Things Look a Bit Different Around Here! (A Few Tips to Navigate the Changes)
Hey friends!
It’s been a long time in coming (and months in the planning!) but my little home away from home website got a much needed facelift. Both inside and out!
While you may see a slightly different color scheme and some new design elements, a lot of the improvements were updates made to the bones and structure of my website so it’s optimized, fast, and purring along nicely.
I wanted to specifically point out a few new features and design changes in case you had questions or haven’t noticed them yet.
I know change can be hard, but please know I made these changes very intentionally and thoughtfully. And I promise they really are an improvement to make your life (and mine!) better.
Homepage
You’ll notice on the homepage there are some new features, including a section of reader favorites (which could also be called the most popular recipes) and another section of MY favorites. Because, guess what, I have very strong opinions about which recipes fall into ones I can eat for the rest of forever. 🙂
The recipes in these sections will change every week or so to keep the ideas fresh!
And for you weekly menu fans, it’s still there at the bottom! The only change is combining Saturday and Sunday into one “weekend” day.
Recipe Format
One of the most notable changes is that the recipe card is looking a bit different! This improvement is being rolled out one-by-one to ensure the utmost quality control in switching over all the recipes to the new format.
I have over 2,000 recipes living here, so it’s going to take a hot minute to get it done, but you’ll start seeing a new format to the recipes as they get updated.
Old style:
New style:
Again, not all the recipes are in the new format yet, but they’ll be there soon(ish). All of the same features are still here PLUS a few new ones!
(If you are looking for the Save to Prepear button on the new format, it’s getting added today!)
Nutrition Facts
After hundreds of you asked (begged, pleaded, threatened) for it, I finally caved and added nutrition facts to the new recipe format.
I never planned to include nutrition facts, because even the best nutrition calculator can be off a little, AND, I’m a big believer and proponent of intuitive eating vs calorie counting, so I don’t look at nutrition facts myself.
However, I know a lot of you rely on them for counting carbohydrates (shout out to all my Type 1 Diabetes families out there!) and many of you DO track nutrition facts for your meals, and I know it’s important to you!
So consider this my gift to you. 🙂
I’m not going to lie, it pains me to add nutrition facts to recipes like donuts, but I’ll just take a lot of deep breaths and hope no one writes me hate mail because they found out via my blog that donuts actually aren’t health food and they feel like their whole life is a lie.
*If you don’t see nutrition facts on a recipe yet, it’s because that recipe still needs to be converted to the new format. Working as hard as I can to get this done!
Print Photo
I get that, like, only 3 1/2 of us are still printing recipes in this day and age (I’m a die hard recipe printer-outer), but for our awesome print community, you can now select whether to print the recipe photo or not.
This has been a long requested feature, and I’m excited to roll it out!
Weight Measures
I’ve included weight measures in ounces on all my baking recipes for several years, but many of the old recipes don’t have weight measures.
Using weight measures and a kitchen scale is an awesome way to level up your baking game in the kitchen! Plus, it helps recipes be even more foolproof since many of us measure flour, sugar, etc differently when using a measuring cup.
As I convert all my recipes to a new format, I will be adding weight measures to ALL my baking recipes – even the super old ones languishing in the cobwebby dungeons of the archives.
In the past, I’ve used OUNCES for all weight measures on my recipes. I did this mostly because I was highly influenced by America’s Test Kitchen when I first started blogging, and they use ounces instead of grams. However, I have gotten many, many, many confused questions over the years when readers see things like: 1 cup of flour = 5 ounces.
Many people associate 1 cup = 8 ounces, which is true if we’re talking fluid ounces. But 1 cup can equal a lot of different weight measurements depending on the ingredient.
To help clear up any confusion, I’m converting all my weight measures to grams, which is a more widely accepted and accurate method for weighing ingredients. And of course, I’ll still continue to use cup measures as well.
I know this may cause some of you consternation. Those of you, like me, who have gotten so used to setting your kitchen scale to ounces. But I promise, in the long run, this is the better way. Thanks for your patience as I roll this out!
Reviews
I’ve said this before, but it bears saying again: it means SO much to me when you take the time to leave an honest, unsolicited review on any recipe on the website.
These reviews help me as I continue this endeavor of food blogging (and as I create and test many more recipes), but it also helps give reputability to my recipes, as well as helps my content show up in google searches.
So THANK YOU to all of you who leave ratings and reviews. I appreciate each and every one of them! (Yes, even the ones who constructively and nicely say why they didn’t enjoy a recipe for whatever reason.)
