Well, ladies and gentlemen, the past year of food has been awesome. I wanted to take this opportunity to sit down and actually write a blog entry going over the past, present, and future of the blog.
Man…what a year. Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of great travelling and did some cool food tourism. In case you haven’t kept track, here’s the major cities that I have traveled to within the past 12 months, roughly in order by date, with some some links to some corresponding posts:
- Las Vegas, Nevada (Twice)
- Houston, Texas (4 times, Though, just passing through each time)
- Saint Louis, Missouri (Twice)
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
- New Orleans, Louisiana
- Phoenix Arizona (Twice)
- Los Angeles, California (Twice)
- The Caribbean, including Roatan, Honduras
- Belize City, Belize (though I couldn’t get my cell to post from here. 🙁 )
- Cozumel, Mexico (There either)
- Tuscon, Arizona (and Tombstone, AZ, The thing, and surrounding stuff)
- Providence, Rhode Island (my phone was dead, though… I went to Hemingway’s and had awesome stuffed shrimp.)
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Southwestern Connecticut
- Amarillo, Texas (multiple times)
- San Antonio, Texas (multiple times)
- Austin, Texas (multiple times)
- And, of course, the metroplex that I call home, Dallas / Fort Worth, Texas
Through my travels and my food tourism and yelp reviews, over the past year, when eating out, I managed to eat:
- Over 100 burgers (only 98 are tagged here)
- Around 50 whole pizzas (75 meals archived here)
- 15 different Egg Benedicts, while in search for the best (click here – I think the best I had was the one in New Orleans at Stanley)
- 105 decadent desserts (click here)
- 137 Mexican and “Tex/Mex” dishes (click here)
- 133 Fast Food runs (click here)
- All this, with a grand total of 812 posts, detailing around 800 dishes.
Crazy, huh? I know what you’re thinking. Yes, throughout this process, I did gain weight. I’m up about 11 pounds, though about half of that came after I started training for the 5k that I’m running in Walt Disney World in about a week and a half. So, not that bad, I figure!
Anyhow, it’s been a great run. And I intend to keep going. With the conclusion of the “Year of Food,” I now usher in a SECOND YEAR of food. Starting now. To kick off the year, you’ll notice that there are NO unauthorized posts, which has allowed me to post the somewhat useless statistics above. (And this one–did you know that if I’m having a meal, there’s a 12.3% chance I’m eating a cheeseburger? For comparison, there’s a 1.7% chance I’m eating a salad, and a 3.4% chance it’s a Chili con Queso.) Now that I’ve satisfied all of my requirements and curiosities for statistics, I intend to make a few changes to DineAtJoe’s.com.
THE NEW RULES (Really, not that much different from the old ones)
- I may not post every meal I eat out, as I know that not every time I go to get a Quarter Pounder with Cheese at McDonald’s is all that exciting.
- I plan to post more written posts, kind of like this one… I may or may not get around to it.
- The written content of the posts should go outside the scope of “Food” and “Food Tourism” far more than they have.
- With the food posts, I will follow the format that I’ve already had–categorized by meal, course, and cuisine, tagged by city and state and perhaps some odds and in-s. (I’ll let the reader dig through my site to find some of the cool ones. Here’s one that I’d suggest.
- In tagging the posts, I’ll tag by PRIMARY destination. (For example, if I eat in New Braunfels, Texas, I’ll put the post under “San Antonio” and “Texas.” Otherwise, the tags just get too confusing.)
Basically, henceforth, DineAtJoe’s (Or, as I hope to call it, D@J) will become more of a personal blog for yours truly, hopefully making this site a more interesting site for everyone involved. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be taking almost as many pictures of my food, however… or that I won’t talk about food as much as I do today. I’ll just have some other cool content peppered in here and there that should keep things a little more interesting!
Cool Stuf About Dine at Joe’s That You Probably Didn’t Know
With the new year, I figure I should point a few things out to you. Call these “pro-tips” that will get you closer to the action!
- Did you know that you can register at DineAtJoe’s.com to follow updates?
- Also, did you know that DineAtJoe’s has an RSS feed? If you bookmark the feed as a live bookmark in your browser of choice, you’ll be able to follow along without necessarily going to this site! Also, you can use Google Reader to get DineAtJoes.com updates on your Flipboard app for your iDevice.
- Did you know that you don’t need to register to leave comments? Don’t worry–I take anti-spam measures all over the place that prevent my site from getting spammed. I also review all comments, though I’ve never seen any abuse yet.
- Have you read Dad’s Rules of Life of Eating Out on my “Wall of Shame?” It’s been updated a number of times over the past year… we’re now up to 20 rules, and counting!
- See something you like? Did you realize that sharing stuff from Dine At Joe’s is extremely easy? Simply click on the button that corresponds to the type of sharing that you’d like to do (i.e. – Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Google+, Gmail / Email / Hotmail, RSS, or Evernote) and you’ll be able to share it directly! (If there’s any other type of network you’d like to share my content on, let me know and I’ll add a button.)
- Did you know that even if you don’t want to do a full-out share, it’s easy to “like” something on DineAtJoe’s? You can easily “like” or Google +1 something by simply clicking on the corresponding links above. Web 2.0 will take care of the rest!
Anyhow, thanks for being great readers, and I hope to bring you a lot more awesome content. We’ll start the second year of food off with a bang! I’ll be taking a long vacation with my new wife Alicia to Disney World next week…
Thanks for a great year, and we’ll see you right back here for the next!
I like your ideas and changes for the blog’s second year Joe! I look forward to following.