HAPPY NEW YEAR!
It has been a really long year. We have traveled a decent amount - we started off the year with skiing in Vermont and then a month later we were skiing in Tahoe, which we followed up with a trip to Austin the following weekend. And then we had a few low key months before we headed to France and Belgium in May. Then there were trips to visit the family in Cincinnati, Maryland and Philly. Last but not least, my mother and I went on a girls' trip to Hawaii. By December I had almost nothing left in the tank and I knew I would probably have to work so we hunkered down in NYC for the holidays. We already have a number of trips planned for early 2014 (starting with a trip to Arkansas in less than 2 weeks and then skiing in Whistler in early March) And work was crazy again, but I guess I should just accept that work will always be crazy (at least during the last quarter of the year). I worked until 3am on Sunday night, which basically meant that when Alex asked me last week what I wanted to do for New Years Eve I told him that literally all I wanted to do was sit on the couch with him and Brady and a bottle of champagne. I was way too pooped to even think about making plans for NYE. And I wanted to cook dinner because I haven't been able to really plan and execute a meal in forever. Those were my only requests. What little cooking we have done in the past few months has been last minute and scavenger-esque. It involves a lot of opening the fridge and realizing there is absolutely nothing in there and then throwing together what we can. And the very few meals that we planned in advance ended up being ok, but nothing special. So I was a little discouraged and a little over it. And given how much I was working and how little time I had to play around on the blog, it seemed like a total waste of time to blog about those paltry few and merely passable meals. It got to the point where I told Alex that I was thinking about shutting down the blog entirely. But the dishes that we cooked on New Years Eve (both the soup we made for lunch and the roast chicken we made) were really good. And I got a few new cookbooks that I have high hopes for (including Smoke & Pickles by Edward Lee). So my goal for 2014 is to cook when I can, post recipes when I can (and when I think the dish was worth it) and leave it at that. I'm hoping that 2014 will be a little slower at work so I will have more time to plan meals in advance and make recipes that interest me. I'm also hoping to have more time to try new restaurants (although we did a pretty good job of that this year) and return to some oldies but goodies. Anyway, this was all a slightly meandering and long-winded way of saying I'm sorry that I haven't been around and that I will try to do better next year. Here's to 2014!
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