Episode 483: Embrace Slow Growth and Define Your Purpose As A Pathway To Success with Nosheen Babar

EBT483 – Nosheen Babar

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers, hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom, whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you know that you are heard and supported. 

I know plenty of food bloggers who struggle with finding their why. Why they create the content that they create, who they’re creating it for, and kinda what their purpose is in this whole blogging world. Nosheen Babar joins me. She’s from Untold Recipes by Nosheen. She’s a blogger. She joins me in this interview to talk about how she came to the realization that she needed to understand what her purpose was. Why was she creating this content? Why did she start this blogging business? And once she defined what all of that was, it really opened up space for her to determine what to prioritize, to set achievable goals for her business and just really stay on track with everything. It’s such a valuable and important discussion. I think especially in this world where things are distracting us, they’re discouraging us a lot. This is a really important conversation to have and I really appreciate Nosheen’s view on this. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I do. It is episode number 483 sponsored by RankIQ.

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Megan Porta 03:13

As a first generation immigrant from Pakistan, Nosheen is a self-trained home cook turned recipe developer, food photographer, and content creator. Nosheen started her blog three years ago to create a reference tool for people interested in exploring authentic Pakistani cooking. She is using her 30 plus years of cooking experience to create recipes that are accessible, foolproof, and adaptable for her audience. Her goal is to take you on a culinary journey through Pakistan and showcase its cuisine, along with its rich history and cultural influences. Nosheen, welcome to Eat Blog Talk. How are you today?

Nosheen Babar 03:50

I’m good, thank you, Megan.

Megan Porta 03:52

Good. Glad to have you here. We’re gonna talk about defining your purpose as a blogger and how you can find success with that, before we get into that conversation, we would all love to hear a fun fact.

Nosheen Babar 04:05

The fun fact is actually that my first love is and always has been making desserts, but somehow, and for some reason I got into mainstream cooking and my experience over the last 20 years has been with that. I still do a lot of desserts for fun, but since we primarily just eat day-to-day food, I ended up creating old Pakistani classic street food restaurant, you know, copycat recipes and other stuff. So my primary experience has been in that field, and I ended up blogging about that. But if you gave me an opportunity, I would prefer to be in the kitchen cooking up some fun dessert from anywhere in the world, really. But of course, Pakistan primarily.

Megan Porta 04:54

So I’m looking at your site. It looks like you have some desserts on there. Do you focus on that at all?

Nosheen Babar 04:58

I would like to eventually, but I need to create a base. And then as we talk more about that and my purpose and the why my blog exists and what I want, you’ll understand why. You know, I’ve been kind of a little bit all over the place. I’m trying to focus and hone down, and I’ll have desserts in addition to what I have, but I’m trying to create something that shows exactly what I want people to see when they go on the blog, you know? And I started focusing on that probably this year. So that will evolve in the next year or so as things change. And you know, I hone down on that.

Megan Porta 05:36

Great. Which is a perfect segue to just telling us a little bit about your blog and your journey. Do you wanna share with us about your blogging journey a little bit?

