. I have one trip to Jackson and one trip to Cincinnati before I turn my attention north. Looking at my notes, when (if ever) the Ohio Donut Trail is completed there will be at least forty and potentially fifty great Ohio donut spots listed.

Moving forward this year and beyond, other than when I post the last entry in CMH Gourmand (which has been written) I will no longer posts marking off the anniversaries. There will be more “dining diatribes” as I increasingly become a grumpy old man. What I look forward to the most as CMH Griffin ages, is backtracking to all of the road trips documented here and having him enjoy each of these spots with me with fresh eyes, an open mind and very likely a large appetite.

My other shared “bodies of work” continue as well. Although I am not embedded in the Food Truck world as much as I was, Street Eats Columbus keeps on trucking as does (although very much in need of an updated census) Taco Trucks Columbus. Looking at the Venn diagram of CMH Gourmand and Bricks of Ohio Blog readership (overlap of 3), while I have not been on a brick foraging mission in 2016, I do believe I will find more as time goes on. One day the two worlds will collide when I finally create time to build a brick pizza oven.

A final observation. This is post 666, which my high school self, who loved heavy metal (although was wary of the culture that went with it), would have found hilarious.