Well, hi.

It's been a while.  Over a month, actually.

I didn't mean to take that long of a hiatus, but my life has been kind of moving along at a pace faster than I can keep up with, so I let the non-essential activities slide by the wayside in order to continue to be able to handle the important things.  You know, work, eating, paying bills, sleeping.  That kind of thing.

The move back home as officially been completed, and R. is safely off to his internship.  It's going to be a very long six months of only being able to see each other on occasion when our schedules line up (if it ever happens.  I'm crossing my fingers!), if the two months where he was back in California were any indication.  I miss him. He did, however, leave me the pancake mix and chocolate chips.  He did this while knowing full well how terrible I am at making them.  I'm going to take this as a sign that he'll be back for them.

Most days, I work.  Which means breakfast in the morning, a packed lunch of whatever I can grab while rushing in the morning, and dinner of some kind.  My job doesn't allow me the ability to snack at all, which means I've had to adjust my eating habits since snacking was one of the main ways I was able to keep hunger at bay, and continue to make smart eating choices.  That is, when the snacks were smart to begin with.  But now I've learned to adjust to three meals a day, not overloading one or the other, and keeping things healthy.  A sandwich for lunch, or leftovers, possibly some rice with chicken and salsa verde and a few Babybel cheese wheels melted in.  Breakfast is oatmeal mixed with greek yogurt for protein, and dinner is usually a protein and carb, and a vegetable if I can get my hands on it.  All well and good.

I admit that there are downfalls.  Like the fact that even though I know I get lunch, I never really know when I'm going to lunch -- so it could be earlier or later than I expected.  If it's earlier, I'm starving by the time I get off work, and stopping by Chick-fil-A or Great Wraps is a much more appealing option for dinner than coming home and wasting time cooking.  Take time to cook while hungry, or have instant gratification of waffle fries in mouth?  It's a difficult conundrum.  There are days when I eat late and I'm still starving.  I have managed to keep the worst of those at bay with an emergency Luna protein bar in my lunch box for desperate times, but there are only so many protein bars you can eat in your life before you hate them. Even tasty ones like Luna bars.

I haven't been very creative with cooking lately, so I don't have any good recipes to share with you.  But I promise that I will, very soon.  I'm working on writing up some of my old standbys that I usually just make from memory.  Some of them I don't think I ever wrote down, I just created.  It's about time I wrote those down.

Life is good, even if the future seems lonely right now.  I'll try not to get sappy on you guys, but I will say that I feel like Bonnie without her Clyde right now.

-A

P.S. R. managed to get my Grandma to allow him to cook in her kitchen.  She refused to sit down or "not help" the entire time, but it's still a pretty amazing feat.  It's things like this that make me love him!

There's nowhere like home.

Julia Child held the policy that she would never apologize for the quality of any of the food she made, even if it was terrible.  My grandmother held much the same ideal.  Never did I ever heard her apologize for quality, only possible lack of quantity.

My grandma’s kitchen table has been a grounding center for my life as long as I can remember.  I have eaten innumerable meals, snacks, drunk hundreds if not thousands of cups of tea, at her table.  While the table itself has changed a few times over the years, it has always been the most prominent feature in her home, a gathering place for family and friends.  Her table acts as an anchor we all could hold onto in the storms of life.

No one uses the actual front door at my grandma’s house.  Everyone uses the kitchen door, a sliding glass door (or the screen door in favorable weather) that allows my grandparents a panoramic view of their potted-plant garden and bird feeders.  The door opens directly into the open kitchen, where my grandparents constantly sit at their wooden table.  From the table, my grandpa can watch the TV that he can’t hear without his headphones, and still keep an eye on the goings-on of the neighborhood through the windows.

My grandma sits in the same chair, and has as long as I can ever remember.  I have whole troves of memories of sitting across from her, learning lessons of life from her experience while her deft fingers worked a needle in her intricate cross stitches.  It’s rare to find her stitching anymore, as she has trouble she won’t admit to with her arthritis and eyesight.

But she is always sitting there, as if she knew I was coming, even if I was trying to surprise her.

From years of homework, to huge cookie decorating fests at Christmas, making batches of Grandma Jelly in the summer, to crying over heartbreaks and disappoints, my life always comes back to her itchen table.  On my worst days, when I feel completely sorry for myself,  I want nothing more than to be sitting across from my grandma at her table, nursing a mug of tea, as she tells me to get over it – “This too shall pass.  It’s not that bad, it could be worse.  You could be dying.”  Tough love, served with jelly and butter sandwiches, a mug of hot tea laced with enough sugar that it’s basically syrup, and a comforting pat on the hand to soften her words.

But she was always right.  The bad things passed, and life went on, eventually improving.  I dread the first time I have to miss a holiday dinner at her house, because I honestly don’t know how to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas without sitting at her table.  Here’s hoping that day is a long way off.

Sometimes where you eat the food of your life is more important than what you eat.
-A