Overbalanced - ads and websites

Time for a website and this is the next one on my list. I looked at it a while ago and wondered why I had it on the list, and actually decided it wasn't worth a look. However, since then I have wondered a bit at why I rejected it as unworthy of a look, but then thought, well it's relatively popular - it often comes up in the first few results in searches that I make. So I need to think more about it. And one thing that is a thing to talk about is the massive number of ads on every page - which is why I have preserved the small ad window on the Home Page picture above, rather than just deleting it - as you can do.

I say massive and give you as an example this screenshot halfway through a recipe for Orange spritz. Now to be fair I may have chosen a particularly bad example - but on this page - what I can see on the screen at one time. there are two lines of actual text, the end of one picture and the beginning of another. The rest is ads - and the same continues as you scroll through any page on the site. Also to be fair, this is not unique to this website. Virtually all commercial websites these days have the same thing going on - even The Guardian to a slightly lesser degree. Moreover some of them pop up and disappear or start and stop a video, and sometimes the scrolling sort of jumps as a new ad pops up. Whilst I was searching for information about this phenomenon I found that I could adjust a setting in Safari - my web browser - which may have improved things slightly - but actually I don't think has, because the web page shown above is still much the same.

It's an extremely annoying feature of every website that relies on the advertising revenue for their income, and thus runs the risk of so turning off the reader that they will leave your site. As I am often tempted to do on countless similar websites - most of which also have virtually the same design which is very boring and not very adventurous. I think Wordpress is guilty of some of this, but maybe people are just unadventurous when it comes to the look of their website.

Obviously most of us appreciate that small business, and website creators such as this one need the money, and that therefore some advertising is necessary. I think when the advertising just stayed in a column at the side of the content we were tolerant. But now that it seems to appear after every few lines of text or every picture it becomes extremely off-putting - particularly when, for some reason, the ads are almost repulsive - like the one telling how to lose a hanging belly.

It's also confusing. Sometimes the subject matter of the ad is similar to what you are reading, and for a moment you might think the ad is part of the article. Rare I know but it happens.

Then when you finally get to the recipe - yes I know you can jump to it if that's all you are interested in - I have recently noticed that this one - and many others, now have an ad -in this case repeating the hanging belly thing - which is another irritant - on the recipe itself, although to be fair - I have just checked - if you print it out you do not get the ad.

And note that internal ad to hand over your email address so that the recipe can be sent to your email address, so that you can then be bombarded with 'interest-based advertising'.

This particular website:

"Christina’s Cucina is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associate Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com." which means that, as she states in each recipe: "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases."

She also has sponsors - listed on her Work With Me page whose products are mentioned every now and then with links to their websites - as in this recipe for Orange spritz:

"Check out the oranges that are in season via Melissa’s Produce." or "a good Prosecco (like La Marca)"

And she has a Shop page where you can find some of those products and her e-books.

And right at the bottom of each page it tells us that this is A Raptive partner site. Raptive being a company that helps websites with monetising their site. I occasionally get people emailing me offering their services to get me more readers. But I'm a lost cause as I really don't care. I could do more myself to make myself more well-known but frankly can't be bothered.

All of which sounds very critical - but I understand that if you want to really make a go of a foodie blog, then you need to somehow get yourself noticed aand also earn money. I wonder if, once you have been noticed and have millions of followers whether you still need those ads? I checked out Recipe Tin Eats, which is hugely successful and yes she still has ads, but mostly down the side of the screen, although there is the very occasional one in the middle of the text. However I did notice that, possibly because I changed that setting in Safari, there are a couple of blank spaces in the text - was that a space for a popup ad?

Maybe Christina is conscious of the annoyance because she also states in her About piece:

"No matter what I do, there has to be the component of quality or else I won’t use it, make it or in the case of food, eat it. I say “no” to companies much more often than not, and only work with those I feel are top notch. Some blogs I see are virtual advertising sites. Every single post is sponsored, and the product is always the “best ever”! That’s not for me. I think people lose credibility when they are consistently promoting a different product."

So who is Christina, who has some 700,000, on average, unique vistors to her website each month? A not inconsiderable number.

Her name is Christina Conte Wartinbee, born of Italian parents. Her father was born of Italian parents who had migrated to Glasgow. Her mother was born in Italy, but her parents, too migrated to Scotland. Christina's father ran a fish and chip shop in Glasgow and her mother decorated wedding cakes amongst other things. When Christina was nine her parents migrated to Michigan in the US where she lived until she entered graduate school in San Diego, California where she lived with some Korean friends and with Filipino neighbours. She now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, an audio engineer, and has two children, now grown and living elsewhere.

So how did she come to be writing this blog? Well it seems she has always loved food and learnt to cook from her maternal Nonna Chiarina - shown here - and her mother of course, but she has no cooking training. In fact she has two degrees in psychology and was a social worker focussing on parenting for a time, and also worked in a photo lab for six years. I think she takes most of the photographs on the website, and has apparently won awards for her work.

