General Discussion
Greetings from NZ....
.... and Happy Christmas to all forum users.
@cheftallyrand
I can't help observing that your cookery articles deserve a wider online audience than will be provided by Dawlish.com. Thankyou for your efforts.
I am doing my best to sample as many types of the best New Zealand pies as I can, notably from "The Fridge" in Kingsland, Auckland. I am reading "Pie" by Dean Brettschneider for inspiration and pleasure, although for the tarakihi and prawn pie that I made last night, I borrowed a method and made up the rest, Perhaps you might consider posting a few recipes of your own on the forum.
If there is anything that I can bring back for you, please let me know. I shall be back in Teignmouth on 2nd Jan.
Yes, many thanks chef for all your efforts this year and to everyone else that has contributed and visited the site. If anyone can think of a better way of chef reaching a wider audience but keeping the content on dawlish.com then this would be my preferred solution. Also anyone else who has any ideas for dawlish.com next year, please post them here.
I normally give out statistics for dawlish.com around this time, so here are this years compared to last years (in brackets):
Period: 24 Dec 2011 - 23 Dec 2012
Pageviews: 597,849 (484,889)
Visitors: 144,632 (114,802)
Unique Visitors 68,513 (60,722) - I'm not too sure how Google Analytics determines this so I would not read too much into this figure.
Average daily pageviews: 1638 (1328)
Peaks:
01 April 2012 : 3689
04 June 2012 : 4097
10 June 2012 : 3782
25 Nov 2012: 5436
Last year Peak:
18 Aug 2011: 3305
Carnival Week (Sat to Sat inclusive): 19,844 (17,001)
So we are up 25% on visitors and 23% on page views compared to last year. These are great statistics I think, and it just leaves me to wish you all a merry Christmas!
A happy and peaceful Christmas to all users of this site. Whatever, you're doing, keep safe and dry.
Don, Chef has his own website http://www.hub-uk.com/index.html, (and until recently tallyrand.info), including a regular newsletter. I think we are lucky to have him contributing to our local site as well.
Many thanks Chef, and you Webmaster, and a happy Christmas to you all.
@Don Pearson - aha, i have been wondering what happened to you! so in my old chopping (stomping) ground ahy? spending time in dear ole aotearoa, ka ora! Nothing I can think of, for bringing back. Look forward to that beer, on your return
Many thanks for your kind thoughts and support. I have been rather quiet of late on here, having been busy with other projects. I kept checking back, expecting at least Christmas recipe requests that I would urgently need to answer, but there weren't any. So I am not sure if Dawlish folk / Dawlish.com readers are foodies? Hopefully I will be proved wrong in the new year?
My brined turkey recipe however was a HUGE success over Xmas, with everyone involved now a brining convert as it stayed moist even when sliced cold the next day, not too mention converting people to brussel sprout lovers :-D My mince pie filo rolls and other festive recipes, are now winging themselves around the country after spending the time, demonstrating 'how to classes' - how to make Xmas cooking stress free, how to be successful with recipes, how to make it Xmas dinner delicious again and how to take pre-made products and make them your own with minimum effort and maximum effort.
@Everyone - if you need or have contacts that might want/need - an emergency on call chef, a food consultant, menu or recipe advisor, a cooking demonstrator you know where i am! Or if you know a well deserved (local) charity that might be interested in raising funds by auctioning a "personal chef for the day" ....... I am only too happy to help out.
Here's wishing everyone a most wonderful and happy Christmas period (remember despite the commercialism, it lasts until Jan 5th) and a most prosperous 2013
(=|:-D <------- for those of you who have asked, tilt it and its a smiley, with a chef's hat on