Angela P Ricci

One of the greatest pleasures my mother used to have was to be with family and friends around the table, talking — pretty loud, by the way —, laughing and enjoying her delicious meals. She was very proud of what she cooked, and to see everybody enjoying her cooking was very important to her.

In 2007 she started a blog in Blogspot, called “A Cuca” (“The Master Chef”) because my son insists that I write a book to preserve them (the recipes).

In the beggining of this year, we heard that Blogspot would terminate, and that maybe all she's written would get lost. That was another motivation to preserve her recipes and thoughts after her death.

The Review of the Content

I wanted to preserve what she has written exactly as it was, even if there were typos or punctuation problems, but I didn't want to maintain the blog-like navigation. As a proper blog, it was separated by date, with a page per month, and in a same page we could find random thoughts, full menus or recipes of all sorts.

A review of the content was then necessary to provide an easier way to access the recipes; I had to group them by type and to find a way to determine how to present her free thoughts — portions of text not related to a specific recipe. The idea of a home page in the form of a menu seamed quite straightforward then. This choice proved to be the perfect one, as my family and I we intend to keep adding recipes that are not part of her original blog, but that she kept on paper.

The Logo & Graphical Design

My grand-father was from Autria, and I believe my mother has herited from him a slightly kitsch taste; she loved her little bibelots, most of them travel souvenirs, that decorated the whole house.

Those bibelots were the inspiration for the web site logo and the graphical design.

From one of the small dolls of this little wooden house, I created the logo, trying to convey a romantic, classical style.

The Color Palette

• #B9E4AF
• #E2E4AF
• #E6FFE1
• #90DAC4
• #40BFBF

The color palette came quite naturally to me. I honestly cannot explain why I've chosen these colors; they've just imposed themselves. I believe I was looking for something soothing, reassuring... as moms are.

The Typography

I've spent some time in search for a font. Again, I didn't know what I was looking for, but while searching, I was thinking about her voice, her way of talking, her expressions. When I saw Fraunces, I immediately knew it was the good one.

This time, for me, design was just feeling.

The Illustrations

My mother always appreciated my drawings — of course, she was my mother —, so I thought maybe she would be happy to have some illustrations of mine on the home page, so... I've put them everywhere.