Archive for October, 2009

Pumpkins Galore!

Friday, October 30th, 2009

My husband is a recycling nut and all our veggie waste goes to the bottom of the garden where he and the kids have made compost units out of pallets and bits of old wood. Last year we did the Halloween thing and all the waste as usual went to the bottom of the garden.
This spring, when Kenny was doing the front flower bed and he put his own compost onto the top soil and a few weeks later it grew into what we thought was a jungle of weeds. My dad came by and said he thought we should get our boys to do a bit of gardening and tidy up the front flower bed.  To our surprise Tom came back and showed us vine tomatoes, potatoes and about 20 pumpkins that had grown from the waste in the compost. The result has been a bumper crop of pumpkins we’ll be using for Halloween!

We have also made so much pumpkin soup for the winter with all sorts of different variations including ginger, coriander, turmeric and someone showed us a really nice finishing touch – you can fry a thin slice of pumpkin and then bake it to decorate the soup

So, if you’re carving out a pumpkin this Halloween, don’t waste the insides. MyDish has loads of pumpkin recipes for you and remember it’s very much like butternut squash so those recipes work for pumpkin too. Enjoy your pumpkins!

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We *heart* the Green Granny

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Barbara is Britain’s Green Granny courtesy of Oxfam. We love this video from her showing how to use leftover, stale bread. Go Barbara!

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Getting More Recipe Views

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

We’re constantly tweaking the way that MyDish works and especially how recipes appear in search results. We want visitors to the site to find the recipe they want as quickly as possible. In the past few weeks, quite a few people have asked me how they can ensure that their recipes are viewed by as many people as possible.

Here are some tips:

The Recipe Title is vital

One of the most important aspects of your recipes that helps it get found is the title. So ‘cottage pie’ is fine but more detail is better: ‘easy cottage pie with beef mince’ or ‘vegetarian cottage pie with lentils’ or ‘quick cottage pie for the family’. The added info gives the search engine a bit more to play with. As long as it’s accurate and relevant, add it.

We love recipes that are called something like ‘Granny’s winter soup’ and ‘Donna’s killer dessert’ but personal titles don’t necessarily help people find you. Try adding some of the major ingredients to the title to make it ‘Granny’s winter soup with lamb, carrots and leeks’ or ‘Donna’s killer dessert: white chocolate cheesecake’. If in doubt, if it’s relevant, add more details.

Pictures

In search results, visitors to MyDish love to see a picture of what they’re looking for and recipes with snaps really do attract more attention. If you can, add a pic to your recipe to draw in more readers.

Add more details

On the second page of the Recipe Input process, you have an opportunity to tag your recipes by course type (starter, main course etc) and also by recipe type (vegetarian, family recipe etc). Adding these extra fields means we can offer up your recipes to more browsers, if they’re relevant. If you want to add more more detail to recipes you’ve already posted, don’t forget that you can edit your recipes any time.

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