The Best Recipes of 2022

What can I say about 2022? That it’s been a year? Because it has, despite the fact that it still sort of feels like 2020. (2020 version 3.0 if you will).

We did a little bit of traveling this year, visiting family in California, and taking a quick fun trip with siblings and friends to Portland, Maine that provided to be a much needed mental reset (I’d really forgotten just how much I love to travel), although the… ahem… souvenirs I brought home (and subsequent 14-day isolation) weren’t quite as pleasant. We’re still not quite ready to head overseas again… Maybe in 2023? We’ll see.

The trend of me sharing fewer, more in-depth recipes in this space continues, with fewer new posts published this year compared to last, about half as many as published in 2018, and a third as many as in 2015. Which seems shocking, although if you compared the sheer number of words written in 2018 vs 2022 my guess is I’ve probably written way more overall (I don’t know a good way to calculate such things otherwise I’d prove my theory). Quality over quantity, right?

Part of the quantity decrease is that I’m apparently no longer capable of posting a recipe with fewer than 3 rounds of testing, 42 photos or 2,000+ words of narration. To be frank, it takes a heck of a long time to publish one recipe, so doing more than one a week is no longer feasible for me as it was once. Even once a week becomes difficult at times. I did take a few more breaks (so if you noticed a few weeks passing without a new recipe, that’s just me giving myself permission to stop pushing myself and take a break. Which is a lot harder then it seems and something I’m still working on for sure.)

Luckily, there’s no shortage of recipes to tide you over, 15 years worth to be exact. That’s over 1,500 recipes that I’ve published, which is quite astonishing actually.

I’ve always said I’d leave my old content and photos as is, because I like having that visual timeline of my progress and growth as a photographer, writer, and recipe developer. But perhaps this sentiment is misplaced. Some of those old recipes are really, really good, and maybe aren’t getting the attention they deserve because of the outdated photos and sparse information. I still haven’t figured out how to reconcile my desire to preserve my old work for posterity’s sake with the need to update old content for SEO and whatnot, though it’s definitely on my to-do list.

I did update a few recipes this year, including the Tequila Watermelon Popsicles and Olive Oil Rice Krispie Treats. Maybe I’ll continue doing more of this in 2023, to bring some of those older recipes back into the spotlight.

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/9rQZm6q