Hi. Remember me? I’m priding myself on the fact that I now consider going missing for two weeks a real “blog hiatus.” Remember when we left for six months without giving you any notice? Yeah.

The biggest reason SiS is MIA is this: I have a new job! If you’re keeping track, this makes FOUR jobs for me. I swear, I’m only doing it to see how many I can juggle. For the first time in my life I’m going to be able to say that I’m busy. Though  I think that at some point I might have to start dropping commitments when I take on new ones.

My new job is at the Legislative Assembly Office of Alberta. I’m working for Hansard, which is the office that transcribes and edits everything that is said during House sessions and committee meetings. So far, a week and a bit into the training, I’ve learned that this involves the judicious use of a lot of commas. Other punctuation too, but especially commas. I am simmering in a stew of commas. You should see the size of our style manual. Good thing I love love love good punctuation. Not that you can always tell around this blog.

What does this mean for you? This blog is going in one of two ways. Maybe you will enjoy a punctuationally pristine  pavlova of perfect paragraphs. Or! I will, be venting; my unused-punctuation mark rebellion — in! all! entries, making an over-salted mess of: unecessary; incorrect; and irritating commas/ellipses-colons and semicolons… you get the idea.

Have I stretched the punctuation-as-cooking metaphor far enough? I do think it’s an accurate one. A good punctuation mark is like the perfect amount of salt. Too much, or in the wrong place, and it makes things unpleasant or even incomprehensible. Used well, both salt and commas just make everything make sense.

Okay. Since Carlo and I made some resolutions this year that didn’t have anything to do with “stop procrastinating” or “make sense on the blog,” I will not apologize for my hiatus or for the above lack of sensicality. I’m working 12-hour days, okay?  Finally getting to the point of this post, I present:

Supper in Stereo’s Food-olutions

-Memorize a new cocktail recipe that we love each month
-Cook a new fruit or vegetable every month (first up… rutabaga)
-Master pie pastry (I need to catch up with the rest of my expert family here)
-Learn to fry things
-Make soy milk
-Make ricotta
-Find some new things to do with lentils (hey, we like our bank balance going UP, not down)
-Cook more with our favourite girls (aged 6, 3, and 2)
-Try not to put bacon into EVERYTHING
-Grow tomatilloes
-TBA

 

I love a good resolution, but I hate to be tied down. The above is a start, but I hope this year will be FULL of great food discoveries and adventures. That’s if I can find time between jobs to get into the kitchen.

So… does anyone have any advice about what to do with rutabaga?