Welcoming the New Year with a New Look!
Sunday, December 30th, 2007Filed Under Random Musings | 27 Comments
It is 2008 already, well not yet, but it will be before most of you read this. It will be January 1st at least in the Central Pacific Ocean island of Kiritimati (Christmas Island) , the first city to usher in the New Year…. I can’t believe how fast this year went. An year older and hopefully a tiny bit wiser… The only New Year resolution from last year that I stuck to was the No More Poker resolution. Those who know me personally will know what a major accomplishment that is for me! The big thanks goes to this blog, for keeping me occupied. I haven’t really thought of any new resolutions for the next year, other than the regular ones like eat healthy, hit the gym, save money etc.
As far this blog is concerned, I just finished an year of blogging. I already did the reminiscence post, this post is about looking ahead. There is a fresh look for Live To Eat, I was so bored with the old theme, the change was way overdue. I finally got the time to sit and code and customize to achieve what I hope is a unique look. I am so happy I switched to Wordpress, it is truly a powerful platform, you can customize the heck out of it.
The design change is as much about usability, as it is about the new fresh look. So, I want to highlight some changes that you might find helpful.
Homepage:- The home page is now a magazine layout, where only the latest article is featured. You can also see the last four recipes with thumbnails and the last three restaurant reviews on the home page. The regular navigation elements like the Recent Posts, Categories, Monthly Archives etc are available too.
If you want the old fashioned layout where the past 10 posts are visible in one page, select a monthly archive view from the Archives section on the sidebar .
Recipe Index - I have been working on a completely automated, user friendly categorized index for the posts here. And finally I have something I am really proud of. You can browse the recipes by cuisine, by type or by ingredient, along with the thumbnails of all the dishes. From a technical standpoint, making an automated thumbnail index is my proudest accomplishment. Any feedbacks or suggestions welcome.
Restaurant Index - Same as the recipe index, restaurant index is automated too, albeit the thumbnails. You can browse restaurants by neighborhood or by cuisine.
Other than this, you can select a category from the navigation bar on the right, to view all the posts from that category.
If none of these helps in finding what you are looking for, just type in a search term in the search box on the top right, that will show you all the posts with that search term.
Any feedback on the usability and design are welcome. I am sure there are small kinks I have to sort out, but hope you enjoy the new look.
Wishing everyone a fun-filled year ahead!
Sorry about another non-food related post. I will make up for it soon.
Wow, its been an amazing year! I started this blog about year ago. I don’t know the exact date; even though the first post is dated Jan 1st, I am sure I cheated a bit and fibbed the date. If I remember correctly, I woke up way too hung over on Jan 1st to even go near a computer. But now on I am going to pretend like Jan 1st is my real blog birthday.
When I started a blog last year, I had no idea where I was going with it. I wouldn’t call my life boring, it is far from it, but I couldn’t base a public blog on my everyday life. There are too many girls who write about the drama of their single life, but I believe there is much more drama in a marriage, but I definitely didn’t want to write about that. And work, well there is more than enough drama for a TV serial at my workplace, but the lawsuits sure would’ve been ugly. Anyway, somehow along the way, it occurred to me that I could write about food, the safest subject in the world, a universal topic everyone can relate to.
That is the short version of how this blog became a food blog, it went through a bunch of transformations, starting from the name to the platform used. It started as a personal blog on MSN Spaces, then I moved to blogger, and finally settled on Wordpress.
I am very happy with where this blog is right now. There are about hundred recipes and forty restaurant reviews. That means I published a recipe once in three days this year. I was not even cooking once in three days in 2006! I have tried so many new things this year, I even baked my first bread! I could go on and on, but let me just pick some highlights from 2007. These are my personal favorites.
A 30 Minutes Dish - Chicken Curry with Potatoes
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007Filed Under Chicken, India - Kerala, Mains, Potato | 30 Comments
Wow, have I gotten lazy or what? I don’t know if it is the cold, or it is just the holiday spirit around, I have been a bad bad blogger lately. I rarely visit other foodies, I don’t reply to the comments on my blog, and even though I have a few recipes and restaurants in my drafts to write about, I just don’t feel like getting around to it. And as far as blog events are concerned, I have been ignoring those for a while now. But I think it is not just me, things have been a little quite around a blogosphere lately. Hopefully things will get back to normal next month.
