You may have noticed it's been a very quiet few weeks around here. I won't make excuses. I havent felt like doing it. The last month has been very hard and will remain hard through the rest of October. I can't promise many articles until maybe mid November.

First off, my husband was let go from his job in mid September. This put a lot of strain on us and my extra projects, mostly that I cannot afford to purchase new cookbooks each month or buy into food experiments while we need to save as much money as possible to make sure we can survive up until we move to the new job he just got, which is in Green Bay Wisconsin, and into the time after we land in our new home.

That's the big one. It will impact what we do around here on Eating Normal for a few months, and up until we are unpacked in our new home, it means that not a lot of fresh content will be coming up. I have plans to highlight the great food and great people that have made my experience as a cook and an eater a good one in the state of Delaware before we depart, so keep an eye open for that.

Food waste has been an especially big concern here in the Eating Normal kitchen knowing that I cannot take everything in my fridge and pantry clear across the country. I don't think I have ever seen the fridge as empty as it is in this moment. How do I use everything I have neglected for likely a whole year? What if I don't want to eat the things I see on my shelves? Do I have to eat it? All those answers and more are to be explored during the time I give myself to write.

Speaking of writing, November is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. I have participated successfully for three years, and I don't intend to stop this time around. I let this blog slip last year. It's likely I will be unemployed for the whole of the event if I don't get lucky. Maybe this time around I can make the big goals I set for myself to help other writers get through the month with quick meals and healthy snacks to keep butts in chairs and fingers on keyboards.

I can't say with any certainty when things will get back to normal around here. We are so often knocked off schedule by one thing or another that there may not be a normal, but one post in almost four weeks certainly isn't it. 

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Hey Ya'll. It's been a few weeks. Here's what's going down.

Lightbox Challenge = Complete

I met my goal of posting for the whole month of May. So here we are, almost two months into regular posting, and I will be purchasing a lightbox for myself. I love this whole thing I've committed to in the last few weeks. It keeps me motivated, and this feels like the culmination of everything I've done my whole life. Weird how a website can light up your life so much, right? Here's hoping that lightbox makes for some better photos.

Support

Shout out to my mama-in-law for being one of the first Ko-fi supporters. Every scent is going toward what I do here. Anything submitted to Ko-fi will go toward gear or books to help me keep eating normal.

But there are other ways to support without cash donations. Like us on facebook, share a post, leave a comment, tweet me out. Encouragement and sharing of what I do is so valuable. Even your visits to the website making my little traffic ticker trend upward makes me feel good about what I'm doing.

Domain

I'm sure you noticed, but I bought the domain eating-normal.com! No more .weebly tag. This is a big step for me and an additional away for keeping to my goals. Moving forward, there will be a slow but continuing personalization, right down to logo design and code changes. I am very proud of what I am creating.

Digital Food Series

Food media has seen a tremendous growth in my lifetime. My love for cooking grew from a near religious viewing of the Food Network channel, so strong that when I got my wisdom teeth taken out I did nothing but watch it. My aunt was annoyed me. She just wanted to take care of me when I was away from home and in pain, and I filled her house with the sound of Guy Fieri talking about flavortown.

But Food Network has helped spawn a sprawling digital landscape of food blogs, dedicated youtube channels, and podcasts. It can be hard to navigate, and I am here to help. I've compiled a list of my favorite food medias to consume just for you. I plan on having this done before the end of the month, but depending on other posts it may run into July. I want to share my recent discoveries with you. I've been learning so much from the food scene online.

Cookbook of the Month

You may have noticed I haven't posted weekly discussion of my cookbook of the Month, Six Seasons. I'm going to do things a little different this week and do a long form review toward the end of the month after cumulatively working through the book. The more I work on this blog, the more the content evolves and changes. It's leaving me less room to do 'weekly' recipes out of the cookbook and discuss them as they come. A once a month post seems like a more me-friendly and reader friendly experience.

All posts are now categorized! You can see them in the menu on the right side. Restaurants will be categorized by state moving forward now that I am travelling more often. This will just be easier for everyone.


The Lightbox Challenge

In an effort to improve content on this blog, I want to buy a lightbox for better photography of finished meals. But here's the thing: I know I have been inconsistent since I started this blog almost two years ago. I will not buy the lightbox until I have maintained a consistent posting schedule for the month of May. 

Integrated into the lightbox challenge is the purchase of my own domain name. The goal is the same. Post all month, buy domain.

Recipe Lab:  AKA My House

My own recipes will be coming to the website more frequently as I get comfortable playing with a new scope of ingredients. Dinner is a fun playground and my husband a lab rat to my cooking whims. My intention is to talk about the things I'm working on turning into a coherent recipe, and then post a coherent recipe involving those things toward the end of the month. This may not be a common thing. I am all over the place with ideas about what I want to do with this blog.

Vendor Highlights

Farmer's Market season is back. I'm in a new place with a new market and new vendors to meet and sample. Whenever I feel like it, I'm going to highlight a vendor that I am particularly drawn to each time I visit the Milford Farmer's Market. Local food is important, and I want these farmers and craftsmen to thrive in any way they can. I may be just a teeny food blog with like two regular readers, but it's something.

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As of April 26, I am a full blown pescetarian. I never really thought I would be one of those people to put eating restrictions like this on myself because I typically love steak and chicken and pork and bacon and all of it, really. My stomach, however, does not. The effect of eating livestock and poultry has been cramping and nausea at the worst of times. Very rarely did I get out of a meal without side effects.

So here I am, eliminating it from my diet. The good news is that I’m living on the Delmarva peninsula, surrounded on three sides by fertile fishing and crabbing ground. The bad news is that I am really going to miss chicken wings. Still, I am sure this change of diet will be good for me.

Not only have I had a lot of stomach trouble the last few years, but my weight has steadily climbed without reaching a plateau. Maybe my diet is less to blame than factors like exercise and medication, but it IS part of the equation. Cutting out red meat and poultry will force the focus of my diet more on healthier proteins like fish and meat substitutes like tofu (which I have learned to love lately).

I have been a lazy pescetarian for the last month or so to see if it had any real effect on how I felt. I have decided that it has. So I am entering a new chapter of my life both as a home cook and an eater-- no meat. The strangest part is how different my grocery cart looks at the end of the trip. I have never bought so many veggies at one time in my life.

What this means for Eating Normal is that the recipes and the food featured from restaurants will change. You’ll see more fish and more vegetarian options here. We started trending toward this the last tme I was active, featuring one vegetarian meal a month for the failed Cookbook of the Month (which is coming back).

Here’s to a healthier me!

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