In the new recipe format, there are several ways to leave a rating or a review. A rating is just selecting a star amount without leaving a comment. And a review is a star rating + a comment.
1) Under the title of the recipe, you can select a number of stars to rate the recipe (without leaving a comment – although if you select three stars or lower, it will automatically ask you to leave a comment so I can learn from the valuable feedback!).
2) Down at the top of the comment thread, you can leave a comment and select a number of stars to rate the recipe there. Or you can leave a comment without selecting a star rating.
Search
I’m still working on improving the search function to return the most relevant results, but for now the best results will pop up as you type in your search criteria and wait for the dropdown box to load.
This is enabled on mobile and desktop.
A Few Last Notes
There are a few more design changes that are kind of fun: keep your eye out for the What to Serve With This box on main dish posts as well as cute FAQ boxes to answer the most commonly asked questions (and save time reading through the comment thread).
Thank you for your patience as I continue to update recipes and roll out some of the remaining changes!
One quick note about ads: you guys, I know ads are annoying. I don’t like them much, either. But ads are kind of a necessary evil as they are the revenue source that pays my bills and allows me to continue giving you my very best tried-and-true recipes.
As my blog has grown exponentially in traffic over the last decade+, it has turned into a full-time business, and it requires a lot of behind-the-scenes work to keep it up and running.
I think long and hard about ad placement and the amount of ads that appear. There is no magic formula. And I know many of you feel like you’d make different decisions if you were in my shoes.
But please take a moment to be thoughtful as you judge or issue criticism. All of the pieces of the blogging puzzle add up to an insane amount of work and costs associated with web hosting, design, contract employees, audits, plugins and more. I’m running only about 1/2 of the ads available to me in order to keep the user experience fairly positive.
With this redesign, I’m tweaking a few things ad-wise (and trying to eliminate some problematic ads that have popped up – I apologize for those; thanks to those of you who bring them to my attention).
Ok, I think that’s it!!
I appreciate you and your kindness, loyalty, and patience! I’m excited for these website changes and hope that you are, too! Thanks for being here, you guys.
I never realized how much goes into running a blog (clearly I’m not very tech savvy!), but THANK YOU for all the tasty recipes and all you do to make this such an enjoyable place for all of us. 🙂 My family and I adore your recipes!!! 🙂
Lookin’ good Mel! Question – how do we find the Reader Favorites and Mel’s Favorites? I’m not seeing them on the home page (but I could just be missing them!)
Thanks!
Hi Patricia! They are on the homepage if you scroll down past the first nine featured posts. Let me know if you have trouble finding them!
Got it! Thanks Mel!
Enjoy your weekend 🙂
Yay! Some exciting changes! I love cooking with measurements, and I’m looking forward to printing recipes with pictures! I like to print out those favorite recipes that I use more often. They are easier to use in cooking with my kids … and 4 boys = lots of cooking. 🙂 Recently, I noticed that nearly half my printed recipes are from your site. I enjoy almost everything I’ve made from you! Thanks for all you do for us!
Thank you Mel for all your hard work, making the experience better-though I had no complaints. You are our “go to” site for fabulous food-especially cookies. Thank you for all you do.
Thank you for ALL the hard work you put into your blog!!! I wanted to leave a comment and say that I absolutely love the “what to serve with this” ideas. I use them all the time and it really helps out with menu planning!
Thanks Mel, you are the BEST!!!
Ashley from St Louis, a loonnnggg time reader
I’m “one of those” 3-1/2 who prints recipes and I appreciate the option of printing the photo, because I almost never do! Everything sounds great. Thanks for working so hard and caring about us so much. We love ya!
Thank you Mel for all your hard work! I only know you from your blog but I don’t know how you do all that you do. You are an inspiration!
Thank you. I know this has to be a lot of work. I think it is going to be amazing.
I have followed you for years and have always appreciated your honesty and transparency with your followers.
I am a recipe printer as well. For me it is a way of sorting. I print out the new recipes I try. If they are a keeper they go in my binder sorted by category. If they aren’t I just throw the paper away and remove them from my Pinterest.
Thanks again.
This is such great news! Photos and nutrition info included when printing (I keep a file and it helps) and all these changes will make one of my very favorite websites even better! The nutrition info is a great help. Thank you, Mel. And thank you for keeping the ads so that there is no charge to followers of your awesome blog!
Love the new changes!! We will ALL benefit from you making these wonderful updates. So happy to be part of this community. My family cooking is based almost entirely on your recipes, and I feel good about making these recipes because they are not only delicious but nutritious as well (for the most part haha).
