Announcement: Website Redesign (+ signed cookbook giveaway)!

Congrats to our winners!

Cheryl D.

Jennifer B.

Michelle C.!

I am so excited to FINALLY be sharing our brand new website design with you! Believe it or not, my husband and I started this process over a year and a half ago. For reasons you really don’t want me to get into (basically one problem after another), it has taken forever and a day for this much-needed facelift to finally come to fruition. It has honestly taken so long that we’ve already drafted another redesign in our heads so expect to see more tweaks to this new layout as time goes on! In the meantime though we’d love to get your thoughts on how it looks and all the new functionality (see below for details) so please be sure to drop us a line to let us know!

To celebrate this momentous occasion I’m going to give away 3 signed (and personalized) copies of my #1 New York Times Best Selling Cookbook today! So don’t forget to enter at the bottom after you read about all the cool new features you’ll find on the new blog! :)

First, just to recap, here is the dramatic before and after!

The Evolution of the Blog

New School Lunch Idea Gallery

Aside from the aesthetics, we’re hoping you guys are going to dig some of the new features including our brand new School Lunch Idea Gallery where you can sort by dietary needs such as Dairy Free, Egg Free, Gluten Free, Peanut/Tree Nut Free and Vegetarian AND flag and print your favorites. Holler! :) This is an easy way to make and print a school lunch meal plan for the week. You could even get your little ones involved to help make the selections.

New School Lunch Idea Gallery

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New Recipe Gallery

For a more visual experience, we have a new colorful Recipe Gallery that uses the same cool dietary needs and photo flagging features as the school lunch list!

Here’s what you can do:

• Search by category – Think dinner, salad, slow cooker recipes, etc.
• Search by dietary restriction – Want to see only egg-free or dairy-free recipes?
• Perform a text search – Want to know what you can do with that spinach or kale you bought at the farmers market?
• Combine all of these search methods – Looking for egg-free dinners containing kale?
• Batch print your favorite recipes – Flag your favorites as you browse.

New Colorful Recipe Search

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The Old Recipe Index Lives!

We actually briefly removed our old text Recipe Index when we added the new one above, but (based on your comments) quickly realized how many people use and like our old school recipe index, so it is back and here to stay! It has recipes listed by name in alphabetical order so it is easy and fast to use on a smartphone without having to wait for pictures to load. Note it is only updated through 1/30/15 right now, but that will be fixed very soon.

The Old School Recipe Index

All the New Site Features

Here’s a full list of all the fun new features – please don’t forget to give us your feedback on everything and also enter my cookbook giveaway below!

• As you can see, the site now has a new clean look with a much smaller, consolidated menu bar.
• The site is also now mobile friendly, which includes an easy to use pop-out mobile menu (for smartphones and portrait orientation on tablets).
• There is a new featured image slider on the home page to highlight articles or announcements.
• The new Recipe Gallery allows you to search with photos and gives you the ability to filter by categories, dietary restrictions, and text (in case you’re looking for recipes containing a specific ingredient).
• The new School Lunch Idea Gallery has similar search options to the Recipe Search. 
• There is now the ability to flag your favorite recipes or school lunches so you can view or print them – a great way to make your weekly meal plan! Note these favorites may or may not be saved for you next session depending on your browser settings.
• There is a new searchable shopping guide. We’ll be adding more products soon, including food.
• There is a new video search page. 
• We’ve also added some help pages in case you need them including Recipe Search Help, School Lunch Idea Gallery Help, and Shopping Guide Help.

We’d absolutely love your feedback on all these changes and also what more you’d like to see in the future – please take a moment to share your candid thoughts with us!

I also want to quickly give a big warm shoutout to my husband Jason (and his tech help including Andrew, Chris K., and the guys at Tuna Traffic, plus Cori and Stacey on admin, and Chris M. and Jennae on design) for working tirelessly on getting this thing up and running!

Giveaway to Celebrate: 3 Signed Copies of my Cookbook!

To help celebrate I am going to give away 3 signed (and personalized) copies of my #1 New York Times Best Selling Cookbook today! Since we want to be able to read through your comments about the site redesign please only enter this giveaway using the Rafflecopter form below. I repeat, comments will not count as an entry this time!

This Contest is Now Closed

a Rafflecopter giveaway