I started creating posts on this website in early January, and now that the calendar year is winding down, I’m ready to take stock of where exactly this journey has taken me.

I technically started creating the website in August 2024, but it took me a while to play around with formats before I figured out how I wanted to share each recipe with the WordPress features at my disposal. So, January was about building the first pages and re-posting a few recipes over again until I found a method that worked for me.

At first, I was posting all recipes from my old wiki site onto here. Then I noticed that WordPress created a blank gray square for each recipe that didn’t have a photo. I changed my game to focus on posting only recipes that had a photo, and eventually took down the ones that didn’t. I’m still working through some of these “drafts” — though I’ve cut down that list by more than half!

Overall, it’s forced me to realize how many of my recipes I made and didn’t commemorate with a photo after cooking, and how many recipes I’d saved and simply never got around to making a first time. I’ve joked on some of my mom’s heirloom recipes that she hoarded recipes without making hardly and of them, and, well, let’s say the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in that regard. But I’m working on changing that, and in the process I’ve picked up some skills and knowledge that are helping me to fill in the blanks when I come across sparse recipes without much instruction.

Here are some numbers for folks who like number-y things:

310: Number of recipes on my original wiki. Not all 310 are going to make it here, as some really old recipes I invented when I much younger haven’t made the cut. But still, this feels like a LOT of posting and cooking to catch up!

251: Number of recipes I’ve added to this site to date. Not all of these came from the wiki, as I’m also still finding new things to make as I go!

7: Current number of recipes in my Drafts folder, waiting to be made and photographed.

2010: When I started putting recipes on the old wiki 15 years ago. I’d been saving them offline before then. It feels like a lifetime ago! Having digital recipes has made it so much easier to keep track of them across different computers, share with friends, search meta tags for specific ingredients, and make changes as I tweak them over time.

26: Number of letters of the alphabet at the beginning of at least one recipe on this site. The last letter, funnily enough, was E, thanks to the Egg Nog I made recently because my spouse was craving some. This was a much better result than last year’s experiment with Egg Nog Fudge — this disaster was never going to make it to this site, but you can see a photo below. (And if you’re wondering which recipe starts with the letter X, check out this Xacuti!

So, what’s the plan for 2026? Let’s keep going! As mentioned above, I still have plenty of recipes to make and share from my old wiki. I want to follow that to its natural conclusion as well as continue to add new recipes as I progress.

I also want to develop more of the genealogical side of this site, as that’s been part of the original plan. I’ve been sharing so many recipes from family members that I have a page started, and I have notes on family history that could tell more stories. Going through my mom’s recipe box has introduced me to relatives I never met in life and wish I’d had the opportunity. Regular genealogical histories tend to just list names and dates, spouses and children. I want to organize the information that I have, along with some of the stories that make these people more real. For example, my great-grandmother Jessie first moved to Illinois from Virginia in a covered wagon, started a Shakespeare club in the small town of Fillmore, cosplayed as Amelia Earhart seemingly for her own cosplay convention of one, and passed down an award-winning gingerbread cake recipe.

Happy New Year to the handful of people and bots who read this blog! Thanks for checking out my recipes. And if you’ve tried any of them, consider leaving a comment to let me know how they turned out!