Happy 1st Birthday Tasty Makes Happy!

It’s hard to believe it’s already been one whole year since I started Tasty Makes Happy. Time flies. During this exciting year, I added over 100 recipes. Some of those recipes were sent to me by my dear friends. Svetlana, Natasa and Sasha- thank you for your contributions!

When I created Tasty Makes Happy, I didn’t know much about blogging. Actually, I knew nothing at all. But with the lack of other sense of accomplishment, I thought I’d give it a try. I started reading about blogging, blog promotions, online advertizing & associate programs, buzz words, and a bunch of other stuff I never knew existed. Then I realized- blogging is a whole science by itself. One year later, after putting many, many hours into writing posts, doing research, fixing photos, and battling blogger, Tasty Makes Happy has come a long way- it is making me whole $0.60/ month. Now I have to figure out how to spend all that money!

During this exciting first year of blogging about food, I have checked the statistics of the visits many, many times per day. I might even say that I am a little obsessed with looking up the stats of my blog. But hey! It’s exciting to know that 50 people read it every day. I like to see what recipes are more popular, and what countries the visits come from. Sometimes, I even get comments and messages from the readers, and that is a special treat.

For all of you who follow my blog, you have probably noticed that new recipes are becoming more seldom. I have not lost the passion for cooking! It’s just that my job requires me to spend more and more time in Portland, and I do not have the time for cooking or blogging. Currently I spend the whole work week in Portland, and I get to go home only on weekends. While in Portland, I stay at the hotel, and needless to say, I do not cook at all. When I go home on weekends, I am pretty busy and during the day and a half I get to spend there, I do not do much cooking and even if I do, I don’t take photos or blog about it.

Sadly, I have no new recipes to post for Tasty make Happy’s 1^st Birthday. Instead, I will share some of the exciting foods that I’ve been eating in Portland. Being on the expense report, I tried some cool places on town that normally never would if I had to pay for them myself.

Here is one pasta dish I had at an Italian restaurant- it was a special, a spicy special they said. I decided to try it anyways, even thought I don’t do spicy. Well, it was not spicy at all. Anyways, I chose to post this photo because it looked cool. Two weeks later, I visited the same restaurant and they presented the same special. Then I realized it was not so special anymore.

Next photo was taken at a small Hawaiian place where I like to eat because they have pulled pork. It is not as good as the BBQ place I often go to, but this picture made it in just because it is funny. It has 2 grammatical mistakes in one sentence: “All are meals are slowed cooked”.

Oh, this one was actually good food. It was a sea food place a bunch of us went to one evening. It was good food and fun times. I like going places with my coworkers; they are all exciting people to be with. I did not order this dish, my coworker Dallas did. It looked so exotic and cool; I couldn’t help but put this little crawfish on the photo shoot.

Hmmm, this one you can’t even tell what it is. But I assure you it was tasty! It was some kind of fish in orange sauce.

I bet you can all recognize the blooming onion. That thing disappeared in seconds. Then some stakes disappeared. Then a couple of 22oz beers disappeared as well. That evening, I was passed out at 10:30PM.

Let’s not forget my favorite food of all times- sushi! This one is some volcano roll, it was on fire!

This is not an ordinary pasta dish. I ordered this dish because it was made of wild boar, and I’ve never had a wild boar before. It was tasty but nothing too exotic. As you can see, I had no problem finishing the last bit of this dish.

And the last one is fish tacos. Nothing Special, but colorful.