The Update - Six Months In

It's hard for me to believe that last week's blogs were the end of my first six months of doing Cabana Boy Cooks.  Where does time go?

I have had so much fun doing this blog four days a week.  I just hope that all of you that have been following the blog have enjoyed it as much.  We have covered a lot of topics together that I hope have helped in the kitchen and made cooking more fun or interesting at least.  In these six months, there have been 30 new recipes for you to try.  I doubt that anyone but Claudia and I have tried all of these recipes.  If any of you have, please let me know.  In fact, if any of you have made over half of the recipes I'd love to know.  Please click on the comment area right after the blog and tell us how many you have tried.

I'd love to know that everyone was successful and pleased with each recipe.  That's probably not possible because everyone has different tastes.  But, again, let us know.  The thing that is more likely, someone had a bad experience following one of the recipes.  If you had a disaster and can now laugh at it, please let us hear from you on what went wrong.  It might help someone else down the road.  Or remind us all that we need a sense of humor when working in the kitchen with food.  I'm serious, please don't be shy as we all want to hear the good, the bad and the ugly (my favorite western).

In these first six months, the blog has averaged over 100 hits a week.  When I started this was beyond my dreams.  But now as we start the second six months, I want to get that average up to 200 hits a week.  That is 200 hits a week by the one year anniversary of starting the blog.  I'll need help to do that.  Please spread the word about the blog to everyone you know.  Even if they are great cooks, they may know someone that would enjoy checking it out.

The blog has had hits from over 15 countries outside of the USA.  A few of the countries have had only one hit like Burma and United Arab Emirates, but seven countries are in double digit counts.  Germany leads the way with over 50 hits since the start.  I've got a nephew in the military over there.  He must have told some friends to check out the blog.  The tough part for anyone from another country is the measurements and temps.  They don't use the same system as we do here in the USA.  I may have to work on converting all the recipes for them.  I'll have to see how much work that would be.

Tomorrow's blog will have the WeightWatcher points for the soup chapter of the cookbook.  For the soups a portion is one cup.  The points range from 3 to 11 but remember they are hearty soups.

This week's recipe is for Home Basil Pesto.  It only makes one cup but pesto goes a long ways.  My favorite way to serve pesto is over Gnocchi.  Gnocchi is an Italian dumpling made with potato, flour and egg.  You can find it dry, frozen or fresh.  I got mine at Tenuta's in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Remember the hanging 300lb piece of cheese in an earlier blog.  You should be able to get 10 to12 servings of pesto gnocchi out of this one cup.  A little garlic bread (week 7 in blog) and a salad make for a great dinner with the pesto gnocchi.  Try it.