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Tampa food blogger celebrates the year's food holidays

 
Jennifer Buggica, 29, of Tampa, started blogging when she was 14, but her interest in cooking has inspired her to write about food. She often cooks in her mother’s apartment kitchen.
Jennifer Buggica, 29, of Tampa, started blogging when she was 14, but her interest in cooking has inspired her to write about food. She often cooks in her mother’s apartment kitchen.
Published May 5, 2014

TAMPA

Jennifer Buggica has embarked on a curious campaign this year.

She's a food blogger, and every food blogger worth her weight in recipes, has to have a shtick, a theme if you will, to separate her from the other 16,000-plus people like her sprinkling the Internet with their culinary adventures. That's about how many food blogs there are out there.

Buggica is observing the year's daily "food holidays," putting her own twist on the honored dish or featured ingredient and posting the results with photos and recipes on her blog, the Foodie Patootie (TheFoodiePatootie.com). Food holidays? You know, National Coffee Cake Day (April 7), National Turkey Neck Soup Day (March 30) and National Sticky Bun Day (Feb. 21). For those days she featured recipes for Coffee Cake Muffins, Kale, Bean and Orzo Soup, and Sticky Bun Monkey Bread, respectively.

About those Coffee Cake Muffins, Buggica blogged, "With breakfast being the most important meal of the day, I love those things I can make that I can just grab and go with, and that I don't get too sick of. I have food ADD in that I need something new all the time. For me to find something that I can eat every morning for several days is rare. But, these muffins are it. I eat one for breakfast and another for snack on the long days at work."

As blogger shticks go, Buggica, 29, came up with a good one. Since late last year, traffic to the Foodie Patootie has grown 200 percent and she's getting about 5,500 views a week. Room for growth, for sure, but a good start. On Jan. 1, Bloody Mary Day, she got going in earnest on her new plan.

We hung out with Buggica on a recent Friday at her mother's apartment in Citrus Park where she likes to cook a few times a month because the kitchen is a bit more spacious than her own in Temple Terrace. She was preparing Thyme Buttermilk Cornbread for National Buttermilk Biscuit Day (May 14) and Butterscotch Blondies for National Butterscotch Blondies Day May 9).

On the stove, a big pot of red sauce bubbled away. Whereas the blog project represents the modern intersection of food writing and technology, the chipped, white enamel pot connects her to the past. The recipe for the red sauce, and the pot, are family hand-me-downs, reminders of where her passion for cooking comes from.

"I'll never give away that recipe," she says of the aromatic sauce that's the specialty of her grandfather, Robert Buggica. "And I'll never be able to make it like him." A deep whiff reveals lots of green peppers, but the magical mix of spices would be difficult to figure out. She uses the sauce for spaghetti, lasagna, "whatever," she says.

Her grandfather is the "cook of the family," she says. Someday, she hopes to have that title.

Buggica is a lot like many Tampa natives. Her heritage is Italian, Cuban and Spanish, and along with that ethnic heritage comes many family food traditions, not the least of which are big get-togethers for the holidays. Her love of food and cooking was born around those tables.

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She's clever about coming up with the recipes for the blog, working them into meals for her extended family, friends or husband, Mike Gutierrez. She made sure that when she tested crown roast of pork (for the first time) for, um, Crown Roast of Pork Day on March 7 that she paired it with a dessert destined for the blog. Since March 8 was National Peanut Cluster Day, they ate homemade PayDay bars after the roasted pork.

When she isn't cooking for her blog, Buggica is a social media specialist, most recently for Publix and now at Grow Financial Federal Credit Union. She leans on her knowledge of social media marketing to drive traffic to the Foodie Patootie. She has been blogging since she was 14 and says she hopes no one is reading that early effort. She knows that nothing dies on the Internet. Buggia turned her efforts toward food writing last fall, mostly critiquing Tampa restaurants, which she is still doing.

Food holiday bonanza

With the number of days set aside to celebrate things such as oatmeal cookies, New England clam chowder and pistachios, it's hard to believe that any food has been left out.

In recent years, the food holidays list has grown so much that some days mark two celebrations. For instance, crown roast of pork day slams head-on into cereal day.

So what gives with all these food holidays?

Mostly, they are industry campaigns to promote certain foods. Somebody has to make sure bittersweet chocolate and apple turnovers get their due. For example, the Walnut Marketing Board makes a case for setting aside a day to celebrate its favorite nut. Then press releases are sent out to the media, and other interested parties, with recipes and information extolling the virtues of said walnuts. Stories are written, recipes are shared and the marketing machine has done its job.

The case is made to groups who approve these petitions for the right to call July 10 Pina Colada Day, among 364 others. Even the president can get involved. President Dwight Eisenhower put his stamp of approval on National Walnut Day, May 17, which is now Cherry Cobbler Day, too.

It's a crowded field.

So what's next?

Come Dec. 31 — no surprise, that's National Champagne Day — Buggica thinks she'll be ready to hang up her food-of-the-day crusade. By then, she hopes more people will have found her site, using it as reference not just for food holidays but as a recipe repository.

"Ultimately, I want to start conversations about cooking," she says.

And for 2015? Buggica will keep blogging, but she's thinking about taking her readers on a seasonal journey, Tampa-style.

That means strawberries in February and watermelon when the snow is still flying up North.

But first things first. Today is Roast Leg of Lamb Day.

Janet K. Keeler can be reached at jkeeler@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8586. Follow @RoadEats on Twitter.