Just before I read your section on ads, I was thinking how thankful I am that your website uses ads!! There have been so many recipe websites that I used to follow that have converted to having readers pay subscriptions fees to get access to recipes. I understand and agree that people should get paid for all their hard work, but not everyone can afford to pay. When times are tough, websites like yours are a true blessing.
Your website is beautiful and I have enjoyed many of your recipes.
Love your recipes and writing, and love these site updates! Thanks for all of the hard work.
One thing I have noticed, beginning with the recent frozen strawberry dessert recipe, is that I receive duplicate emails when there is a new recipe post. I don’t want to unsubscribe from one, in case it removes my email completely! It isn’t a big deal to delete one of the recipe emails, but if there is a way to change that behind the scenes that would be great!
My whole family enjoys your recipes and recommendations, and you certainly make life in the kitchen easier and more enjoyable 🙂
Oh, that’s annoying! Let me see if I can figure out what’s going on.
Sounds good to me, thank you
Thank you Mel the website looks amazing!!!
Thank you! These updates sound fantastic, I appreciate all your hard work. Most importantly: it’s obvious you care about your readers experience as you’re always lovingly explaining choices and you make decisions that are not YOUR first choice just because you know WE will benefit from them. Thank you for remaining humble in this crazy world. May God Bless you and your sweet family.
Thanks for the work you are doing for us on all the changes. Love your content and the ads will be worth putting up with for what you offer.
I already thought your blog was amazing.. and now it looks even sharper! The most important part is your treasure trove of the BEST recipes. This is the first place I look when searching for something yummy. As a die hard recipe printer myself.. I wonder if you have a Mel-magnificent method for organizing them all?
Hey Dorothy! This is a REALLY old post about how I organize my recipes into binders: https://www.melskitchencafe.com/mels-kitchen-tip-how-i-organize-my-recipes-and-my-favorite-cookbooks-blogs/
Thanks for posting this link, my Binders & Pinterest system is similar which is why I do prefer adding a photo to all the many recipes I print. I just saved this link to my Tips & Tricks folder on Pinterest! Also, I agree with all the wonderful comments on here…love the new format, always appreciate your approach to ads, and many of my favorite recipes came from your blog!
🙂 awesome !
and yes I like the idea of weighing ingred. but always switch to ounces – this will be something new for me!
The changes you describe above will make preparing your recipes much easier and more precise. I really appreciate being able to use grams to increase accuracy and also speed the process up. Without all the new updates and changes, your site was still the best. The first thing I ever used your website for was buttermilk biscuits. I love to cook with technology, for example use a food processor to prepare biscuits..They were so good, I was sold on everything else from that point. Printing images is good; I collect in PDF format sometimes. All your changes bring your site up technically to the best of the best! Your site is like a brand new car with all the options. Indeed, now it’s a Rolls Royce (like it always was) but with navigation and forward collision warning / breaking and lane keep assist.
You my dear are a rockstar! I appreciate allll your continued hard work and generosity helping the world be rockstars in the kitchen too! Xoxo
Can I just say I LOVE your format for printing off recipes!!!! Your site is by the best when I need to print a recipe, your efforts are very much appreciated!
Mel, Mel, Mel. Ahhhhh what do I say!? Thank you does not seem adequate! While I have not yet graduated to the big leagues of weighing ingredients or needing to know nutrition facts, I’m immensely grateful for the option to print pic or not, as well as the FAQ box to save me time reading the comment thread (and hoping I didn’t skip the one comment I needed to see!) haha. Truly, what a gem you are. I don’t even understand how we all got so lucky to have you in our (virtual) lives!! Thank you, and may God bless you my dear friend.
Thank you, thank you for all the hard work you put into this site! I have been a faithful follower for hmmm, 15 years(?!) and use your recipes almost exclusively. I don’t comment a lot but I wanted to say: I appreciate you so much! Love you Mel!
P.S. Yes, ads are annoying but I agree, you did a good job incorporating ads so they are minimally disruptive.
You are amazing Mel! I appreciate the thought and effort and hard work you put into your blog! I’ve been following you since the beginning and I’m still on all the time looking for new recipes! You are the best!
I love the fresh updated look!! That is a lot of work and I don’t know how you do it all! This has been my go to site for several years and I always share it with others. I’ve never been disappointed in any recipe and think this is the best out there! I’ve never felt overwhelmed by ads on your site but I think (hope) I speak for all of us when I say you do what you need to do to keep this site up and running! I’m not sure I could live without it! I love it and I love you – you have a wonderful way with words and I enjoy reading the commentary before the recipe and all your other non-recipe posts. Thanks for everything you do.
