The Running Chef

It’s been a strange year for me, and it has ended differently than I thought it would this time last year. As we welcome 2024, it’s time to look back and say goodbye to 2023. Since I started my blog at the end of March, it makes sense to ignore January and February and begin when I hit the post button on my first recipe.

13^th March 2023

This was my first post, a beef stroganoff, ironically one of the first recipes I’d ever cooked. When I planned my first post, it seemed fitting to post something that held fond memories of when I first learned to cook. This wasn’t intended as my first post but rather a dish I’d planned for the first day of my week of cooking.

I’d been preparing recipes for nearly 6 months, waiting for the right moment to post them online. Beef stroganoff just happened to be the first post by chance. This has allowed me to create a narrative around one of the first dishes I ever cooked and the first I ever posted.

Photography Backgrounds

One of the earliest struggles I faced, and one that stopped me from hitting posts on my website earlier, was the background for my photos. In the end, I gave up waiting on trying to find the perfect backdrop and settled on a clean, black tea towel in the meantime.

Eventually, I would find a new background for my images. This backdrop was born from leftover flooring my dad had when decorating the living room. We glued some wooden pieces together and varnished the finished “tabletop” to make it look like a homely wooden table. It was a simple solution to a very frustrating problem.

The first post to feature a new backdrop, which has persisted until now, was this spanakopita recipe on 7^th May. As we say goodbye to 2023, it’s important to note the small changes that have improved my blog, even if they did come around by chance.

Goodbye to 2023: Hello to SEO

16^th May and Lamb tikka kebabs mark the milestone of introducing Yoast SEO’s free service into my articles. I have a spreadsheet that tracks my posts and their SEO ranking. This insight shows me that my writing in terms of SEO has improved significantly.

As we say goodbye to 2023, I hope to increase my SEO throughout 2024 further, a goal I’ve been quietly thinking about for the last six months. I still haven’t updated all my old blog posts to include simple things like an SEO keyword. I should look to address this as soon as possible in 2024

Around the same time as Yoast, I also began using WPRM, a free plugin with paid upgrades available to provide recipe cards for my blogs. Like my goal for SEO in 2024, I plan to explore one of these paid upgrades to my blog to improve the recipes and services available.

A Holiday of a Lifetime

Just as I got into the swing of things and found my routine and rhythm in posting and blog organisation, I had to take a break for a long-planned family holiday. Before the holiday began, I found myself stressing to ensure I met targets regarding my posting schedule. In short, I failed to keep up, resulting in a change to my posting schedule from every other day to every three days to maintain a continuous posting presence throughout my absence.

The holiday, however, a cruise around the Mediterranean with my then girlfriend’s family remains the holiday of a lifetime. It also helped inspire recipes such as this Nduja Pasta, using Nduja I brought back from Italy. Blog aside, the holiday was great and allowed me to refresh. However, I struggled to adapt to my old routines once I returned home. From here, I maintained a schedule and made minor improvements but never returned to the same patterns.

Salt to Taste

While on the holiday above, I started re-reading a book by Penn Vogler called “Scoff.” The book examined the history of food concerning class in Britain. It was an exciting read packed with numerous little stories and history lessons. While reading it, it gave me an idea that allowed me to move away from recipes every other day and allowed me to try different content. The book inspired me to tell stories that interested me about food. However, reality turned them into something completely different.

These articles started as articles that examined British food, and even early attempts at defining what my website name, salt to taste, represents resulted in essay-like articles. However, they’ve evolved to include how-to guides, ingredient spotlights, and lists. I hope to eventually get around to building a homepage that shows the variety of posts I have written that aren’t just recipes.

A Bump in the Road

I don’t want to spend too much time on this part, as it represents a darker moment in my blogging journey. However, as soon as I began to pick up where I left off before the holiday, my girlfriend broke up with me. The blog became a greater source of focus with my time and something to hold on to as I struggled to adapt to a new reality. However, it was still a difficult moment in my life that stole a lot of my focus.

The blog, however, continued as usual. And now, as the new year approaches, I can see targets and goals I’d like to achieve with my website. It was a dark moment that allowed me to sit back and reflect on where I was heading with 2024 looking a lot brighter than that was said goodbye to in 2023.

My 100^th Post

You won’t see success until your 100^th post. I can’t remember where I read it, but the article suggested that blogs don’t tend to gain traction until the 100^th post. Well, in October, I reached that milestone. I can’t say I’ve noticed much traction or rapid growth, surpassing the 100^th post. However, I have seen a slow, gradual increase in Google clicks from searches. This may also be connected to my increased SEO, but there’s definite forward momentum.

This post also helped me see the potential of diary-like posts where I inform my followers of my blogging journey. These posts focus on how I feel or express an opinion about my blogging journey. At first, I wondered if I was wasting my time or the readers’ time. However, one of my most liked posts this year was a diary entry about my challenges in writing a recipe write-up.

Merry Christmas

Throughout 2023, I’ve missed many key moments in which to boost potential search results. I’d always planned to create posts based on upcoming food days and events. However, planning seemed impossible as events took hold, as discussed above.

Yet, I knew I would need more seasonal recipes as Christmas approached. And so, I began creating recipes that I would use to make Christmas dinner. This meant I had to eat numerous Christmas dinners at home and work in the lead-up to the main one on Christmas day. Well, I say, unfortunately.

Goodbye 2023

Planning for Christmas has allowed me time to look ahead as it has built a bit of a gap between due dates and my next scheduled posts. The next biggest events in January are Veganuary, which has vegan recipes, and Burns Night, a Scottish celebration involving a full 2 weeks of articles leading up to Burns Night itself.

I’ve probably made it sound stressful with all those big dinners and recipes I’ve had to produce, but it wasn’t so bad. I enjoyed it for the most part. My personal year was full of ups and downs but ended with a very merry Christmas. And on top of that, I’ve found a new motivation for 2024.

So this New Year’s Eve, I’ll raise a glass of something and bid a fond farewell to an old friend when I say goodbye to 2023. And I’ll join my mum’s annual tradition of opening the door at midnight to let out the old year and warmly greet 2024 with my arms open wide.