So it has been just over three years since we started this blog – our first post was on September 7, 2009! Sally has been working hard getting started on her PhD program, learning all about biochemistry, biostatistics, and cutting-edge nutrition research methods, and so hasn’t had any time in the last couple of weeks to post any new recipes and ratings. She hopes to get back to it soon (she’s got a big test today!), but in the meantime I thought I would share some “summary statistics” about the blog from over the last three years. I spent time this summer creating a spreadsheet with information about all of our posts – dates, titles, categories, ratings, etc. Here’s what I found…
We’ve added 135 posts to the blog since we created it, which averages out to about one every week, or every eight days. Of those posts, 121 have included recipes that we rated on their tastiness, easiness, healthiness, and greenness. Over 99% of these posts were written by Sally about dishes she cooked – my role has been primarily as editor, proofreader, taster, and dishwasher (some of those recipes create several sink loads of all manner of things to wash!). Not a bad deal from my perspective, since Sally’s cooking is fantastic, but given how much Sally doesn’t like doing dishes, it’s worked out pretty well for both of us. 
The posts have included a wide range of different types of dishes – main dishes, side dishes, appetizers, desserts, salads, breads, sandwiches, and soups. No dish received the highest score in all four categories (five out of five), but one did receive three fives and one four (honey crisp apples!), while five received two fives and two fours. These strong performers are listed below:
The distribution of overall scores ranged from 2.25 (chocolate bison cookies!) to 4.75 (honey crisp apples), and was remarkably normal in its distribution (I’m teaching statistics right now so that’s the only reason it comes to mind), which you can see from the figure below. The most common overall score was a 3.75 (the mode!), which 26 recipes received.
Overall, our 121 recipes scored highest in their tastiness (average score of 4.05 out of 5), then their environmentally-friendliness (3.69 out of 5), and then their easiness (3.31). Lowest was their healthiness (3.19 out of 5), which is mostly explained by the delicious desserts that Sally has made over the last three years, from crème brulee to sticky toffee pudding!
While the average healthy score is not as high as the other scores, 13 recipes did receive the highest possible healthy score (5), second only to the number of highest possible tasty scores (18). I’ve listed the top performers in each category below for your reference, in case you want to check them out. I’ve also included the figure below showing the distribution of each of the recipe sub-scores. As you can see, the most common tasty, healthy, and green score was four, while there were an equal number of recipes scoring a three and a four on the easy scale. One interesting statistic is that 90% of the recipes scored either a four or a five on the tasty scale – a testament to how delicious the vast majority of the recipes were!
One last piece of data to share relates to many of you – over the past three years, we’ve received over 775 non-spam comments on our posts! That’s over five comments from real people per post! We’ve really appreciated your support, questions, suggestions, and desire for more recipes and ratings from us – it definitely keeps us going knowing that there are people out there who find our blog to be helpful and interesting. Whether you are friends, family, strangers, fellow food bloggers, health nuts, green advocates, or food enthusiasts, we hope you’ll keep coming back for more great recipes and ideas from TastyEasyHealthyGreen. We know there are a lot of great food blogs out there, some of which have a whole lot more posts than ours, but hopefully we are filling a useful niche that is worth your time to visit and enjoy. Thanks and keep on commenting, and we’ll keep on cooking! Stay tuned for more recipes soon – and maybe Sally even will share some new insights about nutrition she is learning in her classes with us…
Five Chefs = Gourmet Fare!
Happy Anniversary, Sally. Sweet of your, Graham, doing the post for her.
Congratulations!
Angie
What a fabulous summary of the last three years! I can tell you had fun putting all of these stats together!
Great job Graham! AND great job Sally for keeping such a wonderful blog going for three years! I’m always thrilled to receive a notice of a new post! Congratulations and can’t wait to see what’s next! Good luck with your exam and your PhD program!