Nosheen Babar 05:46

Yeah, sure. I’ve always loved to cook, but I think I really just ended up doing a lot more than I ever thought I would because my family and I ended up living in Mississippi. We’ve been here for about 20 years. My husband’s a physician, so his job brought him us, all of us, to this beautiful small coastal town about an hour and a half away from Mississippi. We love the life here. So we’ve lived here. The only drawback was there were no restaurants, even in New Orleans, there weren’t very many Indian or Pakistani restaurants back then. So if we wanted to crave something, we had to kind of recreate it at home. And I’m not talking about day-to-day classics that we cook at home. Talking about old favorites that you would typically find in a restaurant and you do in cities like New York or Chicago or Houston. So on the one side, I wanted them, or we wanted them on the second side, we had a close knit Pakistani community. We entertained and met up a lot, and we all kind of cooked and got together and ate those favorites. And then on the third side, I had a lot of time on my hands. My husband was busy, I had young kids. I didn’t have a work visa, so I couldn’t really work or pursue my career in my past life. I was a banker, so I just took this one love that I had of cooking. And I just started recreating these old favorite recipes and just went to town. After about 20, or maybe about 16 years of doing it during Covid, I decided to start documenting this recipes. Everybody was cooking more. Pakistani friends wanted some recipes like that. And Pakistani recipes are wonderful, but mostly, you know, people don’t document them. They’re not written down with like teaspoons and cups. So people are told by their parents how to cook them. Just throw this in a pinch, a pinch there. So a few friends asked me if I could maybe write them down like that, and I did. And I kind of got the hang of that, that coupled with some people from here. Locals wanted recipes like that because they suddenly had time, had to experiment. And they were like, there are no restaurants here. We wish somebody would teach us. So one thing led to another and I started a blog soon after I started the blog. You know, I thought doing a Pakistani blog was enough as a niche. 

Nosheen Babar 08:30

And after about a year or so, I realized that’s not enough in and of itself as a niche. I took an audit of my blog, other blogs, Pakistani blogs, and just kind of looked at everything and saw what was there. Combined it with an audit of my own blog conversations with people who were landing on my blog and kind of seeing what people wanted. And came up with the realization that I needed a, a more definitive niche within Pakistani cooking, because it’s a very complex form of cooking. There are regional varieties within Pakistani food. There is street food, home cooked meals, there are restaurant style meals. There’s just, you know, meat dishes, vegetarian dishes. So I had to kind of pick and see what was my purpose for doing what I was doing, what kind of recipes was I really churning out that I enjoyed or was passionate about churning out, and which ones of these were resonating with people on my blog. And then I started seeing a pattern. And based on that, I started seeing that I need to do more of this and less of perhaps some others. And as I started putting that into place, I had an audit with Casey earlier this year, and I started hearing these things from mentors or other bloggers in my niche. I think Izzah from Tea for Turmeric had a talk with you. And I met Izzah earlier this year, and she kept mentioning strategies. Similarly Cynthia Louise is a mentor of mine. I took one of her courses and she talks a lot about strategy and, you know, just your, our purpose, our ISA, what they want. So all these people talk about it in different forms. And I’m just like listening to all this information. And then, then all these Google updates are coming in and I’m just sitting and thinking. And during the summer, I just really, really like thought about all of it, pieced it together and started writing my purpose, looking at this audit that I did and see that there is a pattern there and is beginning to make sense. I just need to align all of this. And now when I think about a post that I’m refurbishing or writing or working on or doing an SEO four, I really think is this adding value to my blog or where I want it to be in X amount of time? Then I’m going to work on it. If not, then I’m going to shelve it and get back to it later. And, you know, writing the purpose, you know, creating smart goals and, and using them to outline my objectives and future strategies. Because another thing a lot of these people keep telling you is all this information they give you, they give to everybody who does their courses or does the audit. But all of us as content creators have a unique business, have a unique ISA that only we know. So there are minor adaptations that we have to make, you know, and only we can understand and make. So that has really helped make me think and understand where I need to go. And I have seen it despite these, you know, I know a lot of us have been hit by the Google updates, including myself. So it’s almost like I move two steps forward, one step back, but I keep focusing, not thinking negatively and just like thinking more strategically. And I’m like even two steps forward, one step back is one step forward. And that’s what, you know, talking to all these people at different intervals. I was at the summit in October in New York and was perfect timing was like, just hang in there and keep working and improving the content. The format that have has been given to us by all these experts and you will get there, is just understanding and honing down on all these points that they’ve given to us.

