Happy New Year! Since I am now authoring my first post of 2010 it must officially be the new year. I thought I'd take this post to set out some new year resolutions and continue the quest to make this blog more interesting and more useful to you, the reader. So let's the start the conversation!
To start, what do *you* think? Please use the comments below to let me know. Do you want to see other nationalities? Other types of food? Or more focus on a single area of cooking? Would you like to see more pictures? Fewer pictures? Video? Would it help if I wrote more detailed instructions for recipes? Or if I had pictures of each step? Anything and everything is on the table.
As pointed out in December, I debuted a new feature in time for the final two posts of the year. It included a 3-prong "fyi" which gave an approximate length of time to prepare the entire meal from putting on your apron to sitting down to eat. This included all prep and cooking times. I also added a difficulty rating which is independent of length of time. Finally, I included a drink/wine suggestion that pairs well with the meal. Is this helpful?
In addition to new features I'd like to focus on some overall themes. For Hanukkah my boss gave me a 'Julie and Julia' gift sit which included the DVD and also Julia Child's French cookbook, the one which has garnered renewed interest since Julie decided to cook her entire way through it in one year. Well, I'm not going to repeat that feat for many reasons! But what I *would* like to do is work through it, tackling a few recipes a month, but only focusing on the ones that fit my general diet... meaning vegetarian or seafood recipes. The catch is, however, I'll make them healthy. While Julia Child may be a fabulous cook, French cooking is hardly known for it's health. I'll work to make the recipes healthy and post them in the updated style with notes and comments as usual.
I'll also be hitting the major holidays with special meals. You'll notice that one post was a complete Thanksgiving meal. I'll be tackling other holidays as they come along - watch for Purim and Passover in the next few months. These posts will be a full guide to throwing your own party for the holidays complete with all of the traditional items and a few more interesting ones thrown in for fun. As usual, they'll all be made healthy and will include step-by-step notes.
Finally, I'd like to tackle more international food. Each month will have a focus on a specific nationality. This does not mean that all of the food items in each month will be of that ethnicity, but it will feature at least a handful of dishes that crop up throughout the posts. This will allow me enough cooking to begin to understand the tastes and flavors, and to improve my cooking skills, for a given country. January is now officially the month of Moroccan food. I'll tag the relevant posts with the nationality so you can search based upon country or region.
And, of course, I can promise that the occasional political post will be thrown in as an issue crops up that I cannot resist advertising and writing about.
For now, I suppose that is it from my end, but I encourage you to continue to submit your thoughts. I welcome your feedback and get a smile on my face every time I get an email saying a comment has been posted.
No comments:
Post a Comment