Last week I went on a foodie & farm media tour in Kalamazoo, MI. For two days we tasted, saw, touched, and smelled farms and breweries and restaurants. I felt lucky to live in West Michigan. I had a chance to reflect on this blog, and why I do it.
I originally started this thing to cook through all the recipes in Simply in Season. I never did make it all the way but I came pretty close! Over the years I have learned a TON about cooking with vegetables I’d never even heard of. A few weeks ago I was behind a fellow CSA member picking up our produce, and she had no idea what much of the stuff was or how to cook it. She even asked if she could use basil in a salad. I gently suggested that she look up how to make pesto.
It seems like only yesterday I was at the CSA pickup with two bags: One for cooking greens, one for salad greens. Later I’d learn that they are interchangeable. I also laugh about how I originally didn’t know you were supposed to remove the stems from kale – you can imagine some pretty chewy stir fries!
I explored the “real food” blog scene for awhile, then decided that I wanted to produce more of a lifestyle blog. The militant approach was not for me. Over the past few months I have not felt particularly inspired, as you can probably tell by the lack of posts.
After last week, though, I have a renewed sense of purpose. I hope to take a more personal approach in the coming months, possibly combining this blog with my local one, Eat Local West Michigan. I’ve found myself having trouble sometimes deciding which blog is a better fit for certain posts. I think I have it worked out in my mind; stay tuned for a new design!
Thank you so much for those of you who have stuck with me the whole time or have recently joined our little community. Feel free to comment below to let me know what you’d like to see more of. Inspiration? Recipes? Stories? DIY? I’ll leave this with a quote that captures the essence of what I want to share:
Eating with the fullest pleasure – pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance – is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.
Wendell Berry (1934 -)
What's on your mind?