It is slightly unclear why she began the blog other than a vague statement about a turning point in her life, in 2011, when some friends suggested she start a blog. It was a struggle at first coming to grips with all the technicalities of that, but since then she has maintained a high profile for her blog, and also for doing things like judging various food competititons and winning some herself. So she can now describe herself as:

"an international food judge, recipe and content creator, afternoon tea consultant, and travel writer."

She travels a lot and one whole section of the blog is dedicated to travel. And she also has published at least one e-book.

So what about the food? She states:

"Having a unique perspective from British, Italian and American viewpoints, I see the best and worst of each culture and cuisine. Let me share the best of each with you. Let’s put aside the boxes of cake mix, processed ingredients, faux-chocolate products (like Hershey’s), non-dairy whipped topping, and cook and bake with REAL ingredients. I promise you that it’s just as quick and easy, but with better tasting, healthier results! ...

I’m a label reader: if I can’t pronounce it, if I don’t know what it is, if the ingredient list looks like a page from the Bible: I just put it back on the shelf. No corn syrup, aspartame, propylene glycol or any other chemicals in my food"

I should also say that she is quite vociferous about other writers not acknowledging sources of recipes even if is just their mother, but particularly if it is a published recipe. Not all of her recipes are original, but if not she does indeed acknowledge that fact.

Each recipe is accompanied by lots of photographs showing the process, a few words about it - maybe some personal history, maybe just where it comes from. But brief. The recipes are also not exciting or original in the sense of all of those celebrity chefs and recipe creators out there. Some might say not interesting. I mean - Egg and chips with Heinz baked beans as shown here? It's not really a recipe is it, but it is a typically British dish from poor homes such as mine - we often had this for dinner - to Transport caffs and some pubs. But yes, it is good.

Another British dish that we used to eat at home as children is Steak and kidney pudding, but she, probably quite rightly assumes the Americans wouldn't fancy the kidneys - well we didn't much either - and so has left them out so that this is just called Steak pudding. She claims it as British pub food, and it probably was, but now that I think about it I don't think I have ever eaten a meal in a British pub. Certainly not in my youth anyway. It is, as she says incredibly simple - just a beef and onion stew, but the different thing - and I think only the British do this - is that it is cooked within suet pastry in a pudding dish and steamed. Not a dish with a good reputation. Delia has a recipe but I can't find any from any other of my British favourites, although Nigel has a sausage and bacone one. Not the same is it?

Then there is Stracceti (Italian steak salad with arugula and Parmigiano Reggiano), the original source for this being an Italian cousin who introduced her to it in Rome. From the way she continues with the recipe however, one assumes she has based it on tradition but made it her own and along the way there is a fair amount of product placement - particularly with the cheese, the oil and the balsamic vinegar.

From America we have San Francisco clam chowder (without cream) presented in a carved out sourdough loaf as you can see here. She explains the difference between and East coast version and the San Francisco one - simply the way it's served - on the East coast in a bowl or a cup and in San Francisco it's bread.

Another thing that she does in her recipes is to occasionally refer you to one or more of her other related posts - in this case a Corn chowder, Cullen skink, Homemade pancetta as well as a bakery, one of her travel articles on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, a Napa Valley wine tour and somebody's article about creating a sour dough starter.

From the Phillipines - remember those Filipino neighbours in San Diego? comes Filipino lumpia with garlic and black pepper vinegar sauce which as you can see are a kind of spring roll. She says of them:

"Don’t ask me why they are so incredibly tasty as there’s really not much to them besides lots of veg, especially cabbage!"

Which is not exactly a come on is it?

And last of all - a totally original recipe - the one that won her that Scottish porridge competition back in 2104 - and which she later judged in 2023 - Sticky toffee porridge with oat brittle which I have to say looks more like a dessert than a breakfast dish. And a rather more tempting thing than straight porridge too.

All of which goes to show that if you dig a little deeper into your brain you can always think of something to say about everything - even a website, which in many ways, is perhaps a little ordinary. And yet I know that I have referenced some of her recipes from time to time - probably when I was talking about some classic Italian dish. An Italian American, who somewhere in her website was quite rude about Italian American food. What is it about Italians that, possibly of all the nations on this earth, they are so rigid about how you cook their classic dishes and don't accept that you can fiddle with them? Even dare I say, on occasion make them better.

YEARS GONE BY

July 18

2025 - Are we British ashamed of cream buns?

2024 - Spaghetti pie, cake, slice ...

2023 - A dish to make if you have a spare bottle of Crème de cassis

2022 - Ignoring writer's block tricks

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - Forgotten celebrations

2018 - Tiramisù - common but not to be scorned

2017 - On holiday

2016 - Breakfast