Megan Porta 12:43

So much good stuff. I so admire your attitude and your positivity. I think that shines in this space right now because it’s really like, it’s a lot. We are dealing with a lot as a, I almost said a nation, not a nation. As a, yeah, just an entrepreneur category. I guess I wanna go back to your purpose and figuring out what your purpose is. If there’s somebody listening who wants to do this too, so your purpose can align with your niche, but how did you find your purpose slash niche and how do you recommend others get to this as well?

Nosheen Babar 13:20

So for me it was kind of clear cut. My purpose has always been the same, which is to show Pakistani cuisine in its true attributes, true light, authentic recipes that have been passed down through generations. This is a form of cooking that has been here since like the early eighth century. I want to document the recipes in the authentic form. I understand that people in today’s world need to change those recipes and cook them in a shorter, quicker, easier form. My approach is there are some recipes that do exist that are, can be cooked in that authentic form in half an hour, some that can’t. And that’s the case in any type of cuisine. I mean, look at us. I live in near New Orleans now, half for 20 years. So I can consider this home in a way. Gumbo, for example, is an authentic recipe from the South and it has to be cooked in a certain way to taste like an authentic gumbo. You ask somebody from down here to cook it in 20 minutes, they’re probably going to be laugh in your face, right? But on the other hand, there are recipes that you can cook in 20 minutes. So for me, like, you know, just take the time out of your day and cook like an authentic Punjabi recipe or a Nahari recipe and do it the right way. Don’t try to dumb it, right? Or if you do, then expect your results to be the different. You want those results in this amount of time. That’s my approach to it. And I feel that if I stick to that, I’ll attract the right kind of followers. 

Nosheen Babar 14:58

And that’s what happened when I did my audit. I was like, well, you know, I’m getting these people and they are actually latching on to all these, all these recipes, the Punjabi and the Nahari, which are showing a cooking time of eight hours, nine hours, 10 hours. Most of that cooking is inactive time. You put it on the stove and it’s just slow cooking and it goes on and on and on. But then I have a lentil recipe that’s done in 30 minutes. I have some recipes that you can cook in an instant pot, but then I have some that don’t and I don’t recommend it, because I want to stay authentic to the recipe. But you do have bloggers that do Pakistani cooking and their expertise lies in cooking the food or that recipe in the authentic part. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong. That’s their approach to it. And somebody may find that that’s more their style. So that’s what I saw, that there are plenty of people who will go with my approach or want that. There are plenty of people who go with that, you know, Pakistani cooking approach. So there’s room for all of us. You just have to find what your purpose is and align and if you are passionate about doing it a certain way, you will find the right group of people. What happened was I wasn’t aligning it, and I think it took me a while to realize that in the beginning, because I wasn’t, I was a very new blogger. I didn’t have the right sample size that I was looking at. As my blog grew and I had more followers, I started looking at the data and I had a bigger sample size. So I started seeing more accuracy. So you have to factor that into your data collection. When you look at it through the blog, are you looking at 10 people or are you looking at a hundred people? Or are you looking at a thousand people? Because if you’ve collected data and done, you know, statistical analysis, you know that if your sample size is inaccurate, your data is not going to be accurate. So you’re not gonna have accurate results. So you’re not going to base this, you know, this decision on accurate things. But at it again and again, and every time I publish a new recipe or repurpose an old recipe, there are specific types of recipes that people jump on that I do well on that makes me see that that is what they’re there for more and more. And that is what they trust me with. So it’s making me more aware of what I need to work on going forward, what I need to fix in terms of old content, you know, before I get to those older recipes. Not that I just need to shove the old ones, but those aren’t my priority right now.

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Megan Porta 18:49

So I mean, you did the research beforehand, right? Like you went and looked at what was needed in your space within your niche Yeah. And then came up with a great idea. So do you recommend people do that? Just kind of find those gaps that aren’t being filled and where there’s a need?

