About Simply Recipes
Hello and welcome to Simply Recipes
If you are unfamiliar with Simply Recipes, please allow me to take a moment to introduce you to the site. The first thing you should know is that Simply Recipes is a blog or a personal website, created and maintained by me, Elise Bauer. Unlike most of the large recipe sites that you might find on the Internet with tens of thousands of recipes, Simply Recipes is my personal website, with only a few hundred recipes, all tested by me, my family or my friends. We invite you to try the recipes, and if you would like, leave constructive feedback in the comments. Do you have a recipe binder or box of recipe index cards? Think of this site as our family sharing the recipes in our recipe binder with you. As we cook the recipes multiple times, we often think of improvements and update the recipes. So keep in mind that what you see here is a work in progress.
Mom and dad in their Carmichael kitchenHow we got started
A few years ago I started writing down the recipes I had grown up with and posting them to my website. I had just turned 40, and had spent most of my adult life working as a hectic Silicon Valley consultant with little time to cook, let alone learn how to cook beyond what I had learned growing up. I come from a big family - six kids - and thought what a terrific family project, to document our family recipes! Both my mother and father are excellent home cooks, mom by necessity to raise us all, and dad because he loves to eat well and enjoys the experimentation of trying out new recipes.
Well, the family recipe blog that started in 2003 has blossomed and taken on a life of its own. Simply Recipes now reaches over a hundred thousand visitors each day and was voted Best Food Blog Overall in the 2006 Food Blog Awards.
For the first seven years of Simply Recipes, almost all of the cooking was done in my parent's kitchen in Carmichael, California. As of April 2010, most of the cooking for the site has shifted down the street to my kitchen (also in Carmichael). Journalist, and twice James Beard nominated food blogger Hank Shaw has joined the staff part-time (that would be now a staff of one and a half) to help cook, invent, explore, experiment, instruct, and write. For a couple days a week Hank and I cook furiously, and have my parents over (and anyone else we can rope in) to test the creations.
Where we get the recipes
These days most of the recipes we post we are making up. If you look through the archives though you'll find many old family recipes, and recipes my family has over 30 years pulled from cookbooks, magazines, and newspaper clippings. If we have pulled a recipe from another source, we try to attribute that source where we can (sometimes it's hard when you only have a clipping.) The recipes shown here use mostly whole food ingredients and only occasionally a few things from cans or prepared foods. We believe in a varied, healthy diet, using real butter, real cream, eggs, lots of green vegetables, and protein from meat, fish, beans, and cheese.
About comments
Comments are welcome on most of the recipes and posts. I would ask that if you would like to leave a comment that you think of this website as my family's home and that you wouldn't say anything on this site that you wouldn't, as an invited guest, say in someone's home. Constructive criticism is welcome, as we all benefit from such advice. Rude, mean, or obnoxious comments are not welcome and will not be approved to post (that's me, gently escorting the misbehaving guest out of the house). Please restrict your comments to the topic at hand, for the benefit of all who may be reading.
Press
Simply Recipes was noted in Time Magazine's 50 Coolest Websites of 2006 as being a "great resource for cooks". We aspire to be just that, a great resource for you and others who love to cook. For more press mentions see the Press and Awards section of the website.
Nutritional Information
One often requested feature is to provide the nutritional information (calories, points, etc.) for the recipes on this site. Unfortunately, we have neither the time nor the expertise to provide this analysis. Simply Recipes is a reflection of how our family cooks and eats, and as we do not analyze nutritional information for our meals, it is not done for the site.
Advertising and Amazon Links
Simply Recipes has an Amazon store where we suggest favorite products or good deals on kitchen equipment we find. Once in a while we also publish Shopping Alerts when there is a particularly good sale for a useful kitchen item. We do receive a small commission for any sales made from these links and any other links to Amazon.com on this site. These commissions, plus any fees from ads that are displayed on the site, support the running of Simply Recipes. If you are an advertiser and are interested in placing an ad on Simply Recipes, please see the information on Advertise on Simply Recipes.
Photography
All photographs on Simply Recipes were taken by Elise Bauer, unless otherwise noted. Information about the camera equipment, techniques, and software used for Elise's photographs can be found in this article, Photography on Simply Recipes. The photos taken by Elise are copyright Simply Recipes, Inc. In general I don't mind if my photos are republished on other sites as long as there is a link back to the recipe from which the photo is taken, and as long as the recipe itself is not also published with the photograph, but I maintain the right to withdraw that permission, and request that a photo of mine be removed from another site, for any reason.
About Elise
My name is Elise Bauer and I live in Carmichael, California. Formerly I was an executive with an Internet software company and for many years a Silicon valley strategy and marketing consultant. I maintain several weblogs in addition to Simply Recipes as part of elise.com. I can be reached through email at elise AT elise {dot] com.
About Simply Recipes, Inc.
Simply Recipes is a registered trademark of Simply Recipes, Inc. Simply Recipes, Inc. is a California corporation, wholly owned by Elise Bauer, President and Grand Poo-Bah. (I always wanted to be a Grand Poo-Bah, haven't you?)
Thanks so much for visiting Simply Recipes!
