I’m a big fan of WordPress. I’ve been using it to maintain a couple of blogs for about 2 years. We use it at work for our campus-wide blogging service and it has served us well. I am so impressed that an open source and free piece of software works so well and is so feature rich. The WordPress community of developers have a lot to be proud of.
I am using WordPress as a CMS for my personal web site, but really I still use it as a blog with a few pages with static content. I know people use it as a CMS, but not until this weekend did I truly see the potential for a small web site. An artist friend of mine has a web site that I helped design. He has been using Adobe Contribute to keep it updated and this has worked fairly well. However, a recent OS upgrade made his Contribute stop working. He would need to purchase the latest version, which is kind of pricey.
I thought that WordPress might be a workable solution for him and approached him with the idea. I showed him the interface and how all edits are done through the browser. I showed him some themes and how with a simple change, the design of his site could be changed on the fly. He was intrigued and agreed to try it.
In less than 48 hours I was able to show him a working site that had more features than his previous site. I found a nicely designed portfolio theme and used my ace CSS and coding skills to modify it to suit his needs. I was able to use WP Categories to create the navigation structure, so all his paintings are categorized by type. If he decides to move one post from say, Figurative, to Archives, he can do so with a click of the mouse. He doesn’t have to change the navigation or edit any code. A plug-in made creating a contact form a breeze. I had to hand code this before. We will be able to install new features using plug-ins.
The potential to create online catalogs of work for artists using WordPress is intriguing. I now have an easy way to help my artist friends create elegant and easy to maintain web sites.
Jon Ng’s Web Site
Orange Cranberry Bread with Chocolate
Although, I’m not a vegan, I have been an ovo-lacto vegetarian for 18 years. Lately, we have been cutting back on dairy and eggs. I’ve experimented with using soy milk in place of cow’s milk since we don’t have it in the house anymore. I’ve found that it actually works better in quick breads. It seems to add a bit of tanginess, not unlike buttermilk.
I decided to try making a complete vegan bread using a recipe that was already close. It called for buttermilk, sour cream or yogurt. Substituting soy milk and soy yogurt was easy. I also am trying egg substitute and this recipe only had one egg, so I thought it would be a good test. As an added bonus, I tried adding a bit of chopped vegan dark chocolate. Dave thought it would be good in orange bread, and boy was he right!
This bread was delicious, both warm and cold. I’ve made this bread using dairy and eggs and now I’ve made the vegan version. I have to admit, the vegan version is better. It’s clean and bright with the orange contrasting nicely with the chocolate and the tang of the cranberry adding the extra zing.
Vegan Orange Cranberry Bread with Chocolate
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cups sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 orange (zest and juice)
- 1/4 cup of vanilla soy yogurt
- 1/2 cup of vanilla soy milk
- 1 serving Ener-G egg substitute
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 cup of fresh cranberries, roughly chopped
- 2-3 ounces of vegan dark chocolate, roughly chopped
Preheat the oven to 350º F.
- Using a Microplane zester, zest the orange making sure not to go into the white pith. Juice the orange and place the zest in the juice to bloom.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the orange juice and zest, yogurt, soymilk, egg substitute and vegetable oil.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until just combined. Do not overmix.
- Fold in the cranberries and chocolate.
- Pour the batter into a greased 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.
- Bake the bread for 55 – 65 minutes until a tester inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean and the bread starts to pull away from the edges of the pan.
- Remove from the oven and cool on a rack for 15 minutes and then run out of the pan to finish cooling.