Nosheen Babar 19:05

Yeah, I would. I did. First I wrote a very clear cut purpose, you know, that really like every time I read it, you know, and that’s something I did through Cynthia and her program. I did the her cooking school program, but it made sense with my overall business, whether it was the cooking school or the blog, but it was like a very clear cut one sentence purpose that defines everything I do in my business. Different aspects of it, like the why, like it should make me like jump outta my seat and ignite me every time is what she kind of tried to explain. And it is, it’s very clear and I’m happy every time I read it. And those are the recipes that I’m just like, when I start writing them, it’s like I’m passionate about it, which makes it much easier to work on them. I love cooking them, I love writing about them, I love explaining them to people, the techniques behind them and you know, so it is definitely say that that’s something I’m passionate about. And I do tell people how to break it down. You can make it over two, three days. You can break up the parts and do it over two, three days and then just piece it together so that, that is a way of shortening the recipe for those that have that objection. And then I do an overall audit periodically to make sure I’m still on track with the blog and the way I’ve looked at it, I just did one the other day before I sat down with you. And the top 10 recipes are still the same. These are what I call like the moral classics. It’s like Nehari paste. And these are all very classic, very ancient recipes that involve making your own spice blend. And they’re more, they’re focused on spice plants, but they’re also very focused on technique. How you do, you know, each recipe involves like eight, 10 steps. Why it involves the steps, why it’s important to follow those steps, why you can’t dumb it down. Because if you do, this is why this change, it’ll change the flavor. And I explain all of that, you know, what type of ingredients to source and how to source it. But I’ve done it periodically and I keep doing that. So I’m focusing on that more. For example, I know ideally you should fix seasonal content, but for my type of blog I was like looking at how many people on my blog are actually looking at my Thanksgiving content versus how many people are actually cooking that content for me from my blog during these, this last quarter, and it’s actually almost 50|50 because a lot of my Pakistani niche is not cooking turkey. Some of my friends do. Some of my followers who are not Pakistani do they just trust my recipes. So they’ll follow that. A lot of my Pakistani followers are like, we don’t, we have vacation and we have friends and family visiting, but we don’t cook Turkey, so we’d like to cook this, this, this type of recipe for the holidays. So I’m working on both types of recipes. I’m not strictly working on holiday content. It looks a little different for my blog. So I have to focus on something very different than a lot of bloggers out there. So it is very different, not just for me, but for other niche down bloggers from what I know as well.

Megan Porta 22:26

Yeah, I love this. Okay, so your written purpose really defines everything that you do. And I love how you stay in touch really closely with your analytics and your statistics and what that purpose kind of defines and your stats in analytics define for you to create in the future. And I was wondering if you would be willing to share your written purpose. Do you have it on your site or will you share it with us?

Nosheen Babar 22:51

No, I don’t really specifically have it right. On my site, I have it written down in a little notebook, but in general terms, it is basically that I teach all home cooks who are interested in learning how to cook authentic Pakistani cuisine, how to cook authentic Pakistani recipes, you know, with no shortcuts. Basically the, the railway, and to clarify this, the goal is to teach them how to cook it correctly the authentic way at least once. Because if you are not getting the authentic recipe or cooking it at least once, you have no reference tools. So you don’t know how it’s supposed to taste. By all means. I tell people this, that by all means it’s perfectly okay to change a recipe up and customize it to your own taste buds. I have no problem with that. And I have done it over the years. Like I love all kinds of food. I’ll cook Korean and you know Thai and I’ll make it maybe spicier or change it up, but I, I can’t do that if I’ve never tasted it ever in my life, right? Sure. I have to go to an authentic place and taste it and know what’s supposed to taste like before I can change it up. So it’s almost like a pet peeve when someone tastes writes, oh, try this authentic recipe. And I’m like, Hmm. Well I don’t mind you saying that if you’ve tried the authentic and cooked it off of that, but if you’ve never tried it, then you can’t really say that. So somewhere in this word, I feel with all these blogs that are not always authentic Pakistani or Indian or from any other country, there have to be some out there that have the authentic recipe as a base. 

