Thank you for all the positive feedback about 3191. It feels like just the right thing for me to be doing right now, although I have to say to mav, stop reading my mind.
I'm also really loving reading the new year's posts out in blogland. Everyone sounds so full of possibility. Isn't that a great feeling? I'm not much for resolutions, but I do love feeling like I'm getting a fresh start and that's how I feel now. We had a lot of changes in our lives last year, and I spent a lot of the time feeling overwhelmed and pulled in many directions. I found it really hard to enjoy any one thing I was doing without worrying about what was left undone. I began to rush through things that I had previously savored and enjoyed. The act of cooking and eating was one of them.
I've always been a fan of the slow food movement. It's really, for the most part, how I was raised and how I approached food and eating once I went off to college and began cooking for myself (maybe not always eating locally, but the care and intent of the preparation of meals and the rejection of processed foods, yes). However, parenting, living on a tight budget and balancing a busy life have all done their part to erode my reverence for a good meal. Nothing like cooking for an unappreciative audience to make the kitchen an inhospitable place.
I'm hoping that in the new year that I'll be slowing things down in the kitchen and at the market. I was motivated to make a change after reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and by the restricted diet we're trying with Miles (due to some minor health problems), but also by the desire that the preparation of food be, once again, an enjoyable experience.
I am also proposing a slow life movement, one where I approach things with intent and purposefulness and joy in mind rather than efficiency or other's expectations. A life with more walking and less driving, more lingering and less hurrying, more time outside and less in front of a screen, more doing and less worrying about what needs to be done. Taking a break from this blog is a part of my slow life movement, but, I imagine, coming back to it might be part of it too.
I'll be back to remind you about the auction. I'll be getting up at 5:00 am tomorrow to help it go live.
Be well!
