Blog Update

 I have been away from my blog for quite a while.  To any of you who read and know me, you undestand why.  If by some chance I am blessed enough to have anyone read this who doesn't know me personally,  I need to explain.   My sweetheart, Coco was quite ill for sometime, and actually began to decline right around the time I began this blog, although I didn't know it at the time, or at least was in denial about it. He got progressively worse through Thanksgiving, and even though I cooked a full meal and for 8 people for the holiday, my heart just wasn't in the blog to update you.  Coco entered the hospital on December 1 and passed away on January 8.   I haven't cooked much since, and have actually lost 20 pounds through the ordeal because my focus left food.   Amazingly,  food still played  a role through the process.  Friends delivered meals.  Friends and family cooked for Spud and I.  Never did we eat so much chicken! People shopped for us.  Coco only seemed to have the will to eat and we brought him as many of his favorites as we could.  We kept his Christmas Eve traditional meal of crab legs, we brought him Booberry and chocolate ice cream and iced coffee.  Spud and I went out with friends for New Years Eve for Sushi.  Human nature is to feed people through tough times.  I guess it is the one thing we feel we can control.  Foodwas delivered to my home in droves in the days following.  I fed the homeless of hoboken for 2 days and am still eating our way through the freezer full.  

Admittedly , I am having a problem with food now.  Food was a commonality for Coco and me.  It was him I cooked for. We loved to eat out together.  I cook becuase I love it, but also for my ego.  I know I do it well  and like to have it appreciated.  As much as Spud loves food,  his taste is not as discriminating, or maybe too much so, and he is my biggest crtic.   Either way it isn't the same.   I know that whatever people are in my life as I move foward, I need them to appreciate food and help me find the joy in it again.

As I return to this blog, like my life right now, I cannot predict what it will be like, but hopefully those reading this will follow the joruney with me and see where this experiment if self exploration continues to take me.   I have re-entered the kitchen a few times this month and returned to the grocery store yesterday with only Spud, and no other friends or family, and even paid the grocery bill myself for the first time.  I held my head high and got through it like nothing had changed. 

I miss Coco with all my heart, but I am also eager to move along and get back to life, to move on and continue to make him proud of me for being strong especially on the days it is so hard, like today.  

As I write this morning I am remincisent of the Sunday morning in August that I began this blog, which I think is what made me log in to begin with - a lazy Sunday that I am procrastinating the tasks and events at hand.  It is hard to believe that it was almost 6 months ago.   It seems like a blink in so many ways yet everything has changed.  Hopefully food will remain the joyful comforting constant that it has always been for me and I can find others to be proud of me for my passion.

This blog remains dedicated to Coco, who will be forever with me everytime I run out of something in the kitchen mid-recipe.