Reflections on 2011

Another year over and what have we done....  New Years Day is the time for reflections, for lists and memories.  It has been a busy year with lots of change.  Life is more demanding than ever and I finish the year feeling the just like this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon:

I started 2011 with a burst of employment transition, settling Sylvia into a new child care centre, planning for kitchen renovations and coping with toothache.  The revamped kitchen has made it so much easier to eat at the table and bake with Sylvia.  Perhaps it is why I baked so much bread this year.  It was the year of developing an intranet at work.  Someone ran into the back of our car.  E had a good year of ukeleles, Tiny Tim and the release of a single.  We all loved our roadtrip to Orange in NSW. By the end of the year I was riding my bike more and baking up a storm for Christmas.

Geelong Botanic Gardens

Sylvia continues to change and have many firsts.  She had a fussy year of eating but we found some child-friendly favourite meals and she loves any food on a stick.  She was diagnosed with a peanut allergy this year.  She also loves playing with water at the bathroom sink, jumping, the local swimming pool and Christmas trees.  The year finished with a farewell to Sylvia's cot.  It was replaced by a new big girl bed for Sylvia.  My toddler is now a little girl.  At home Dolly reigned supreme.  She was everywhere Sylvia went and was often fed the food that Sylvia should have been eating.  Lately she has continued to have firsts - her first pair of scissors, her first walk in the waves at the beach, her first swim without a nappy and her first feature length film on DVD (Mary Poppins).

Best of 2011

• Favourite DVD - The Killing (Danish TV series)
• Favourite kids DVD - The Herbs
• Favourite band: Beirut
  
• Favourite Aussie television series - Paper Giants: the birth of Cleo
• Favourite foreign television series - Downton Abbey
• Favourite film - The King's Speech
• Favourite book - The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths
• Favourite tourist attraction - The Australian War Memorial, Canberra
• Favourite kids outing - Chesterfield Farm
  

view from The Elephant House at the Melbourne Zoo

The Numbers:

• Celebrated 20 years of being vegetarian.  
• Uploaded 216 posts during the year.  That is a total of 970 posts on the blog to date.  I don't know where I found the time. 
• Over December I had a spike in my stats with nut roasts being joined by Christmas cupcakes as hugely popular posts.  Just before Christmas Day I had a daily peak of over 1800 pageviews my Blogger statistics, over 1600 pageviews on my StatCounter, and over 1400 pageviews on Google Analytics!!!
• Ranked #34 on the food blogs on Technorati but #363 on the Very Good Recipes site.  Hmmm... not sure what this means!
  

10 most popular posts of 2011:

1. Nutella fudge
2. Bean and buckwheat facon 
3. Marshmallow weetbix slice
4. Dinosaur farmyard cake 
5. Royal wedding chocolate fridge cake
6. Neb at Nut Roast event announcement
7. Apricot delight
8. Vegan Christmas nut roast with salad
9. Cookbook Challenge page
10. Why does food history matter?  

 

Chia olive oil bread with promite and the Rupert egg cup

Best of blogging
It was a great year for blogging - full of cake pops, apple cakes and chia seeds.  Here's just a taster of some of the recipes I shared:

• Favourite bread - Olive oil bread with chia seeds 
• Favourite soup - Tempeh and corn soup (though not a 2011 recipe)
• Great meat substitutes - Bean and buckwheat facon, coconut bacon, Ricki's cauliflower and walnut 'meat', tricken rice soup
• Favourite meals - Matthews delicious tofu, pizza, dumplings, tofu nuggets
• Veganised recipes - Christmas nut roast, chocolate caramel slice, sausage rolls, condensed milk, goats cheese
• Favourite cakes - Christmas fruitcake with chocolate and Orange, lavender and almond syrup cake
• Nostalgic recipes- Apricot delight, chow mien, marshmallow weetbix slice, chocolate crackles, party pies, mum's chocolate cake, cherry ripe cake pops,
• Most decadent treat - Nutella fudge (or vegan version)
• Favourite gluten-free bake - GF Brownies and Chickpea crackers
• Novelty cakes - Guitar cake, Monkey cake, Dinosaur farmyard cake, Flower cake, and Cookie wands
• Favourite meal eaten out - The Post Office Hotel in Coburg for our wedding anniversary (next time I wont forget the camera memory card!)

Vegan nutella fudge and Caramel fudge

Blogging achievements:

• Completed the Cookbook Challenge - 26 posts on cooking from my cookbooks, using a different theme every fortnight.
• My blog went vegan for a month and I posted every day in October for Vegan Mofo.
• Hosted two blog events this year - a second round of my Neb at Nut Roast event and I was a guest host for Helen's Breakfast Club event.
• Selected by the State Library of Victoria to be archived on the Pandora: the Australian web archive.  I was really pleased to be asked.  It is a great honour to be part of the nation's digital history, and reassuring to know that there is someone backing up my blog every now and again.
• Overview posts on being vegetarian and food history.

Blogging changes:

I wrote a post listing some blog changes back in May so I wont go over them all again but I will note a few other changes and plans since then:

• Updated design.  I started playing with new design templates to update the look of the blog.  I am much happier with it now but still need to get my banner centred.  I did a post on the evolution of my blog design for those who are interested.

• Photography - there have been lots of changes to the way I take photos.  The kitchen renovations has changed the space in which I can take photos.  A new camera  in December has made further changes.  It is a Canon EOS 550D (known as a Rebel in America) and has an SLR function that I hope to get to know.

• Searching my recipes is a constant challenge.  I have been using Delicious to organise my bookmarks for some time but I got a nasty shock later in the year when they changed hands and I couldn't access my bookmarks.  Thankfully I finally got back in and the developments to the site have been useful.  They have just introduced thumbnail pictures of the recipes.  Phew I don't need to open a Pinterest account and have yet another login.  But I do love to browse there occasionally.

• Follow by email field on the side bar.  I added this field after someone asked about subscribing.  I am not sure if anyone really uses it as I don't know how to check but I was happy to put it there for A. 

• I have also been tinkering with key pages to keep them updated.  Lots more work needed but I have a few lists in development.  I hope to get up a comments policy and a compilation of child-friendly links.  I also must look into Bloggers Print-a-blog feature that I noticed this week.
  

Happy New Year

Next year promises more dollies and less blogging.  Sylvia seems ready to give up her afternoon nap.  So it seems I may no longer have the time that I have often managed to fit in a blog post.  I would like to see more bike rides, beach trips and bread baking in my life.  I'd like to find time to delve into the pile of books beside my bed but that might be too hopeful.

Meanwhile I would like to thank everyone who has visited, comments, shared recipes, helped me cook, tasted my food and supported me in so many ways.  It is at this time that I am aware of the lovely food blogging community where I have been able to find great friendship and inspiration.  You keep me smiling and eating such delicious food.

A special thanks to my mum who continues to share food and cooking tips with me, and to Sylvia my little assistant baker who loves to sample the flour.  As always I send a huge thanks E for keeping the music on the stereo, the dishes done and keeping me company.

May you have a happy and healthy 2012.  I look forward to sharing it with you.