Recently, I posted the first of what will be many recipes courtesy of the new iVillage Food Section. I briefly mentioned some of the features in the iVillage Food Section, but wanted to take a little more time to talk about them so you can understand the different things you can do with the site. Kind of like a usage 101 type deal. First, in all fairness and the spirit of disclosure, I have a couple of reasons for writing this post – judge me how you will. These reasons are (in no particular order): they invited me to my first con-call about the blog and actually listened to my opinions, which made me feel important; they said I could re-post their recipes on my blog, which makes me happy since I know that’s something you all have been wanting more of, and so if they’re helping me out, I want to help them out too; and finally, even though this may not be considered ‘business’ like, all of the women I’ve emailed with have all been very nice and seem to actually care about having a great food site….OK, and they also sent me a little thank you gift after the call (even before I said I would write a post,) which I might donate to one of you all as a prize. We’ll see. 🙂
So, let’s get to it! Here’s a picture of the iVillage food section.
One thing I really like is how easy the recipe section is to navigate. Not only can you search by main ingredient, but you can also find meals sorted into 30-minute meals, kid friendly meals, healthy meals, budget meals, and other categories. You can search directly from the main page, or click on “Recipes” in the menu, which takes you to the main recipe page. Once you’re in the recipes section, you can browse the most popular recipes and see which recipes are the highest rated.
Once you find a recipe that you like, you’ll see a few cool features on it’s recipe page. First, across the top will be little thumbnails that will tell you what categories the recipe is under. Clicking on those categories will take you to other recipes of the same type. The page also shows a big picture of what the final food will look like, which is very nice. I suggested they include a way for us to upload our own pictures so we can see what ‘real food’ will look like, not beauty shots of food. One of the interactive features for the recipes is that they allow you to share your “twist” to the recipe. If you tweak or change anything, they’re asking you to share it with others. You will also be able to view the twists that other people might have done too.
Underneath the picture and twist section, there’s the ingredient box and the cooking directions. They’ve implemented a neat feature for the cooking directions for those of us who might use our laptops in the kitchen. By clicking on “Kitchen View”, a large window pops up with the directions on slides that you can click through one by one. You can also print out the instructions from the window as well. Another blogger recommended that they include pictures in this section, which I think would be a great idea as well. I’m a big fan of step-by-step photos.
Finally, the recipe page offers ways to share your comments and rate the recipe. If you have your own recipe, they also offer a way for you to share that as well. So with that, a big thank you to iVillage Food for letting me contribute my two cents about their new site and for letting me share their recipes with all of you! I hope you like the recipes and if you don’t, feel free to offer your comments and twists on their recipe page!
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