Updates & On Foodblogging

This little hiatus I've been on seems to be dragging on for quite some time.

I have had quite a bit of stuff happen since the start of the new year. I started a new job, for one thing, and so far that is going well, though seniors seem like a finicky bunch to cook for!

I also found a place to move to, and I have been distracted lately with the details of that. I'll be moving between March 15 and April 1 (the place will be vacated by March 15 but it needs some paint & a few odds and ends done to it), and you can read more about my new home here. I haven't lived on my own for about 13 years, and I'm feeling quite daunted by it. The responsibility of it sometimes threatens to overwhelm me. This is a huge step for me, and I know it will be a positive thing, but it's stressful and frightening.

I also have been asked to be a columnist for our local online paper, The Rossland Telegraph. This came about indirectly through blogging, but more directly via my one-woman Owe-lympic protest when the torch relay came through town on January 24. You can see that post here. The protest went great and I was not arrested, and the editor of the Telegraph saw me out there with my sign (I was hard to miss). When he did his story on the torch relay, I sent him the link to my blog post, and after he read a bit of my "every day" blog, he asked if I'd like to write columns for the Telegraph. He invited me to a meeting with the two other guys who run the site and it was a great group of forward-thinking, open-minded people. So, now I have a a monthly column, the first of which was published today, and you can read it here. Well, I am now a columnist twice over, since I am still writing for Bread 'n Molasses (the new article will be coming out in the March 1 issue, and I'll post it when I get my copies of the magazine).

I have been struggling with food blogging lately for a few reasons.

For one thing, I'm trying to lose a bunch of weight, so I have pretty much stopped baking and I am eating what seems to me to be fairly unblogworthy meals. Nothing exciting, nothing overly photogenic. So far, so good: I am down 17lbs and have 24 to go.

I also have been distracted with other life stuff, as detailed above.

Mainly though, time is a factor. It's not the writing of the blog that is the big time consumer, it's the reading & commenting on everyone else's blogs. I subscribe to dozens of food blogs and I love them all! I really do! But I simply have not got the time to read and comment on so many food blogs anymore. And let's face it, there is a lot of give & take in the food blogging community. No one will read this site if I don't read other sites; my traffic proves that.

Food blogging has been a huge lifeline for me these past 3 - 4 years as I've been through a huge episode of MDD and been in recovery for that episode in that time. This blog gave me purpose, structure, goals, interaction, it's produced friendships and connections, and it's been fun, educational, and a great adventure. But I'm not sure I need it in the same way I did while I was so sick. Life is starting to open up for me (knock on wood it stays that way) and I don't have the same need for what food blogging has provided me with in the past.

I am not shutting down the site and I'm not quitting food blogging, but I do need to find a way for it to work in my current life, and I really don't know yet how that will look. It might be in limbo for a while longer as I sort it all out for myself. My traffic is going to suck, which means my advertising revenue is going to suck, but there isn't a lot I can do about that. I have to find a way for this to work for me again, and I don't know how long that will take.

Thanks to everyone for reading & sticking with me. You can always keep up with my general life stuff over at Wandering Coyote. Take care & I will see you when I see you!

Book Review: My China, by Kylie Kwong

I treated myself to this weighty tome for Christmas, being a fan of Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking, which launched my series Cooking with Kylie.

My China's subtitle is "A Feast for the Senes" and that it definitely is.

Kylie is a fourth generation Chinese Australian, born in Sydney. This book is her homage to her Chinese heritage, and recounts her travels through much of China and Tibet, cooking and eating as she goes. She starts off in the village of her ancestors, where she is greeted like a long lost relative and where she cooks up the first of many feasts featuring local ingredients in rustic cooking conditions. My China takes the reader everywhere: up the Yangtze, along the Silk Road, the Great Wall, to the great cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing, to Lhasa in Tibet, and to a place that really fascinates me Xi'an, where the Terracotta Army resides. Interspersed with food history and stories, are cultural vignettes featuring Chinese history written with Kylie's sense of wonder, respect, and enthusiasm.

Kylie's descriptions of her experiences are a feast for all the senses. She is a great writer, I discovered, incorporating sound, taste, touch, and smell into her narrative so well I could imagine myself there with her. And there are plenty of large, colourful photos to feast the eyes on.

There are over 80 new recipes in this book, and I have yet to try them. But I will!

This is a great companion book to Beyond the Great Wall, which I reviewed here. There were many similarities between the two books, both being a great mixture of travelogue, photographs, recipes, and personal stories.

If you are fan of Kylie Kwong and Chinese food, history, and culture, you cannot go wrong with My China!

Recent Lunches

My SIL and I ate at The Greek Oven in Castlegar a couple of weeks ago, and it was pretty good. I had eaten there before once, three years previously, and didn't think it was very good. I had had a calamari meal and the coating on the squid was really salty. I decided to give the calamari another try this most recent visit, though, and it was actually decent. Shan had a chicken souvlaki wrap. The lunch menu at The Greek Oven is varied and inexpensive, and I would definitely go again.