Nosheen Babar 24:36

And I’m happy as anyone else to have a hundred blogs that are cooking Pakistani food. But I feel at the same time we have to have one that are providing a base for people to go off of. If I cook something, like I have a recipe on my blog that’s Korean just because it’s a family favorite, but it came from somewhere. I, I have a base recipe that I used years ago and modified it a little bit. So I have mentioned that recipe, because not to do so would be a dishonor. I didn’t create the Korean recipe by myself. There’s no way I could have. So I had to mention that. So my purpose is to just create this reference tool. And a lot of the people that come to the blog, I actually have gotten to know over a period of time just because they write to me and they’ve gotten to know me. It’s someone who didn’t know a parent properly before they passed away and didn’t get to learn from them. The parent was Pakistani and this person grew up here and didn’t learn how to cook from them. It’s a spouse who got married to a Pakistani but never got to look cook Pakistani food and just wants to learn how to cook these authentic dishes for that spouse. You know? And it’s just for me personally, it’s just so meaningful when they write to me and say that they cook something for their spouse or someone in their family that belonged to their heritage and it came out perfect and it just was so meaningful to them. Like, that just makes my day, you know, that’s the purpose of my blog in a nutshell.

Megan Porta 26:10

And I love how your purpose just, you are so in tune with it. I mean, it’s so obvious just hearing you talk through it. I love how it helps you to stay connected, it seems like, and also to stay on track. Do you feel like knowing your purpose really well keeps you from being distracted from unnecessary tasks in your business?

Nosheen Babar 26:31

It really does. Especially these last six months, which have been frustrating because I had my audit, I started doing well and then, you know, March with that first Google update, then I started doing well again and then that second update. But when I get a comment in my inbox like this, it just makes my day and then it makes me focus on the, you know what, eventually I’ll make money if not in three years, in five years or four years. And it’s not about the money, like this one comment or it just makes the day. Like I, it just, I can’t tell you how it feels as someone who’s been born and raised in Pakistan, but that is more important to me than monetizing. I need to monetize because I have costs that I need to cover, but it just, this is what I really want to achieve. And achieving that in small ways is the important thing to me. And that just shows that I’m doing it slowly, but I’m doing it.

Megan Porta 27:32

Yeah. Right. And it is so easy to get off track in this current, you know, time that we’re in. It’s kind of an unusual, for sure turbulent time. I mean, it’s like you said earlier, it just seems like it’s never ending these days. And I don’t know that there’s an end in sight, but I love your perspective just staying in touch with that purpose and how that keeps you going and motivated and not focused on just like, you know, the quick results and like, I need to fix this. I need to fix what happened after this update and that sort of mindset. Just wondering if you have any other tips, because I know people are looking for tips right now and I really admire how you’re handling all of this.

Nosheen Babar 28:14

Well, you know, I think I’ve always been like in the analogy of the turtle and the hare, I’ve always been the turtle, like just slow and steady does it and the turtle will always win. So that’s helping me in this scenario. And I think like any other mortar and stone business, we don’t tend to treat blogging like that, but we have to more and more because it’s becoming a bigger industry. So it’s going to just take us longer. I think I’ve just barely like understood, okay, this is where I am, this is where I need to be and now I need to apply everything I learned. Like now I’m applying these concepts, the ones I’ve just talked about to my business. Just like with my style of cooking that I’m trying to teach people about, sometimes less is more and just need to work slower and slowing down is actually making me see that I’m getting better results. And you know, don’t give up. If you’ve spent three years working so hard, the results will show up maybe a little bit longer. And I understand it’s very frustrating for someone who absolutely needs this income because there’s different people who are in different places and you know, you might be really depending on this income, but you’ve achieved a lot in three years probably. And you can use all those skills. Someone who’s become good at writing blog posts can maybe go earn an income by writing for somebody or doing some photography on the site from somebody. That’s the way I perceive it while you’re still trying to monetize your blog. And I think use those skills that you’ve learned to earn that extra income, but don’t give up. And the further you are in the game, the less likely it is that this has brought you down just because you’re further ahead in the game. So in a few years something else will happen and you’ll probably see people who were two, three years into this and they’ve affected by this more. So, you know, it depends where you are in the chain of events, but you know, if you give up, you’ll give up everything you worked so far for. So don’t give up. Just keep at it. It is frustrating. But I think it’s just where still kind of just come out of Covid. A lot of blogs came into being, it’s the survival of the fittest. If you give up, then you’re just going to let everything go and you’re gonna give that little share of the market that you carve for yourself. You’re just going to walk away and give it to someone else. Don’t do that.