You are the best. Love the thoughtfulness you put into this— super excited for so many of the new features!!
Love your blog and am so excited to see weights (metric) for many of the ingredients. As a current user of Noom and longtime fan of yours, I’m looking forward to the nutritional information.
You’re right, all your upgrades will only improve on your wonderful blog.
Looking good Mel. I had already noticed improvement when using my phone to search for a recipe. Before I couldn’t see what I was typing in the search box and now I can. Keep up the great site!! And I know you will keep up the great recipes. That goes without saying!!
Thank you so much for the conversion to grams and nutrition facts. My daughter is a T1D, so I have converted many of your recipes to grams. So this will make my life so much easier and save so much time. THANK YOU! Your blog has changed how I cook and has made me much better in the kitchen. I would be lost without you!
Thanks for all your hard work and the time you have spent getting this all done! Your website is my go to, and I’m grateful for all you do to share your tried and true delicious recipes!
Mel, you are AMAZING. The site looks great. It’s a nice refresh and very visually appealing.
You truly have the best cooking blog out there. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your approach to ads. I have NEVER felt inundated by ads when I’m on your page, which I definitely can’t say about others.
Thank you for all your hard work and amazing recipes over the years. You’re a trusted companion in my kitchen!
Love the updates, and yay for nutrition info!
I love your blog! Thanks for a quick glimpse into the behind-the-scenes of running a blog. Looking forward to seeing the new items. One of my favorite things is when you provide “what to serve with” and another is all the comments! When I try a new recipe…I love reading the comments of people who have actually made the recipe. Your blog is a nice place to find fresh ideas for me. You have a gift for appealing to brand new cooks and those who have raised families and served “a million” meals. Cooking meals well takes practice and for me, planning. Thanks for helping me with all of your well thought thru recipes and notes for success!
So excited for the new changes!
Oh my goodness! I. Love. These. Changes! My husband is diabetic, so those carb counts will be so helpful! I prefer baking by gram weight. And I’m one of the 3 1/2 people who still prints recipes, and I am so excited to be able to print the picture! Looks like as you update things, I’ll be going along behind you reprinting all of my favorite recipes!
Thanks for all you do, Mel!
Have found your recipes to be among the best I’ve ever made and I have been cooking 50+ years!
Will enjoy using your new format and I believe using grams in baking is especially important! I’m sure your readers will agree. Really takes the guesswork out.
Take care and God Bless you and your family always.
Hurray!!! Thanks for keeping it real and for the best dang recipes out there!
Good grief, this is a ton of work. Thank you for keeping at it! It all looks beautiful!!
I love ALL of these changes (well, I don’t care about nutrition facts much, either, but whatevs). Thanks so much, Mel!
Yes!!!! This is all so great. I am one of the 3.5 people that print the recipes out. I’m so nerdy that I copy the recipe into word and then insert the photo so I can print it with the picture. Your new format will save me so much time! Sometimes when I’m being lazy I will print the picture separately and then TAPE it to the printed recipe. Haha
Also the nutrition info is amazing! Thank you!!! I love the idea of intuitive eating but I don’t have the luxury of being able to do that. I have to track everything.
Thank you for all your hard work! I adore your website and wish we could be BFF’s.
Thanks for the crazy amount of work that you do for us! I’m excited to see all of the changes. Tonight was “zucchini” night – I tried the cheesy zucchini rice and the chocolate zucchini cake. Success – I think there is only half a serving left! Thx again!
New site looks great. Can I just add that the “what to serve with this” is a complete lifesaver for me! Thank you for those recommendations and thank you for sharing your tried and true recipes and life with your virtual friends.
Fan for life! Love all your creativity and down to earth attitude about life.
Love your blog, Mel. It’s my go to for almost everything. Also just wanted to express my gratitude for all the work you put in. It’s so appreciated!
I have been following you from your earliest days of blogging!.I love reading your stories and cooking your recipes! You have been a life saver for me in the kitchen! I so appreciate you and your efforts! Keep up the amazing work!
Excited for some of these changes, I’m sure this whole process has been a lot of work! Thanks for all you do, Mel, your recipes keep my family fed with delicious meals multiple times a week.
You are a beast. Get it girl. Rock that blog world. Thanks for all you put into this.
The changes look amazing! Thanks for taking time to explain everything to us and for giving us such a great online experience :] Hooray for nutrition facts!! Love ya, Mel!
Love it and love you Mel! Thank you for all of your amazing hard work to make my life simpler.
Awesome! Thanks for all your thoughts and energy going into this! I’m here all the time, so I can’t wait to try out all the new features!