I also had yet another great lunch at the Sunshine Cafe last week, along with my brother & SIL.

I had a chicken burger with mushrooms, bacon and Swiss cheese - yum!

My brother had the special, which was a capicolli pannini.

My SIL had a custom wrap full of all kinds of goodies - she said it was delicious.

Saturday Laughs

My Job So Far...

I just posted about my first three training shifts here, if you are interested.

Quiz: What Diner Food Are You?

I found this at Raincoaster's site.

You Are Chicken Fried Steak

You are bold and fearless. You tend to think big, and that includes eating big. If you're going to go out to eat, then you're going to order something amazing. No salads for you! You live in the now. You figure the future is uncertain, so you might as well just make the best of today. You don't believe in moderation or holding back. You just go for it, consequences be damned.

What Kind of Diner Food Are You?

Blogthings: We'll Tell You The Truth... Someone Has To!

Magazine Monday #58: Energy Balls

I found this recipe in Appeal Magazine, which is published by Save-on Foods. I happened to have some time to kill one day in Nelson, so I bought a copy and sat down with it and a cup of coffee while I waited for my dad to finish his walk. There are some pretty good recipes in here, and this one comes from Shelley Adams, author of the Whitewater Cooks and Whitewater Cooks at Home books (Whitewater is a ski resort is located near Nelson, BC).

Energy Balls

1 cup sunflower seeds, toasted
1 cup sesame seeds, toasted
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup raisins
1 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 cups peanut butter
1/2 cup liquid honey
1 1/2 cups (approx.) toasted coconut, for coating

Combine all ingredients except coconut in a large bowl. Mix everything together well with your hands. You may need a bit more honey to hold it together (I didn't). Roll 1/4 cup scoops into balls and then roll them in coconut. Store in airtight container in refrigerator for up to one week or in freezer for two months.

I didn't put raisins in but instead used some of the dried sour cherries Jodi sent to me in her amazing Christmas package. That worked out most excellently.

This is a winner! Loved these! Super easy to make, and a really nice snack to munch on at work. I will definitely make these again.

Laughs & Stuff...

Still on hiatus. I'm not sure how long this is going to go on...I'm having some issues with food blogging right now. Perhaps I need to write a post to get it all out there, but perhaps not.

My first day on the job was stressful and overwhelming, but the second day went better. I cannot cook with salt there; these are seniors and salt is a no-no. So, the food is bland. No salt = no flavour! I go back for 2 more training shifts next week and start to fly solo the week after. The paycheque is going to be sweet!

Anyway, here are some LOLs for you. Enjoy!

Work Weirdness

We had a whole bunch of twins show up in our shipment of eggs last week! Out of the 12 eggs I cracked for one recipe, I had seven sets of twins. Last Easter was the first time I'd seen twin yolks, and you can find more information about this oddity on a post I did here.

And here is something gross that arrived in an order a few months ago. It looks like the can had been punctured, but no one had noticed, it and it had gone moldy. Ew!

And...I start my new job tomorrow! Wish me luck!

Saturday Laugh

My Big News

Read it here.

Dinner at Drift

Rossland has a fantastic Asian tapas place called Drift, which I finally got a chance to try when my SIL chose to have her birthday dinner there at the end of December. This place is WAY out of my price range (my dinner cost me $40) but it was so worth it because it was absolutely outstanding. Here are some photos from around the table, where we shared a variety of dishes.

This is a mixed veggie tempura - fabulicious.

Seared tuna.

A bowl of pho, complete with tempura veggies - outstanding.

I am still thinking about this sushi roll - a tempura salmon roll with cream cheese and leek that was deep fried...ORGASMIC.

Fish tacos made with halibut.

Edamame.

Beef tenderloin skewers with blue cheese butter.

Tofu something.

Spicy ginger beef rice bowl.

Do Not Mess With the Dairy Milk!

Kraft has purchased Cadbury for $19 billion.

Dear Kraft:

Please to not f*ck up the chocolate, OK? Cadbury's rocks as it is and to start messing with the formulas and recipes would be disastrous. I cannot live without the odd Dairy Milk or the Dark Chocolate Fruit & Nut. Please also don't f*ck with the Creme Eggs and Mini Eggs. Please just don't f*ck with anything.

Thank you.

WC.

Haz Waffles!

For Christmas, I asked for and received a lovely new waffle maker! It was a gift from my SIL's parents, C&R, who have always been very kind to me. The new gadget is a Cuisinart, and let me tell you, it makes awesome waffles! Very easy to use, with an alert that tells you when it's heated up, 5 darkness settings, and an alert that tells you when your waffle has been cooked to perfection! And it is truly non-stick. I love this thing so much I have been eating way too many waffles. For the time being, in order to use up stuff in my pantry, I have just been using pancake mixes, but the recipe book that came with the waffle maker contains some seriously amazing-looking stuff that I cannot wait to try!

Saturday Laughs

This first one comes from one of the best web sites ever, People of WalMart. I highly encourage you to check it out - it's a scream!
These others come from the usual sources.