Last entry in the blog for a while

Okay, so I am going to take a break from this blog for a little while.  Life is so so busy right now, with work, with the travel coming up, with the press releases and sales stuff, and with all our summer plans, that I am not keeping the blog up the way I would like to do.  I feel like I am short changing myself on the blog and not giving it my all and I don't want to do something if I cannot give it all my passion.  So I have decided I am going to take a mini vacation from writing the blog for a month or so until things calm down a little and I can devote to it the attention it deserves.  I hope you understand.  I will miss writing every day, since it has been almost a year since I started this blog, but right now there is just too much going on!! A great indicator of a full life for me, but not nearly enough time to do a good job on this blog.  So I am signing off until August.  Keep cooking, keep loving food and soon I will be back with more wild food adventures.  I hope you will still enjoy hearing of my tales when I return!  Enjoy the summer sun, have a bbq and think of me and I will see you all in August!! Happy cooking!

Press release time again

Today I have been working on my next press release for the cookbook.  After having spent some time with my colleagues from work in the marketing department, I know I need to keep regular communications about the cookbook out to all media.  It is amazing what you can learn just by taking some work colleagues out to lunch.  I think I know have the formula for writing press releases done but the trick I still have to learn is how to make them so enticing that reporters pick them up and turn them into articles.  Seriously how interesting can you make a press release about a cookbook?  But when I think about all the press releases out there, about new bolts and nuts, mixers, chemical compounds, or scholarly research to name a few, I figure a cookbook isn't really that bad.  Interesting to some, not to others.  I just have to find the hook these days that will generate some interest.  At least I have my profiles set up with a variety of press release distribution services so that saves some time.  Let's hope that this time the one I am currently writing is so interesting, exciting, life changing that newspapers around the world will pick it up and make it front page news!

Enjoying wonderful birthday parties

It was a wonderful day yesterday.  Well to begin, we have to clean the house from top to bottom.  Moving from a condo to a house, wow, there is so much more to clean, extra floors to wash, carpets to clean, two bathroom, rec rooms, laundry rooms.  I think we clean the house for four hours and if I haven’t said it before, I hate cleaning.  I hate everything about it but I do love a clean house afterwards. Unfortunately with me no amount of promised reward at the end makes me any more interested in getting started!  But in the end it was clean and looking beautiful.  My guy had even worked late at night and painted the ceilings and new crown moulding in the rec room so we are now ahead of schedule with the renovations.  We hadn’t planned on working on the lower level until the fall.  I kept telling him not to worry about it but honestly he can just keep going and going and never seems to tire, well I think he is tiring now, but mostly I think he wants the house done.  And he got extra incentive.  A house just six doors down went up for sale and had an open house.  Of course my guy poked through and they haven’t done near the renovations we have done already and they are asking 80K more than we paid for our place.  I really hope they get it!  Instantly raises the value of our place and we have only owned it for four  months now!  Anyway, in the afternoon my parents came down for a visit and we got to show off the new house to them.  Funny how even now you look for your parents’ approval!  Mom and I left and did some shopping in the afternoon at the mall, she buying some new blouses and Capri pants and me buying fresh bread and wine for dinner.  You can see where our interests lie!  It was great to be able to walk up to the mall, shop, talk and spend time together just us.  Then back to the house for Dad’s birthday dinner.  I made his summer favourites, dilled potato salad, pasta salad, tossed garden salad, Dijon devilled eggs, grilled asparagus with balsamic vinaigrette and grilled chicken breasts, oatmeal honey crumbled apple pie and vanilla ice cream for dessert.  It was a great meal and lively conversation.  They left by ten; I think we were in bed by ten fifteen!!  Today, we are going to paint the rec room walls and then head to my brother’s for my nephew’s birthday party.  Lots of birthdays this time of year in my family!  And we decided yesterday that my guy and I would host the family Christmas eve party this year at our new house!  I am pretty excited about it.  It is the first time we will actually have space to do it.  How pathetic is this, I am already dreaming about all the things I can prepare for the evening to eat!!  I seriously need help!

