Weekly Dish

When I started this venture, this food blog, I planned on using the web space to finally write down my methods for dinner preparation and to share recipes with friends and family. As with most things, I had the idea one week, at possibly one of the busiest junctures in my life, and jumped right in head first the next week, designing headers and buying a domain name. Conventional wisdom indicates that you should do your research first, learning what you need to know before you begin a project. For some reason, I never quite learned that lesson.

And so, for the last several months, I have been composing a food blog the hard way, doing almost everything manually, from typing in the links to my Archives each week, to creating a not-so-efficient comments page. And, technologically speaking, not doing a very good job of it, (as I’m sure you’ve noticed if you use Firefox; sorry for all those crazy lines!) As the holidays neared, I decided it was time for a change. So, dear reader, I am happy to report that my blog comes to you now in its new, fully automated clothing.

One of the things I teach my writing students is that one of the most important pieces of information they need to gather is who, exactly, their audience (or audiences) is. One of the things I’ve realized, as I’ve engaged in this writing process, is that my audience is very diverse. Other fellow food bloggers, intimately familiar with the cooking and technological processes I utilize, sometimes visit. On the other end of the spectrum are friends and family, intimately familiar with me, but sometimes not with blog technology or even with the food. And then there’s a third even more ambiguous and hodgepodge group: acquaintances of people who know me, readers of other food blogs, people who just happen to be looking for a recipe for sweet potato grits. Whoever you may be, I’m happy you’ve stopped by, and I hope you’ll come again.

For those of you familiar with food blogs, you don’t need a tour of the new features on my site. I know this. But for those of you who come just because you love me or because you love food, I thought I might take a minute to tell you what you’ll find here. Just in case you care.

First, on the right side of the screen is information to help you sort through the information on the site. I’m in the process of updating all of the material I wrote last year so that it will be searchable and will appear in the Categories, but in the meantime, you can find a list of recipes and links to those posts in the page “2005 Archives.” The other pages are self-explanatory, random information about me and about the way the site began. You’ll also find a list of food blogs I like to read, one I’m hoping to continue updating. If you like to read about food or search for recipes, I recommend any of these folks’ sites.

At the bottom of each post is a place for you to leave comments, to say, “Hey you forgot the baking temperature for the cake,” or “I made that grilled chicken and it was delicious,” or just hello. You can see what other people are saying too, like a little virtual discussion. In the Categories list (also on the right), you can click one (there aren’t many up yet since I only have two posts in this new software) and see all of the posts I’ve tagged as main dish or snack food or family. Or, if you’re looking for something particular, you can use the search box at the top.

Or, you can ignore all of that over there and just come occasionally to read what I write here in the middle. However you choose to peruse the site, I do hope you enjoy yourself and find something delicious to cook. Both worthy goals in my estimation.

Posted: Wednesday, January 4th, 2006 at 7:41 pm Filed under: Miscellaneous Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.