Building a recipe for a recipe site.

I started my latest incarnation of a recipe site today by finding free css to create recipe cards.  My first version of a test recipe is here.  I've still got some work to do, but I'm happy with the format of my page.  I've got some further ideas about how to take the existing idea and make it something that's more personal; that's more my own invention. 

I've given my recipe site a fair amount of thought for some time.  In one form or another I've been thinking about creating a website for as long as I've been trying to compile a list of canonical recipes for myself.  I could've simply added recipes to an existing blogging site like Blogger or Wordpress, but my intention was also to keep my programming skills sharp.

As it stands now, there's not really a lot of programming involved.  I'm just expecting to use html and css with a little bit of javascript (probably something like vue), but, as someone who's always been a backend programmer, it's a refreshing change.  The recipe card css I copied today helped me understand the subtle art of positioning items on a web page for maximum effect as well as help me with figuring out how to create background shadows that add some richness to the page.

As for the actual content of the site, it's a given that I'll post my 52 recipes here.  I've always assumed that I'd just take pictures of the dishes I make and post them alongside the recipes, but recently I've hit on a different idea.  Since I'm trying to bootstrap my drawing abilities again, I realized it'd be fun to draw the dishes I make, even if they're simplistic representations, rather than follow the common path of trying to capture the perfect food photo.

This also led me to another way to expand the content on the site.  In addition to creating a site where I have easy reference to my recipes, it's my intention to provide instruction to people who are interested in learning to cook with shortcuts that have worked for me over the years.  When I first started cooking in earnest, I encountered a lot of well meaning authors who provided a lot of complexity to the recipes I made without adding flavor, or in some cases, because I tried to follow the expert route before I understood the technique, ruined the dish or became too frustrated to follow through.  My hope is, in addition to creating illustrations for the food I'm cooking, I'll be able to do a passable job of creating some instructional material that may assist someone else in learning to cook.