Megan Porta 30:47

Oh, such good words because we’ve all put so much love and energy. Yeah. Time and money, like all of the things into our blogging businesses. So to just walk away because of frustration, it just seems like no, no, no, no. Unless you’re just spent, you know, like I get that too. There are going to be those people who are just done burnt out. Yeah. They can’t do it anymore. Totally understand that. But I think for most of us it’s just frustration. And I would say just like what Nosheen was saying, try to push past it and yeah, like don’t give up what you work, you’ve worked so hard for. And I love your perspective of just keeping your eye really closely on your purpose. And then another question I had for you was, how often do you look back? because I know it’s, it can be defeating to look back and see when you’ve declined, but do you ever look back and note the gains that you’ve made?

Nosheen Babar 31:43

Yeah, I have. I sometimes when I’m redoing a blog post and I have like a pre-audit, post audit, you know, formula and I’m like, oh my God, no wonder if people weren’t coming to my blog. This was awful. Right. So there was a reason why I didn’t have the traffic I need to, and I even understand why my traffic fell. Like I said, I was at the conference in October and they had that first update and they were going through the second update while we were sitting there and we had Casey and Arson and all these people. And I sat with Casey for about 15 minutes. And I could literally understand by looking at my content why I felt, because I had my audit with Casey in February, but I hadn’t gone through as many blogs and updated them as I had hoped to for personal reasons, but, he and I sat and we looked at it like literally if I had done twice as much, I probably wouldn’t be there. So it was literally you fixed this percentage. If you had fixed this percentage, you would be in a better place. So, you know, and I understood that all of that. Yeah. From the audit and that second conversation for what you said about that burnout is very true. I mean, I’ve feeling a little like that because it’s been three years at like running, pushing. Yeah. So I’ve slowed down a little bit just to give myself a break and realized that, okay, so if I don’t do it in six months and I’ll do the, I’ll be there in a year. So let’s just not kill myself. Get there and you know, these the gains, these are the losses. I’ll just like ease up a little bit and this is my strategy. I’m going to do an analysis every few months and make sure I’m on track or just make some small shifts again. And that’s just going to be my approach. And you know, it’s working so far.

Megan Porta 33:34

I love what you just said about recognizing that you need to maybe just slow your pace down a little bit in order to keep going instead of like go, go, go, go for three years. That can be a lot to our systems and our businesses like and your family, like everything. It can be just so much. So just like taking a deep breath, slowing the pace, maybe cutting back the number of posts you put out per week or month just to keep that pace because you don’t want to get to that point where you wanna throw your blog in the ocean. Right?

