Dear Reader,
Thank you for your patience over this past summer. My blogging has been less than consistent. As you might have seen, I did a lot of traveling! Iceland, England, France, Iowa, Memphis…some of which I haven’t even had the chance to write about yet. And most importantly, I delivered my second daughter to college in Maine to start her first year. She, of course, is totally fine. I, on the other hand, was a bit gob-smacked by feelings. Fortunately, I stopped in Rhode Island, spent a day on a beach and recovered a bit.
I’ve also been working on my own cookbook. Even though I’ve been posting recipes from the beginning of this blog in 2009, actually putting them all together and combing through my files to make sure I didn’t forget anything, along with testing and retesting recipes, has been quite laborious. The stream of my thoughts goes something like this:
Holy crap, this is a lot of work! Why did I decide to do this in the first place? Oh, yeah, my kids kept begging me and I’m tired of having to look up all my recipes online and not finding half of them because of some re-platforming a few years ago…SHEESH. Maybe this will be my last book. When I’m done with this I’m finally going to get back in shape and spend weekends hiking and doing fun things rather than sitting in front of my computer and testing icing recipes. Wait, who am I kidding? What about those other three books I’m working on? Dear lord, I will never get in shape again… Perogies…I’ve got to retest those perogies. They just aren’t quite right yet…
Sometimes life can be exhausting. But what I love the most about doing the cookbook is going back to my old recipes and seeing all of your comments! I love them! Thank you! Keep commenting. It’s very helpful.
Oh, and even though I took a summer off from vegetable gardening, the weeds didn’t. But at least I was reinspired to garden. Seeing Prince Charles’s walled vegetable garden at Highgrove this summer did it in an instant. Of course, he has a pretty large staff of gardeners, too. Too bad I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures there…
And then there is that KonMari book my oldest daughter got me, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up… So many things to clean out, so little time…
Anyway, I hope you all had a wonderful summer! I promise I’ll get back to regular substantive blogging, now that we’re all “back to school.”
Thanks again for hanging in there, and here’s to many great things to come. Including a cookbook in fall 2016!
Maria, with all that is going on in your life, with all the work of Rodale’s, not to mention your own family, home, garden, recipes, etc. I don’t see how you manage to keep sane!! Maybe the recipes and the great food they give you and your readers (plus the comments) give you the energy to do it all!! I am continually amazed by you. Now…. I need to go curl up in my La-Z-boy chair with a good book and relax after reading what all you have done, are doing, will be doing. Whew!!
Can’t wait to read the cookbook! Please include some of my favorites like the Izzy orange float, fried chicken and pepper/tomato sugar vinegar salad. Yum, yum, yum.
You’ve been a busy bee~ looking forward to the new cookbook.
Maria, I have been right by your side ever since you “hatched” . When the world of computers finally put a real human face to a person , I was shocked. You were a real person – not just words in books. (although I do believe you gave your Mom and Dad a run for their sanity at times- lol )
I too, have struggled this Summer with over load and finally even drug myself much too low. After almost becoming blind I am forcing myself to re-structure and have put yoga back on my mat. It is Painful -but I know – so important and yesterday my eyesight “showed” itself once again – so I Urge you to force yourself to do the “back in shape ” thing first.
I love all that you do.
hugs , Linda in Va.