A busy weekend ahead

A busy evening and weekend ahead for me!  Later this afternoon it will be a frenzy of shopping for birthday gifts, wrapping, groceries and of course the weekly trip to the hardware store.  We are going to have my parents down tomorrow for most of the day and it will be the first time they have seen the house mostly finished so I am pretty excited about their visit.  We are going to celebrate my father’s birthday with a meal and a cake.  I am not sure what I will make but I will have to certainly make one of his favourite.  Somehow dates are going to be involved!  It will be nice to have the day with them and then Sunday it is all about painting and working on the rec room.  And I still have to get my head around the fact that we are leaving for Amsterdam next week. So much happening so quickly.  And a special congratulations to our friend Christian on his new job!  An exciting new phase of life beginning for him and his family!

Rachel Ray - want a guest?

Today feeling back in control.  Well mostly in control. It is amazing to me how much work you can get done either at work or at home by squeezing things into those little cracks between everything else you are doing.  I got my baseboards painted, cleaned the house some, did some cooking and still had some time to watch a bit of television.  Today I am flying through my work which I love and pretty soon I will be on my way to dinner with my best friend.  I spent some time this morning on the subway thinking about what to do during the summer to promote the cookbook and I think I may try reaching out and see if I can get the cookbook featured on either a cooking show or talk/variety show. I was thinking it would be great to have it discussed and maybe even a recipe prepared on the show.  You know like one of those classic Julia Child episodes, only cooking my recipes.  I could be the laughing jolly chef on television bantering with the host and whipping up a delicious meal for the viewers.  I am not sure if it will help at all with sales but it would be great fun to do. Now if I can just get myself on Rachel Ray!!

Life is moving too fast

I have lost my routine of writing every day.  Work has been so crazy busy the last few days I have hardly had a moment to myself at work and then I get home and I have been busy painting baseboards, unpacking, cooking, general tidying up that I have fallen into bed each night exhausted.  On top of that I have been sick I know and am only now just starting to feel better.  But I can tell I am still tired, I am short tempered and impatient at work, unable to focus effectively and don’t feel like I am in control this week.  Double that with all the ideas swirling in my head to promote the cookbook and the stress of having no time to do them and I am swamped.  I can hardly imagine that we are leaving next week on vacation to Amsterdam and then a small holiday in Madrid while I am at work there and then back, a quick trip to New York for work and suddenly it is the second half of July and where has the summer gone.  I find now to make plans with friends you have to book everyone including us months in advance.  How did life get like this?  Tomorrow night I am taking a night off and having dinner with my best friend.  Outside of phone calls we haven’t seen each other in almost five months, between competing busy schedules.  To me that just tells me I have my priorities wrong.  Anyway enough excuses and enough complaining!  I truly hope if you are reading this your life is full and you have time to enjoy.  I feel like mine is full but where is the downtime to enjoy it!

Martha Stewart eat your heart out

A Monday blog.  Yesterday turned out to be quite a good day.  First thing we were up early and drove up to my parents, stopping for bagels and coffee on the way.  We celebrated Father’s Day with Dad and it was really nice just to drop into my parents’ home, relax, catch up, with no big formal dinner to have.  Just family and relaxing.  We headed home after lunch and spent the afternoon doing touch ups on paint, and unpacking.  We set up the living room in anticipation of our new couch arriving, put together my new tripod Pottery Barn photographer’s lamp and unpacked countless boxes.  Hanging pictures on the wall and arranging our memories has suddenly almost instantly made our house our home.  Easy quick pizza with tomatoes, spinach and mushrooms for dinner and then an early bed.  A perfect day.  And great for me as well, since I am almost certain I am fighting a cold!  Again!  Or still!  Tonight, just heading out to get some pictures framed and then painting baseboards.  Oh I wish I was back at the days of transcribing recipes!!!