2011 Blogging Highlights

It’s New Years Eve and in true New Years fashion I’m going to do a little reflecting on my blogging adventure to date including the trials and tribulations, and of course, the best recipes so far!

I started the blog in April of this year. I had been following other people’s blogs for about 6 months prior and needed somewhere to document my own creations and experiments. Since then, I have connected with fellow bloggers on a whole new level and I’ve been even more creative than before!

Here are my 10 favourite recipes of 2011:

Top Ten Recipes of 2011

1.       Home-made Pizza Dough: This must be one of the most used recipes of the year! Super easy and versatile, Saturday nights wouldn’t be the same without a home-made pizza!

2.       SaagAloo: A real authentic treat! Want to bring the take-away to your own kitchen, then this is the recipe for you!

      

3.       Goosberryand Elderflower Cupcakes: These were one of my proudest creations! They also won an award over at We Grow Our Own in the Summer!

4.       LentilLasagne: This was the biggest crowd pleaser of all! 

5.       ButternutSquash, Sage and Pine-nut Raviolli: After successfully attempting fresh home-made pasta, this was an obvious choice. This later inspired number 6 on the list...

6.       StuffedButternut Squash with Savoury Cheese Muffins: A little bit naughty, but very very nice!

7.       AsianStyle Salmon with Red Onion and Cucumber Dip served on warm Pak Choy salad: The title says it all!

8.       LeMacaron: Perhaps my proudest achievement was successfully making macaroons for the first time!

     

9.       Mackerel and Cream Cheese Pasta: This is the most successful of
my recipes to date with over 300 views in its first day on the blog, thanks to
the people over at Hugh’s fish fight. It definitely deserves to be in my top 10!

10.   Harissa spiced Lamb Steak with curried veg and cous cous: A little more expensive (and more meaty) than most of my normal recipes this recipe is an invention of my own.

I hope you'll enjoy this recipes as much as I did this year!



The Blog Design and format

In just 9 months, my blog has also had several facelifts!

It started off inspired by a door sign my parents bought me.

Next I got creative on paint!

And then with my camera...

But I soon settled on the more simple and chic design that you see today!

I’ve also made changes to the recipes – first of all they were written in the body of text. Now you will find them in pictoral format so they can be easily copied, pasted and printed with one click!

As the year has gone on I have also had more of an opportunity to enter competitions (some of which I’ve won!) and review products sent to me.

Blog Related New Years Resolutions

You might be curious as to where I see the blog going in the next year? What are my blog related New Years resolutions?

Quite simply, I hope to be able to keep adding content frequently.

I hope to find a way of adding more comprehensive restaurant and take-away reviews, something I haven’t been able to update in a while. Perhaps update my cook book page and make that more interactive (does anyone know how to get comments or similar on blogger pages?), and make more of a conscious effort to price the majority of my recipes!

This year is going to see some big changes for me outside of food as I’ll be looking for a training contract, starting Law School in London, and hopefully my boyfriend will be finding us a home. It will be interesting to see how this affects my food-affairs!

Before I sign off I want to say a big thank you to everyone who follows this blog and has contributed in any way. I hope you had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!