Today marks the 5th Anniversary of Roti n Rice. It has been a very challenging year in the blogosphere with rising costs and changes pertaining to sharing rules in the social media sites while still attempting to provide free recipes to our audience. It is our sincere hope that the cooking public will become aware of how much time and effort are built into our presentations despite limitations in capital and resources.
At the beginning of the year there was increased downtime with shared hosting. An upgrade to a more secure Virtual Private Server (VPS) became necessary. Although this move did improve the performance level, it also cost 3 times more than shared hosting. The other major cost is in producing the high quality photography that the public have come to expect from reputable food blogs. Of course such photography do not occur by accident but require substantial investment in equipment and space. It is also extremely time consuming.
Then social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest which were previously free services started changing their algorithms so that our posts no longer appear on your feeds. For them to appear or be seen, they have to be “promoted” (i.e. paid). Since small blogs like Roti n Rice cannot afford to do that, we had to band together with other food blogs to self promote each other’s posts. This exercise was very tedious and time consuming. Countless hours were spent each day in front of the computer sharing posts on Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Yummly.
Thankfully, every cloud has a silver lining. The highlight of 2014 was the launch of our Youtube Roti n Rice Cooking Channel in April 2014. We are greatly encouraged that there are currently close to 900 subscribers to this young channel. Although video programming and editing are very involved processes, they have been a mostly fun endeavor which we hope will continue to grow.
Looking forward to 2015 we hope to continue to provide excellent recipes and food ideas to our faithful readers. We also take this opportunity to thank all of you for 5 years of continued support. Some of you have been with us since Day 1 and we cannot be more grateful. Many of you are new and we want to welcome you to this exciting community of food enthusiasts. May you find inspiration here to cook up a storm in your own kitchen.
As this year comes to a close, we would like to share with you Roti n Rice’s Top 10 Recipes of 2014. These are the most pinned, shared, and viewed recipes of 2014.
Simply click on the link, image, or video to view recipe.
#10 – I am delighted that my favorite chinese vegetable dish, tender crisp Stir Fry Gai Lan (Chinese Broccoli) with mushrooms made it to this list. This is a video recipe to demonstrate the stir fry technique.
#9 – This delicious Pineapple Banana Smoothie is a returning favorite. It truly is a glass of tropical sunshine.
#8 – One can never have enough of these Baked Spicy Garlic Potato Wedges. They are the perfect side and go well with most main dishes.
#7 – Who can resist these fork tender Slow Cooker Honey Spare Ribs? Sit back, relax, and let the slow cooker do all the work.
#6 – This Steamed Tofu with Garlic Soy Dressing is an old post given a video makeover. Quick and easy recipes are always popular. This dish can be prepared in under 15 minutes in the microwave.
#5 – This Slow Cooker Chicken Wild Rice Soup was a request by many for a slow cooker version of this ever popular soup.
#4 – Coconut Candy is my personal childhood favorite. We are so thrilled that this is our most popular recipe on Youtube with over 20,000 views…Wowee!
#3 – Honey Kaustera (Honey Castella) remains ever popular since it was first published in early 2012. This recipe uses only 4 ingredients and was updated with a video.
#2 – This dim sum favorite, Lo Mai Gai (Steamed Glutinous Rice with Chicken another favorite at our house. It is the second most popular post on the blog as well as on Youtube with close to 10,000 views.
The #1 post for 2014 goes once again to Minnesota’s hometown dish, Chicken Wild Rice Soup with over 200,000 pins on Pinterest and close to a quarter million pageviews here on the blog! We absolutely enjoy this soup and make it often during the colder months. Thank you so much for trying out this recipe. Please continue to share and spread the love.
Torviewtoronto says
deliciously food
Happy New Year to you and family
mjskit says
It would be very hard for me to pick out my favorite 10 recipes of yours in any year. They are all fabulous! Happy 2015 Linda!