Over one year and two summers have passed since my last post. During that time, I have cooked and cooked without blogging. Many new recipes came into my life during that time, both from my own kitchen and from the efforts of many fine cookbook authors.
My biggest discovery was using a pressure cooker, lead to overcome my fears of it by the Veggie Queen's blog. My first attempt, a fabulous butternut squash soup, made me a convert. The speed of cooking and the depth of flavor were amazing.
I have experimented with raw foods, increasingly chosen organic fruits and vegetables, and become much fussier about what chemicals and preservatives I am willing to eat. Not many! And in fact, I prefer none.
I spent some time with my son, a farmer with a blog of his own. There is always work to do on a farm or related to the farm. One of my tasks was to help prepare garlic to sell at the market. That was a lovely few minutes I spent with my son sitting on a bench under a huge pine tree in front of his house. It was a cool day with bright sunshine, and we sat with Monk, the dog, cleaning and trimming the garlic and being together. I also thoroughly enjoyed spending time with him selling his farm products at the Capital District Farmers' Market in Menands on a few Saturday mornings.
As much as I like having a photo of each dish to go along with the recipe, I think that was the reason I stopped writing this blog. It is just too much work to plan menus, cook, record the recipe, and photograph the food, serve it and eat it. That is why I have decided to try posting recipes with very few photographs.
New recipes any day now. Meanwhile, I suggest trying the Vegetable Barley Soup as a nearly complete meal by itself.