These days, we are eating out most days, catching up with friends. When we do cook, it is normally something very simple. Last week I got home pretty tired, in no mood to go out or cook. Siv called from work to check what he can pick up for dinner. We just couldn’t think of anything that we both like, I had Chinese for lunch, and he had Malaysian. We did an Indian take out the previous night, and Thai the night before. We were both not in the mood for burgers or sandwiches. We brainstormed for a while, and finally it was getting more tiring to think of a place to pick up food from than actually cooking. So I asked him to just come home, I will just “whip something up”. It took him about thirty minutes to get home, by the time he was home I was done with this chicken curry! Not bad, huh?
A Culinary Journey through Spain
Friday, December 14th, 2007Filed Under Restaurant Reviews, Spain, Travel | 28 Comments
Here it is, the post I have been promising to write for about two weeks now. I finally got around to sorting through all the pictures, a lot of them unusable, especially the ones that were taken after a few glasses of Sangria. But I do have quite a lot, to give you some idea about the diverse cuisine that we didn’t know much about before this trip, except for everyone’s favorite Spanish food -Tapas.
Spanish Style Sauteed Chicken with Garlic
Thursday, December 13th, 2007Filed Under Appetizers and Snacks, Chicken, Spanish | 22 Comments
It’s been a while since I posted a recipe, I am still trying to catch up with real life after getting back home. Since I couldn’t ignore the food part of my food blog completely, I desperately wanted to come out and post a food post. What better way to come out of the recipe hibernation than present you with an authentic Spanish recipe? Have you guys had enough of Spain talk already? Well, we were so smitten by Spanish food that within a couple of days after we got back, we made some Spanish food at home. What can I say, the food was that good in Spain!
This is the last part of my travel posts. Yes, I know I still have to write about the food. But wanted to get this series over with before I get into the food post. Barcelona was the last and best part of our vacation. We spent five nights in this charming, lively city- a place where I could actually imagine settling down at.
Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia province, which has its own language. They sell T-shirts here that declares- “You’re not in Spain, You’re in Catalunya!” The city is truly unique with its wildly imaginative architecture of Gaudi, but it also has the history, culture and spectacular coastlines that you would expect from Spain.
Toledo is a medieval city in central Spain, an hour South of Madrid. This used to be the capital of Spain before Madrid, and there is so much history to this beautiful city, it is definitely worth a visit. We did a day trip from Madrid, but if you want to do this right, you might want to stay overnight and see the city by the night.
Toledo’s history is an interesting mix of Christian, Moorish and Jewish heritages and is lined with renaissance churches, synagogues and mosques. The entire city looks like a set for a medieval Hollywood movie, with its historic walls and unbelievably narrow cobbled streets. The streets are so hilly and twisted, but with a great pair of walking shoes and a good map, it is so much fun to explore the city by foot.
No, I am not back home yet. We are still in Spain, but I wanted to start documenting our trip when it is all still fresh in my mind. We are not out and about sightseeing all the time, there is a lot of relaxation time built into the itinerary, and what is more relaxing than blogging, right? There is nothing but Spanish channels on TV.. also you didn’t think I could ignore my blog for long, did you?
We have been having the greatest time in Spain. I don’t think I can do any justice to the beauty and culture of this country in my humble words, also, there are so many travel sights dedicated to describing the sights of Spain . We are very relaxed travelers, our agenda is not to jam as many sights as we can into the few days we have. We do it more Spanish style - siesta and all. So, this is not meant to be a suggested itinerary in anyway, just a report of our trip. Also, the culinary part of our trip totally deserves its own post, so hang on, that will be coming soon. This post is all about Madrid, our first stop, the capital and the cultural epicenter of Spain.
-
About Me!
-
Sponsors
Subscribe in a reader
Add to Google Reader
Subscribe with Live