Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all enjoyed the holiday festivities safely and with plenty of friends, family, and good food. I had a great time ringing in 2011 with Ms. Munchie and friends at one of my favorite spots in Sacramento: the Shady Lady Saloon! One of these days I’ll have to do a proper review of this awesome speakeasy in the heart of Midtown, but for now, I’ll just tell you that they always do New Year’s Eve right and make the best Sidecar in Sacramento. Anyway, it was a fun-filled night and the rest of the weekend was quiet & relaxing (except for finally getting hit by a stupid cold… first one of the winter seasons, though! Not bad!).
Now, I don’t know if it’s the security of having a decent job or if there’s just something different about 2011, but even with a cold, I feel lighter & happier than I did a mere month ago. I’ve been wanting to tweak a few things on ye olde blog for a few weeks now, and I thought this would be the perfect time to do that while I brighten up the place a bit. Don’t worry, most things are still the same! Things are just a little lighter & brighter with a couple of new tools to help you make the most out of your PGEW experience. Here’s what’s new and what’s in store for this first month of 2011…
- As I mentioned before, I’ve brightened things up slightly without straying too far from the last design. The signature deep blue is still there in the logo, but the rest of the blog is not as dark as before, helping to make the pictures pop out a bit. I fixed some of the issues with the text of the actual blog posts so that weird spacing issue should be gone now.
- After a few headaches trying to figure out the logistics of the newsletter, I’m finally able to get it going! (Thanks, Amir at StreamSend!) Just type in your email in the box located in the left sidebar and you’re good to go (and don’t worry… you will not be spammed, nor will your email be sold to anyone). You’ll get your first PGEW newsletter this week. 🙂
- Continuing with the apparently-I’m-not-as-tech-savvy-as-I-thought theme, I have also been having some issues getting the PGEW – To Go! Vol. 2 ebook ready for distribution. I think I’m getting down to the bottom of this mystery and should be up & running fairly shortly. I won’t make any promises as to the exact date, but it will be at the beginning of January for sure. To those who have emailed me about this, thanks so much for your patience!
- On to something I do know how to do well: cook & eat! I have a fabulous red quinoa recipe in the works, so look for that one this week. And with the help of gift cards from Santa & other generous souls, I’ll be able to shop for some new bare-bones staples & a few “fun” items here & there!
- Speaking of bare-bones staples like whole grains & legumes, my good friend Andrew of Eating Rules has a new challenge for us this January! You might remember him from his popular challenge, October: Unprocessed, but the premise of his blog is actually to follow just three simple rules. To find out what those rules are and to take the January Rules challenge, head on over to Eating Rules. And as an official “ruler”, I’ll also be writing about my personal experience on the challenge in certain recipe posts (and on Facebook & Twitter) throughout the month, so you can follow my journey right here on PGEW.
- Lastly, I am obsessed with doing photo makeovers of some older PGEW recipes! When I was playing around w/the changes I was both horrified and amused at how the very first recipe photos looked. Now that I’m better at taking pictures, I want to give some of those tasty old school recipes the food porn shots they deserve. I’ll be doing these photo makeovers throughout the year and you can look for a couple of those starting this month.
That’s all for now, folks! Have a fantastic January!
