Hi, Reader!
​

“Yours is one of my go-to sites when I need something special.”

Today’s email is going to be a little different from our usual newsy fare. No salad, dinner or ridiculously easy dessert today either.

Instead, we wanted to pull back the curtain a bit and talk about something that’s changing quickly in our online world- and why it matters to those of us who love good food and dependable recipes enough to spend our days producing it....as well as you, dear reader.

“The way you approach recipes gives me the confidence to try things I’ve never made before or haven’t attempted in years.”

By now you’ve probably noticed that Artificial Intelligence, or 'AI', seems to be everywhere these days. While there are certainly some not great uses for it, some of it is really is pretty darn amazing.

Obviously we use tech all the time around here at The Café and certainly aren’t opposed to anything that makes life a little easier! But AI is also changing the way we find information online, including recipes.

The Shift

For years, if you searched for “the best raspberry coulis” or “an easy dinner for company,” you’d get a list of unique and original websites to explore. You’d click through, find a recipe that looked enticing and then, somewhere along the way, discover the person behind it.

But look what's happening now...

Instead of food creator's recipes popping up, the search engine is first offering a recipe it made up on it's own that's never been tested with real food in a real kitchen!

Did you know there's a term floating around for those AI-generated recipes? “Frankenstein recipes” are recipes pieced together from bits of information gathered from different sources.

The ingredient list might look perfectly reasonable. The directions might sound right. But did anyone actually make that exact recipe from beginning to end?

Nope!

Our team knows there are SO many little things you only discover by standing in a kitchen and doing it.

Is the batter too thick?

Does that substitution really work?

Does it need another five minutes in the oven?

Can you make it ahead?

Will it freeze well?

Those are the details that turn a recipe from something that sounds good into something you can confidently serve to your family and friends.

We experienced this ourselves a few weeks ago when I asked my husband to smoke a few racks of ribs for a party we were throwing. All day he tended to them, the smells wafting from his smoker were heavenly, but when he went to serve the foil wrapped ribs they were totally overdone and inedible. So sad! It was at that moment that he realized his error- in the name of time he grabbed an AI generated recipe that looked similar to the one he normally uses. Whoops!

Unlike that recipe, every recipe you find on The Café has actually been made in a real kitchen- many, MANY times!

What does that process look like? Glad you asked....

The Café Process

For every recipe produced at The Café Chris has mixed the dough, tasted the sauce, watched the timer, made adjustments and, more times than she’d probably like to admit, dumped a whole batch and started all over again when something wasn’t quite right.

Along the way she tries to anticipate the questions you might have when you make it in your own kitchen and then she asks her local 'guinea pigs' to give her feedback. The question 'is it blog-worthy?' is one that's well known to anyone who's in her orbit!

Once that whole process has finished, she and Scott photograph it...in their very own kitchen. Sounds simple right? Well...let's just say that might be the at times most frustrating part of m the process. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to get the perfect shot.

And then, dear reader, you become part of the process too. You make the recipes, ask questions, leave reviews and tell us what happened in your kitchen.

And we get sweet emails and comment like this one:

There are real people on both sides of the screen- how awesome is that?!

The Proof is in the Pudding

Perhaps the best evidence of the importance of real recipe creators comes from YOU. Over the years, we’ve received thousands of comments like these:

“Yours is one of my go-to sites when I need something special.”

“The way you approach recipes gives me the confidence to try things I’ve never made before or haven’t attempted in years.”

“Every single one I have tried is a winner… You make us all look like terrific cooks!”

These comments encourage us that The Café is exactly what we want it to be: a place you can come knowing that someone has already done the testing, tweaking and troubleshooting so that when you step into your kitchen, you can cook with confidence and build community right where you are.

Which brings us to one small thing you can do

Have you ever noticed this little button on our site?

Interestingly, Google recently introduced something they're calling Preferred Sources. It essentially gives you a little more say in which websites and publishers you want to hear from.

So, if The Café is one of the places you regularly turn to for recipes you trust, you can now tell Google that you’d like The Café, or any other site, to be one of your Preferred Sources. Click the button below to do it now!

You’ll begin seeing this button in our emails as well as on the site. It takes just a moment, but it’s a simple way to tell Google, Yes, this is a source I want to hear from.

Thank You.

Whether you know it or not there are also things you're already doing to support us like...

Coming directly to The Café.

Clicking on links from our emails.

Saving a recipe.

Leaving a rating or comment when you’ve made something.

Sharing a favorite with a friend.

All of those little things help independent websites like ours continue doing what we’ve loved doing since 2011: creating recipes in a real kitchen for people cooking in real kitchens- so thank YOU!

After all these years, we’re incredibly grateful that you continue to invite us into your kitchens...and we'd sure like to keep it that way!

As always, thanks for reading.

Much love from Asheville,
​Cait and the Café Team​

P.S. Got a question about a recipe? We LOVE hearing from our readers, so just like in the screenshot above, feel free to hit reply to an email, leave a comment or reach out to us on social media. We’ll do our best to find the answer you’re looking for, straight from our real kitchen to yours!

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