She's Alive!

Hiya. So, as my grandmother reminded me this week, it has been quite a while since I last posted. All I can say is trying to keep up with life has me exhausted every week night and spending weekends catching up on everything I didn't do during the week due to the aforementioned exhaustion. I know, excuses, excuses, right?

In my time away from my blog, I have been on countless work trips, one very fun personal trip to congratulate Dr.Hofer in Nashville and have baked lots and lots of bread. I'm still finding myself very affected by Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and have made some small, positive changes in my eating & purchasing habits. I am baking at least a loaf or two of bread every week, eating a ton of vegetables (and trying to be wise about only choosing what is in season), buying fair trade coffee, and I even planted raspberry & blackberry bushes, have seeds growing on my back deck (lettuce, collards, turnips, peppers, tomatoes, etc) and just tonight purchased a half dozen eggs from a lady in the neighborhood that raises chickens & ducks in her back yard.

There is still a ton I could be doing but I am taking baby steps for now. Oh, and I finally broke open the cheese! Zach, ever the jet-setter, was in town between stints in Costa Rica and Spain (yawn) and wanted to see it. I had almost forgot that I had it aging in my liquor cabinet so I showed it to him and figured we should try it out....totally forgetting about his epicurean background and highly sophisticated palate. All I know is, I thought it tasted pretty darn good, so did he (at least he was nice enough to tell me it was), so did Charles, so did Erin and so did Kerry & Mark even though they were VERY drunk when they tried it. All in all, I think it was a great success. Now that I know it is edible and you don't die from eating it, I think I will take another stab....assuming I can find another 5 hours to devote to cheesemaking.

The Simmons' April calendar is ridiculously busy but I am looking forward to an upcoming visit from one of my favorite cousins, a visit from a far-away friend (a couple far-away friends, actually!), multiple fun parties with new friends and ending up the month with our family's annual cousins weekend in Mississippi.

Charles and I are feeling out of control at the moment on many levels so I am hoping a calmness can come over us soon and we can feel a little more stable & organized.

I will try to update more but no promises Momma Dot!

Here are some pictures of my food endeavors.

a loaf of cuban bread and my lovely monterrey jack cheese!

braided white loaves

can you guess which are store bought? the big blue one is a duck egg