Appetizing Muse

Appetizing Muse finally has a "new face" after more than seven years.

When the blog was first launched in March 2003, the design was based on a simple blue-and-white template that worked well for a long time. However, much like wearing the same types of clothes year after year, the landscape grew tiresome and begged for change.

The new design for Appetizing Muse is based on a template by Blog Liber via Open Web Design. I manipulated the original style sheet to suit my needs, and along with a few other tweaks finally arrived at the current design. If anything looks garish or off-center, it's my doing entirely.

Open Web Design is a "community of designers and site owners sharing free web design templates as well as web design information." The designs are part of the Creative Commons Attribution license and Public Domain license.

With the new face, I took the opportunity to modify some of the features available at Appetizing Muse. For starters, I've done away with all blog archives before 2010. The main reason for this has to do with the prior commenting system used for all entries. It would have taken excruciatingly long to modify all entries between 2003 and 2009, in essence removing the now-forced comment code imposed by Echo. In a nutshell, when Haloscan sold out at the beginning of the year, they handed over their clients to the Echo commenting system. Since I already paid Haloscan a one-time fee for ad-free comment boxes, I wasn't about to fork over money to their replacement. Rather than spend vast amounts of time to remove the forced comment codes from blog posts between 2003-2009, I simply deleted the online entries.

If you are looking for a particular entry between the years 2003-2009, send me a message and I'll see what I can do. Postscript 09/16/14: All old blog posts have since been reinstated on Appetizing Muse.

That being said, blog archives between January-September 2010 have retained the old design but without comment capabilities. Someday I hope to find a decent commenting system that doesn't cost a fortune and works with a one-line feature, at which time the ability to leave comments at Appetizing Muse will be restored. Suggestions, anyone?

In the meantime, if you'd like to send a remark about a particular blog post, click here to send me a message. If you prefer, visit me at Facebook instead.

In addition, Food Fare recently entered into a partnership with Class Notes to offer our food articles as research papers. As before, the features will contain bits of history, food traditions, lifestyle and dishes native to specific countries, as well as authentic recipes. Research papers will also include food-specific topics. Class Notes will be up and running next month.

Now, can I get back to some kitchen cooking and normal food blogging?

*Related Blog Posts:

A Bit of Explaining (03/22/03), Happy New Year! (01/05/05) and New Blog Digs (09/16/14).