Hello there, as you might have noticed things around here are getting a little livelier, lemmetellya what happened.
In the process of finding a new place to live, I also had to set up a place to stay as a backup for 11 days, (odd, yes, long story not being told). The house I was staying at is amazing and has an awesome kitchen. They also have cable for net access, but no television service (young kids around). So I was going to have a TV break and knew that likely meant I’d spend a lot more time online, and specifically on facebook. With such an amazing kitchen at my disposal I didn’t want to waste the my time there so I decided to take a break from fb, and knowing myself too well; I had to deactivate my fb account that way I was less likely to try and check it.
Armed with time and solitude, I set out to stock up ingredients for a baking extravaganza. I was going to work on converting some recipes into gluten-free and vegan versions as part of a business idea I’m working on. So I get there and I start researching gluten-free formulas trying to find the ones I thought would work well. Found a few, but I was missing an ingredient or three so I set out to find them and some were harder to find than others. I spent a couple of afternoons searching for things and along the way I bought stuff for dinner that night.
After my first night turned into a partial bust and my second day still searching for a couple of things. I decided to write about what I was cooking that night. The beer braised oxtail, posted earlier this week. I wrote down what I was doing while cooking and posted it after it was done cooking and it had been tasted for nommy-goodness.
Third day have all the ingredients, picked up some things to make a salsa verde for the oxtails I planned to make tacos with and along the way I found cuitlacoche which I’d wanted to play with for a long time. Get back to the house and realize I’ve not seen any sort of baking gear, no mixers, no blender (for mixing gf blends), and yes I could do this all by hand, but I’ve this dinner to make, that’s taking a big part of my time…
By this time, I’ve got so much stuff of mine at this house, that’s it’s going to take 2 bike trips to haul it home, there’s no way I’m hauling anything else over. So I spent the evening noodling around my head while also writing up the recipe for that salsa verde and posting the tacos OMFG those amazing tacos I made. After dinner I felt a twinge of fb withdrawal and went over to Tumblr instead. I have a food tumblr called “Chaz French’s Food Things” It’s primarily my food porn site but I hadn’t been posting to it for months and months, started posting a few things like links to the recipes on my site but also other food stuff I was finding.
At this point in my stay, I was realizing that while cookies weren’t happening, writing was, cooking was, creation was, sharing was, my stress was way down, I was sleeping earlier and better. That’s when I pretty much knew facebook was a goner. I decided to switch mental gears for the week and not feel bad about not getting any baking done, I was getting a lot of other stuff done that is just as important to me and my future happiness. I made some plans for how I wanted to use the rest of the week, scoured food porn for ideas and inspriations, wrote stuff down. I took a lot of notes, and scribbled out some flavor thoughts. Today I picked up two fresh new composition books (thank fsm for the 99c store). One is labeled Savory 2012, the other Sweet 2012. I pulled out my notes, looked at the ideas and flavors I wanted to play with and chose one of the savory ones. twenty minutes later I’d written the entire recipe out (long hand, bitches), including method. As soon as payday comes and I can afford the ground lamb, I’ve got a fully written recipe to test. I took a break, made some pasta primavera from today’s farmers market produce finds, came back, chose a sweet idea involving baking and blood oranges, and have a second recipe written out and ready for testing.
My facebook account remains deactivated. At some point over the next couple of whatevers, weeks maybe, I’ll reactivate it, announce my impending departure with contact info for friends to connect via gtalk, email, and twitter. Then I’ll convert my account to a page so I can use facebook’s promotional aspect for my blog, my tumblr, and my adventures in culinary bliss.
Sometimes we don’t get what we want out of an experience, but we find what we need instead.
Chaz~
PS to my facebook friends: Please share this, maybe others will be encouraged to find a better bliss. I’ll be in touch soon.