Nosheen Babar 34:08

Yeah. And this is something else that in a conversation with Cynthia, I had dis she and I had discussed like she is like, you know, set your smart goals, you know, monthly, then weekly, then daily. And it’s okay if you don’t achieve them all, but set them so that at least you achieve half of them. But don’t be so hard in on yourself if you don’t. She’s very good being a Harvard MBA, I will say she’s very good at this part of it. The purpose, the goals, the alignment, the strategy. She walks you through it. She gives you, you know, this task sheet where you set it. And I think I became more mindful of the fact that I am running a business. It’s not your typical brick and mortar business, but it is a business just like any other. And you know, when we start blogging, we don’t think of it like that. And that’s where we kind of fall through the cracks. Some of us, not all of us. Some do. Some are. And I think that’s what ISA does because, you know, at the end of it, she’s an MBA. And I thought that’s kind of silly because I was, like I said, I have a undergrad degree in business and I have worked as a banker and I, I should have been applying those principles because I weren’t. But then I heard her talk about this. I heard, you know, Cynthia talk about this. I’m like, they’re all saying the same thing, that you’re lacking strategy. I’m like, well maybe then I am. And I looked at it, I was, and you’re seeing success where these people are applying that strategy. So it made sense and I started doing that. So, and that made sense too, that you don’t, and it’s okay, don’t be harm yourself. You are supposed to achieve this. You did half of it. Just move on from there. That’s good. New goals for the next quarter or month or whatever. And then, you know, you’ll still move on ahead, you know?

Megan Porta 35:57

Yeah. The part about not getting upset when you don’t meet certain goals is a huge part of our lives because there are often goals that we set that we don’t meet because there’s so much going on around us. So just having so much grace is such an important facet of this job. Yeah. If it is a business for you, it’s so easy to get discouraged. Right. And distracted and all the things. So yeah. This is such a great message. I love this conversation. I think this is so important right now to talk about. So I really appreciate you bringing this conversation to the table, just knowing your purpose, getting in touch with it, writing it down, using it as your guide, as you create everything for your people. And then everything else you said was such gold Nosheen. Thank you. Is there anything that you feel like we should touch on before we start saying goodbye?

Nosheen Babar 36:47

Just one of my favorite quotes, you asked me to share that and it applies generally to cooking. Julia Child is always a favorite and I know why every time I come across one of her quotes, it just resonates. And what I love about her is that she is not a trained chef. Neither am I. And knowing that sometimes I and other people like me, I think we all suffer from imposter syndrome. Knowing that we’re not trained, we’re just self-trained in our own home kitchens and you know, just learn through mom’s recipes and moved on from there. So one of a course is no one is born a great cook. One learns by doing. And you know, I learned in my own kitchen just experimenting. And what I love telling people is just feel free to experiment, change recipes. That’s what I’ve always done. You know, I need to change this and this recipe, this doesn’t taste good. And many of us bloggers are where we’re at because of that. None of us were born with any skillset. We just experimented, changed things up and that became us so-called recipe developers. So, you know, when people often say, I don’t like cooking, it just means they’re nervous about recipe development and changing things up. Just, just go in and, you know, have fun. That’s my best advice to anyone who wants to try cooking. Don’t be scared, have fun, and just have a good time.

Megan Porta 38:19

Oh, I love that. Such a good reminder that we’re not born to be great at anything. Right. We have to put in the work and have a little desire to, so that’s great. Thank you so much for sharing that. We’ll put together a show notes page for you, Nosheen, if you wanna go look at those. Head to eatblogtalk.com/untoldrecipesbynosheen. So why don’t you tell everyone where they can find you?

Nosheen Babar 38:42

Sure. My blog is UntoldRecipesbyNosheen.com. The pun is intended. And it’s with untold recipes because for me personally, each recipe tells a story or relates to a story in my life. You know, my childhood in Pakistan early life in Pakistan and lateral life and growing, you know, raising my kids here in the us. So I am primarily a written block. Yeah. So you can find me there. I do also have a small YouTube channel. You can find me there. If you have any questions, you can reach me via email sign up for my newsletter through my website. I’d love to have you cook some of my recipes and send me a shout out if you liked it. Thank you for joining me today during this podcast, and thank you, Megan, for having me.

Megan Porta 39:37

Oh, it was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for being an amazing guest. It was so good to talk to you too. And thanks for listening food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode. 

Outro 39:50

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Please share this episode with a friend who would benefit from tuning in. I will see you next time.