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| My great-aunt, second from right, visits family in our ancestral home town of Apice, in the province of Benevento. |
Dear readers,
Those of you who follow this blog on a regular basis may have noticed a few changes around here—all aimed at making your experience here richer and more enjoyable, and making it easier than ever for you to get to the information you're looking for. Here's the low-down:
- A new look: Nothing too drastic, but I've snazzed up the graphics a bit with a slightly different color scheme and some new and hopefully more readable fonts. The new 'deco' look reminds me of Angelina's salad days...
- Just below the blog banner at the top of the page, you'll see some links to what Blogger calls 'pages': permanent content that you can easily access anytime. Now the Master Recipe Index to all the recipes on this site, basic information on The Italian Pantry, my take on the essential features of Italian Food Culture, my recent series on Authentic Italian Cooking and a Glossary of Italian Cooking Terms are all just a click away.
- A small but really useful new widget in the upper right hand corner "Search This Blog" allows you to do a Google search of the entire contents of Memorie di Angelina, plus all the content that is hyper-linked from this site and the blogs on my blog rolls and websites on my Useful Links list. Pretty cool, don't you think?
- Finally, I've reorganized my ever-expanding blogroll. It seems I'm always discovering more fantastic food blogs that I want to share with you. It was getting a little unmanageable to list them all in a single blog roll. So now you will find two blog rolls on this site: on the left hand column, there's my Great Italian Food Blogs and on the right-hand column More Great Food Blogs, with links to my favorite non-Italian foodies. As ever, you'll see the title, a small thumbnail shot and a snippet from each of the latest blog posts from my favorite foodies, so you can tell at a glance if something entices you. Just a click will take you to them...
Now don't forget the other ways to access information on the site:
- On the right hand column, you will still find links to all the posts on Memorie di Angelina relating to Italian Food Culture and Basic Recipes and Italian Cooking Techniques—everything from making your own fresh pasta at home, to primers on making polenta and minestrone, to tutorials on trimming artichokes and roasting peppers, to tips on buying canned tomatoes.
- The Recent Posts widget on the left-hand column, like the blog roll, shows you the 10 most recent recipes featured here on Memorie di Angelina, along with a thumbnail photo and snippet.
- The label cloud will bring you to all the recipes under a particular category. Want to see all the posts here that feature recipes for dishes from the Campania region? Just click on "Campania" and you'll good to go. Want to see Angelina's signature dishes, just click on "Nana".
- And don't forget the Useful Links, which can be found in left hand column, a bit further down. There are some wonderful websites featured there with incredible online resources for the curious student of Italian cookery—and cooking in general.
And, last but not least, do check out The Italian Pantry Online, which you'll find in the right-hand column, just below the blog roll. I've associated with amazon.com to bring you an assortment of real Italian food products that I've selected myself for the Italian food enthusiast. It's a great resource, especially for those of you who may not have ready access to Italian specialty shops. If I've mentioned an ingredient in my posts that you can't find near where you live, chances are you'll find it there.
Well, I do hope that these features, new and old, will help make this site more than just your average food blog—I like to think of it as your 'one stop shopping' resource with everything you need to know to make great authentic Italian dishes at home.
And, of course, if there's some other feature you'd like to see here, don't hesitate to drop me a line at gnocchiaifunghi@gmail.com. If there's a way to do it, I'll try to get it done.
Buon appetito and happy cooking!
Frank
