Monday, September 1, 2008

One Year of Hearting Kale

Happy anniversary to the blog! Digital camera in hand, we set out exactly one year ago to archive our recipes and amuse ourselves, and have ended up with comments from across the country and readers from all over the world, according to Google Analytics! Most importantly, having the blog has pushed us to be more creative--knowing that someone will actually read our recipes, we've taken risks and gone through multiple iterations of dishes to get the seasoning and proportions just right, resulting in some pretty awesome stuff we might not have come up with sans blog. To celebrate, here are our top five blog success stories, recipes we perfected for the blog and have continued to enjoy after posting.


#1: Tortilla Soup. The first recipe we ever posted is also the one with the most hits, so it seems like everyone else loves this one as much as we do!

#2: Dark Chocolate Mousse Pie with a Coconut Crust. Ordinarily, we're a little shy sharing dessert recipes--if you eat normal cookies, whole wheat agave-sweetened hermits taste like cardboard. But having the blog made us realize that there are other folks out there who want to make delicious sweet treats without refined flour or sugar, and we happily monkeyed around in the kitchen to get the perfect consistency for this filling. Now, we have a go-to dessert whenever there's a potluck, and this is it.

#3: Brussel Sprout and Green Bean Bhaji. When we plan out menus, now we try to think not just about making food that is delicious and healthy, but also about making food that is bloggable. This has resulted in a lot of season-specific variations of old standbys--for example, adding brussels sprouts to a much-loved bhaji right after Thanksgiving!

#4: Raw Kale Salad with Tamari-Roasted Almonds. One of the main innovation drivers in our kitchen has been trying to create new kale recipes for the kale-hearting masses (and those striving to join their ranks). With that goal in mind, we went on a kale binge week, and this is the standout recipe from that experiment, with the most reported reader attempts of any recipe on the blog!

#5: Whole Grain Strata with Oregano and Myzithra. Situation: a loaf of rapidly-aging sprouted bread. Usual remedy: breadcrumbs. Blog-era remedy: whole-grain strata!

Thanks so much to all of you for reading, commenting and being a part of our kitchen. Here's to another year of cooking for you guys!

7 comments:

Daniel said...

Congrats to you both, Hannah and Phoebe! I've really enjoyed your writing and your recipes. Your work here is always creative and original. Keep it up!

Dan
Casual Kitchen

I Heart Kale said...

Thanks for reading, Dan!

kasha said...

hannah and phoebe - congratulations on a year of delicious kaleness! your blog totally opened my mind to blogs and inspired me to start my own cooking/crafting blog, thanks for the inspiration and the fantastic recipes.

Meg Wolff said...

Happy blog anniversary! I came over from the Slow Cook blog because I love kale and had to see who else does. You recipes look delicious.

I Heart Kale said...

Thanks, Meg and Kasha--it's wonderful to have kindred kale spirits in the blogosphere!

Anonymous said...

Congratulation Hannah (and Phoebe) on your one year blog anniversary! I adore kale and brussels sprouts so your recipes are a must try only I'll tweak them into raw creations.

Best success in your second year blogging!

Anonymous said...

You guys are awesome!!!