We chat with Alana at Wasabi Cowgirl about her fun and entertaining food blog.

When did you start your blog?
April 2006

How did you come up with the name?
I had just moved to Toronto from the prairies (Edmonton, Alberta), so I was going for an “East meets West” thing. The cowgirl part is a nod to my home province.

Does your blog have a specific focus or area of coverage?
Not really. I write about whatever food-related thing is interesting to me on that particular day. Most of my posts are Toronto restaurant reviews, recipes, or about what I eat when I travel. One of my favourite things about travelling is trying out the “hidden gems” in new cities.

Where do you get the ideas for the topics you cover in your blog?
I don’t really take ideas from anywhere except my own experiences.

What is your favourite post that you’ve written?
Good question. I’d have to say my food travelogue of Ottawa is probably my favourite.
Another fave is the “Ham Mousse” post, but I’m afraid that most readers didn’t get the references to 1984.

What is your favourite thing to cook? To eat?
To cook: anything I haven’t cooked before! My favourite part of cooking is challenging myself and trying new things. To eat: where do I begin? I’ve got about 50 million “favourite” foods. It would be easier to tell you what I hate to eat: mushrooms!

Favourite kitchen utensil/gadget?
I’d have to say that the old-school flour sifter (looks like a big silver mug, and you squeeze the handle like a trigger to sift flour through) is my favourite gadget. Not because I use it a lot (I don’t even own one), but because it was the first kitchen tool that my mom gave me to use when I helped her out in the kitchen as a tiny cowgirl.

Name a famous person you’d love to cook dinner for.
Player-coach Craig MacTavish

If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Pizza! It’s so versatile and delicious.

Tell us about your best and worst dining experiences.
These change all the time, but I had an amazing dinner at the River Cafe in Calgary over the holidays that would probably be on the “best” end of the scale. I’ll be posting about it sometime soon. As far as “worst” experiences go, that’s hard to say. I’ve had plenty of aggressively mediocre dining experiences, but I’ve never walked out of a place. As long as I’ve got good friends or family with me, no experience can be that bad — at least we can laugh about it.

Name some of your favourite food bloggers.
I love reading Elise’s blog, Simply Recipes. It’s by far my favourite. I also love reading Heidi over at 101 Cookbooks, because she takes amazing photos and has a great writing style. Plus, I share her obsession with cookbooks. Really, all of the blogs on my blogroll can count on regular visits from me.

Any other places readers can check out your writing?
Hockey fans can find me over at my (satirical) Edmonton Oilers Fangirl site, Hot Oil.