"Simple elegance" is what came to my mind when I opened this site. The site actually looks like two teared strips of paper put on top of each other with the white one serving the main content and the yellow-ish one such complementary information as the site title, categories and the latest articles. This color scheme fits the topic of the site quite well and helps put the user in the complementary mood.

All of this is further decorated with tasty food images including a nice small pumpkin icon image marking each title, cucumber icon for the sidebar home link and chilly pepper icons for block titles in the sidebar which are nicely colored on mouse hover. One suggestion I would make with regards to food images in the sidebar is to perhaps make them rotate between multiple images of food as the visitor refreshes or visits other pages.

Article pages are a somewhat less pleasant view however. The title of articles seems to lose its style and displays as just a plain big link. Furthermore the two square ads within content seem to overlap with the text on some articles and the style of these ads is not adapted to the site's color scheme instead still using the default google adsense look.

It might also be worth checking if the "related posts" list below the articles could be moved a little more to the left. The bullets seem quite close to the border of the site. The spacing between elements below the articles also seems a bit odd; too much space between "share and enjoy" widgets and related posts, between related posts and "leave a comment" title and also between "leave a comment" title and the actual comment form. It all seems a little too spaced out except for the related posts part which could actually use a little more margin between its title and the actual list.

All in all, this is a pretty good design, but the article pages still need some work and polish to make the overall look and feel more consistently pleasant.

Design Rating: 7/10

Focus:

RecipeIdeas.org is quite simply and obviously a recipe resource. The title and domain name are unambiguous and informative. Although it is technically recipes that the site appears to offer this may be conflated with "ideas" given that it may indeed give the user new ideas as to what to cook and how.

Content is well categorized by various types of food such as beef, chicken, pasta, pork and so on, though there is one odd "recipes" category which probably contains recipes which couldn't fit any other or might be mixed. One article is "uncategorized" however which could fit this general "recipes" category.

Overall the focus of the site is clear and consistently followed by its categorization and content so this is a no brainer even without any kind of an introduction or an about page (which always add value, but in this case are less necessary).

Focus Rating: 10/10

Content:

There's plenty of recipes to be found, total of 179 of them as can be conveniently counted from the categories block. The style is simple; a quick affirming introduction, ingredients you need and instructions. Articles are brief and to the point with practically no fluff whatsoever making them easier to digest. Instructions could still however be better presented in step by step numbered list form, especially in cases where there may be more than a few steps to follow. As someone who cooks for myself, I may definitely find this useful.

Content Rating: 10/10

EasyCookingGuide.com is colorful, "organic" and somewhat elegant, but also immediately reveals some issues. Images of food resources in the header is quite fitting. The way they are split by white blinds and the way left sidebar follows the first green image in alignment is what gives it some elegance. Green search box below that looks like the sidebar is also a nice touch.

The most immediately visible issues pertain to overlaps that happen in the sidebar between menus and a mild overlap in the "share and enjoy" area below posts between the "share and enjoy" title and the corresponding buttons. What appears to be happening in the sidebar is that the height of list menu elements is fixed so some menu link titles don't fit in and instead expand to the next one overlapping with the next menu link. A simple solution is to just remove height:16px; from the .nav li a element in CSS.

Regarding the overlap in the "share and enjoy" area below posts it seems to be caused by display:inline; in the .sociable ul element in CSS. It tries to display the title "share and enjoy" and the buttons that follow in the same line and apparently fails. Just removing display:inline; seems to fix the issue. And while we're at posts I would suggest increasing the spacing between posts (last post ending and next post beginning) and perhaps removing that red bottom border or moving it closer to the "share and enjoy" buttons. This should make things a little more elegant.

Category pages and article pages are quite fine though I would really suggest cutting back on those ads. Articles have three large ad squares in them which aren't even styled to fit in (it appears they use default google adsense colors). In some articles this ruins styling of the "share and enjoy" area and sometimes even chops up the article into pieces completely split by the ads (as is the case here).

Different colors of the name, mail and website input fields in the comment form is a nice touch.

It's a little odd that the "previous entries" and "next entries" links at the bottom of the post listings is in what appears to be dutch rather than english as the rest of the site.

Finally, copyright info in the footer doesn't really fit the background. Unlike the site titles in the header which is big and bold the size of text in the header is naturally too small and thin to fit the background with so many colors split with the white strips. Best thing might be to choose one color instead and use solely that or perhaps make a gradient between the current colors which would at least fade more nicely.

Design Rating: 7/10

Focus:

From site domain name and title to its design and article titles there is strong consistency and clarity of purpose of this site as a cooking resource mostly about specific instructions on how to cook particular meals. There is no about page to provide some background info, but it doesn't seem quite necessary given the obviousness of what the site is about. Not much more to say here.

Focus Rating: 10/10

Content:

Articles usually begin with highlights of a particular meal it is about and then proceeds with instructions split into contextual sections corresponding with types of food or main parts of the process. In some articles it may be useful to offer a step by step process in list form rather than strings of sentences in a paragraph (since that tends to catch the eye and is easier to follow, especially when using as a reference), but even as is it should do the job. There are just over 80 articles in EasyCookingGuide.com which is pretty good. That's 80 different meals!

Content Rating: 9/10