Helllooo everyone!

I have a blog-related announcement today…the look of my Recipes page has changed! Click the link or the Recipes tab in the header bar to check it out!

The Recipes page used to be just a searchable database of past posts tagged as a recipe. Each one was listed as a paragraph excerpt from the beginning of the post with no pictures to help you find what you were looking for.

Well…my awesome programmer husband has jazzed it up and now it looks like this!….

Now, all recipes show up as a Poloroid-like icon, much prettier and easier to sift through than the clunky search feature was.

Currently, about half of the total recipes from the site are available, but as I have time to update the rest to the new format more will pop up.

Speaking of the new format….

Some of you may have already noticed that my posts containing recipes appear a little differently now. To show you an example of the new look, here’s a short recipe for spicy cucumber quick pickles that I made yesterday.

Spicy cucumber quick pickles

These spicy cucumber pickles are quick to make and are a cooling compliment to spicy dishes.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Yield: About a cup of pickles

Ingredients

• 2 small cucumbers
• 1 sliced scallion
• 1 tbsp. mirin
• 1 tbsp. rice vinegar
• up to a 1/4 tsp. chili garlic sauce
• sesame seeds for garnish
• salt to remove excess moisture

Cooking Directions

1. Slice cucumbers very thinly and sprinkle with salt.
2. Massage salt into cucumbers and allow to sit for 10 minutes.
3. Rinse and squeeze out cucumbers and return to bowl.
4. Add mirin, rice vinegar, chili garlic sauce, scallions, and sesame seeds.
5. Mix everything well and store in the refrigerator.

Now, recipes appear in a box with all the information you need to recreate them at home. Even if all the steps for the recipe were explained elsewhere in the post, you’ll still find the whole recipe written out like this towards the end of the post. That’s because soon I intend on adding a print feature to make using recipes even easier!

Neat, huh?

I hope these changes really do make finding and using recipes easier. I know even I was having trouble finding anything with the old layout.

What kinds of recipes do you get most excited about? Desserts, smoothies, appetizers, ethnic foods, dinners?

May 24, 2011 Alayna Discussion, Recipes 3 comments

Thanks so much for everyone that had nice things to say about my new haircut. I didn’t mean to be negative, but sometimes it just feels so good to whine! I’m sure you know what i’m talking about. I’m glad that I let my emotions about it out so that now I can really move on. (BTW, I’ve had the chance to style it myself a few times now and while I still don’t love it, I can deal with it until it grows out.)

Yesterday I had a very green lunch. Another salad, this time with creamy avocado, and a side of yet more avocado smashed on sprouted toast with seaweed flake. It occurred to me recently that maybe not everyone is sprinkling seaweed flake on everything like I do, so I think soon I’ll need to do a post on this stuff to extol its virtues, cuz it really is a wonderful and delicious thang.

Last night’s dinner was incredible.

I made a spicy pineapple pork dish over jasmine rice. This was kind of half-way between sweet and sour pork and some sort of Hawaiian dish. Jeff and I both swoon for hot pineapple, so this was much enjoyed by both parties.

I made it by first adding some sesame oil and red pepper flakes to a wok (pan is fine) and then sauteing the red peppers in the spicy oil. When those were half-way cooked, I added the pork pieces and let them brown on both sides. Then, in went the pineapple cubes and chopped scallions. To make it a little bit saucy, I crushed some of the hot pineapple pieces with the back of a spoon, then added a swish or two of fish sauce and rice vinegar. The whole thing got a small sprinkle of salt and black pepper and was done!

It takes more time for the rice cooker to finish making fluffy rice than it does to make that dish. Super easy.

This morning, I thought that I would be really clever and make green tea and blueberry pancakes for breakfast…

I wanted so badly to draw a smiley face on this one, but I restrained…

As usual though, any time that I think I’m being really clever with a recipe it kind of fails. While these were totally delicious and filling, I couldn’t really taste the green tea at all. I’ll try ’em again sometime and up the matcha addition quite a bit.

This afternoon was gorgeous out. 85 degrees but breezy, can’t argue with that! We took the open morning to start house-hunting in the area. We are not on track to buy for at least another year, but we’d like for our next rental to either be a single-family home all to ourselves or a nice condo really close to or in downtown Decatur, so that we can enjoy this town to it’s fullest.

After an hour or so of driving around and writing down numbers to call for rentals, we parked the car at home and walked into town for a relaxing afternoon beer break.

(Love that thermos!) We parked ourselves at the bar in Leon’s and spent some time drinking good beer and talking about the next few things we need to do to make RipeTrack better. SO much work left to do, but all worth it.

This weekend has felt long, and for that I can’t complain.

This next week is going to be tremendously busy. My brother-in-law’s wedding is Saturday so I’ll be baking and decorating the wedding cake for he and his fiance from Tuesday on. Yeah, it takes several days to put a wedding cake together, yeesh. I cannot wait to show you guys my mad cake-baking skillz!

What do you have mad skillz at?

April 10, 2011 Alayna Discussion 11 comments

First of all, THANK YOU, to everyone that checked out RipeTrack and left such wonderful feedback!

This project has been on my mind for a long time now and it feels so good to finally get to share it with everyone. Based on comments, it seems like we’re going in the right direction with how to take this site to the next level.

And it’s just in time too. Spring has sprung and so many fruits and vegetables are coming into season right now. Lettuces, avocados, and even pineapple are all on my radar for the end of this month.

And right now, all I can think about are salads! Normally, I’m not a big salad person, but for some reason nothing else will do right now.

I had this amazing Thai salad with marinated tofu at Raging Burrito over the weekend…

And yeah, maybe a margarita or two was involved. 😉

Yesterday I made a salad of mixed lettuces, broccoli, dulse, pistachios, Annie’s roasted red pepper dressing, and sesame seeds. Served it up with some Pacific creamy tomato soup.

And today I wanted that same salad, but I jazzed it up with some dried cranberries and had a sliced asian pear with cinnamon on the side.

I’ll probably want another tomorrow, I gobbled all those up like they were brownies.

So now that fresh spring produce is bountiful, I’ll be sure to fill my plate with it and keep using RipeTrack to anticipate all the new and delicious fruits and vegetables as they come into season.

Know how else you can tell spring is here?

Gross! I think we lost half a cat on that one!

April 6, 2011 Alayna Discussion 7 comments