M.I.A.

It's no secret that I haven't posted in a looooong time. Life happens.

My sister is more than halfway through her pregnancy now. We've gone shopping for baby furniture and shopping for maternity clothes, and just plain shopping. For some reason when she and I are together we end up "running a few errands" which ends up as a full day of shopping.

My brother's daughter Charlie had her hip surgery. It was a very long procedure that took a whole day and then a week at Boston Children's Hospital. She's doing well so far, though we had a little infection/pneumonia scare when she was recovering from the surgery. Luckily it wasn't insurmountable. She will be in a very elaborate cast for a while, which means that she can't fit in her car seat, so no visiting Auntie X.

And I got a full-time job for the first time in 2 years. Unfortunately, with 9 hours at work and 3 hours of commute each day, there isn't a lot of time left for cooking and blogging. I'm trying to be more proactive, planning ahead all meals and snacks for the entire week, doing all of my grocery shopping over the weekend, and using the crockpot as much as possible. Unfortunately even the best laid plans get brushed aside sometimes, especially this last week when I put in almost a full day's worth of overtime.

I don't want to give up this blog because I love to cook, but I think I'm going to have to get creative about how a do my blogging. I also have been really disappointed with the performance of my digital camera. The camera is a hand-me-down that I got from my mother-in-law. It was a reasonable camera for taking pictures of the renovation, but since the camera can't focus on anything closer than about 6 feet, it takes pretty unappealing food photos. But I also feel like photos are a very important part of food blogging. We eat first with our eyes, and it was always nicer to have a photograph to give you an idea about what the finished product will look like. Different cooks have different ideas about what "chop" or "thinly" means. Having a picture can give you and idea about what the author intended. So I've decided that one of the first purchases that I'll make with my new found income (once I've paid down some debt) is a new digital camera. I'd like to get the same one that Susan has over at Fat Free Vegan.