A face lift good enough to eat, not a freakish one like Cher's!
As we celebrate our 2 year anniversary here at Oui, Chef we felt a little face lift was in order. No botox for our little blog, just a spiffed up banner, a new layout, a more unified design and color scheme, an upgrade to "Discus" comments, and some new search functionality including a full recipe index. We've wanted to pretty things up around here for a while, and felt hitting the 2 year mark was a good excuse to finally pull the trigger, roll up our sleeves and get to work. We hope you like what you see!
First, some words of thanks to the awesome Laura and Colleen at TypePad. Their questions guided me through the maze of design possibilities, and helped me to realize what it was I really wanted to accomplish during this "make-over" process. Colleen exhibited infinite patience as she taught me (an HTML neophyte) the few snippets of code I would need to format my posts to take advantage of the new design. You ladies rock! Thanks also to Dina Lyons the graphic designer who came up with my original logo and banner, and is responsible for the cool evolution of the banner you see above. Finally a shout out to my brother-in-law David, who's talent at making "food faces" inspired the lovely green tomato smiler above.
New look aside, things won't be changing too much around here. I am losing my oldest sous chef to college….boo, so my brigade will be whittled from 5 to 4 kids. We are all looking forward to a more relaxed summer schedule that will allow a bit more hands-on time with the gang in the kitchen. As all of you parents know, scholastic and athletic schedules over the course of the school year can make for very tight dinner-time planning. The kids are already making lists of stuff they'd like to cook over the summer, and in fact, Peyton will be guest posting soon about a fabulous meal she recently cooked for all of us, and photographed for all of you. Once she's done with her final exams I'll cut her loose on it.
What won't be changing is our commitment to sharing family friendly dishes made with "real" ingredients, some simple, some that take a little more time, but all of which are tasty. You'll still see us focus our cooking on food from local sources like our terrific neighborhood farmer's market, and our soon to be overflowing veggie garden. I can't promise that most of our recipes will be low fat (I can hear you all laughing now), unsweetened or gluten-free, because we run a very much an "all things in moderation" kind of kitchen, and we don't have that tight a culinary focus here. We believe in eating "whole" foods prepared with love, that are nutritionally well balanced, reasonably portioned, and tasty. We believe that a thoughtful approach to diet along with lots of fresh air and exercise is not only the key to good health, but to happiness as well.
To all of you who have been friends of Oui, Chef for a while, as well as those of you new to our little blog, welcome. We're so glad you're here and do hope you stick around for a while. We'd love for you to be an active part of our community, so don't be shy, jump in with both feet and leave a comment or question. Looking for a specific recipe, or have a question about a certain cooking technique? Fire away, I'll do my very best to answer all your inquiries.
This may sound funny to many of you (especially you non-bloggers) but blogging can either be a lonely endeavor or a really exciting one. The difference between the former and the latter is all up to you, the reader. For me blogging is all about sharing. Sharing great food and recipes, sharing stories of cooking with my kids, and sharing a common passion for these things with all of you. Here's the catch though, sharing without any sort of connection and feedback from you feels an awful lot like I'm talking to myself, and where's the fun in that? So DO let us know what you're cooking, how you get YOUR kids in the kitchen, and what you think about what's happening here at Oui, Chef – the good and the bad, you can keep the ugly 😉
Thanks for being an active and critical part of the fun we have here, without you all (make that y'all for my Houston based friends), Oui, Chef wouldn't exist. As we round the bend and start our 3rd year here, I can promise you lots of great food and recipes to come, so stay tuned and keep cooking.
Cheers – Steve