The Online CookeryBook

My name is Smedley although my real name is Richard Smith. Smedley is the nickname I’ve had since I was about 9 – why and how I got this name is lost in the dim and distant past though

As the welcome page says, I’ve had a mind to do a foody web site for ages now but like most things, the time it takes to get where you want to be is considerably longer than you initially thought.

My initial intention with this site was to use static web pages and add new ones as and when I updated. After thinking about this for a while, I realised this was never going to work as it’d be messy to update, hugely time consuming and ultimately a ‘sloppy’ solution to the problem.

I decided after a while that I needed a Content Management System to do the hard work for me. As I work in IT – historically a programmer, I decided I ought to learn the scripting language PHP and I set myself the task of writing a Content Management System that would be both general purpose and suitable for The Online Cookerybook.

The result was Viperus CMS which forms the core of this site. Its taken months of work in my spare time to get to this stage (still unfinished but its usable and stable enough.

In terms of my cookery and recipes, they are largely influenced by my addiction and love affair with Indian cookery (although I have not, as yet, been there

) and my travels and holidays.

In my younger years (god, I make myself sound like I’m a hundred when I’m 37

I fell in love with Turkey and backpacked repeatedly around the country on numerous trips. You’ll find my re-creations of the dishes I adored when I was on my travels – although I missed my curry something rotten after several weeks without it!

Recently I’ve also fallen in love with Greece and have been there yearly since 2000 and my cooking is also influenced by the dishes I had there. Thus far I’ve been to Zante, Kefelonia, Samos and Crete. I was so impressed with Panormos in Crete that I even did a little website about it that you can visit at http://panormos.skinsuit.net.

Other places that I’ve visited that have influenced my cooking are Morocco and Egypt, so you’ll see recipes from these countries too.

You can email me directly here

Smedley

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