Top 5 Posts of 2012

Today marks the end of my first year as a food blogger. I'm still debating to what extent I'll be blogging in the new year, I'll likely keep it up but perhaps with a little less regularity. But as we look to 2013, just about everyone presents a "best of" list from 2012. So in keeping with this spirit, I present to you the Top 5 most clicked on blog entries from Small Girl, Big Appetite. Some of these come as little surprise, but I was surprised that considering i post a decent amount of meat dishes, not one of them made this list!

5) Baked Costa Rican-Style Tilapia

This is a very simple dish that has a nice sweet taste, brought about by the pineapple rice. The fish itself doesn't have a lot of flavor, BUT the rice is awesome and so when you mix it all together, it's a great dish.

4) Smoked Paprika Roasted Salmon with Chive Pesto Fingerling Potatoes

I make this salmon all the time. You can easily mix the ingredients together with one fillet and not end up with a ton of leftovers. I regularly have all the ingredients in my cupboard. And it just tastes so good. I haven't made the potatoes in a while, but as we enter wintertime and I tend to gravitate to my favorite starch, I'm sure I'll revisit that side dish.

3) Food Porn: Belga Cafe

Let me give you all a brief lesson about Search Engine Optimization. Certain words naturally garner higher search results due to their popularity. I should put the word "porn" in every post because then my site visits will go through the roof. But I only choose to use it sparingly, when visiting restaurants with porn-tastic food dishes. This entry highlighted a great brunch restaurant in Capitol Hill. The truly interesting anecdote about this is that the owner/head chef of the restaurant was eliminated last week on Top Chef: Seattle. He made it about halfway through the competition. One of his dishes, the green eggs and ham, he featured on that show and it's high on my list for the next time I grab brunch there.

2) Buffalo Cheesey Bread

I need to give credit to my friend Nick Evans from www.Macheesmo.com for this recipe which I made for a Super Bowl party this year, and subsequent other sporting event watches. You take cheese, mayo, hot sauce, a good french bread, and chives to create something that tastes much like a buffalo wing, without the wing. Amazing.

1) Food Porn: Sticky Rice

Remember what I said earlier about SEO? This is a perfect example of how this works. This post included the words "porn" AND "sticky" in the title and "balls" in the body. (that's what she said?) Yep, this is a no brainer and received twice as many clicks as anything else. Sadly the owner of Sticky Rice passed away a few weeks ago, but the restaurant perseveres on. And I'll be visiting again in the New Year.

Happy New Year's Eve all!