He’s here, I said to myself, the moment I felt him slip from my body and the doctor said ‘It’s a boy’ before they whisked him away from me to clear his lungs from the traumatic start to his life. My body tried hard to reject him that last week of pregnancy, tried to rebel against him but medicine persevered and he slipped from me and straight in to my heart with his first feeble cry.

I was gone, lost in a love that I had no idea about. It was four in the morning, April 19, 1994 and I was utterly exhausted, sick and surrounded by a medical team that was caring for both of us. But I reached for him and they finally laid him on my chest, lungs cleared, perfect and pink. His tiny eyes narrowed when I spoke to him and he looked at me hard as if to say ‘Oh! That’s who I’ve been hearing all this time!’ and I felt him sigh, and relax against me. ‘You’re mine. and I’m yours.’ From that foggy moment on, he’s been in my heart.

And now, he’s 18. At some point in time, this was adulthood. But not now, and not because I want him to stay with me, to never leave me, to not grow up or move on or not need me. This point, this stepping stone has been the goal from that long ago moment that he was laid on my chest, instead of within my body, and both of us have been working for this jumping off since the moment he emerged. He was a life I was given, an honor bestowed on me to raise him. My almighty Father trusted me with this one life and I’ve given him all of me. The lines between us have gotten longer with each passing year, but that tether will remain, a bond of blood and a lifetime.

I’m at this turning point as a parent, without guilt or remorse over what did or didn’t happen in the last 18 years. I am an imperfect human being, and I’ve made my share of mistakes. I’ve raised my voice, showed my wrath, disappointment and despair to him. I’ve let him know when I’m unhappy with him, but never ever in those long years have I ever let go of the love I have for him. I’ve been clear to his heart that his choices can upset me, his words can hurt me and his actions can disappoint, but it never ever changes the fact that I love him with all my heart, that he can’t do anything that will make me love him less. This he knows. And it makes forgiveness easy.

I’ve held him when he’s needed it, I’ve let him go when he wants. I’ve fed him well and taught him life skills and given him a foundation and a sense of humor. I’ve shown him boundaries so there’s no surprises later in life. I’ve taught him to walk and to run and to play on his own, not as a matter of pride, but as necessity, as his autonomy and ability to walk away from me is vital for a full and rich life. I’ve worked outside the home, and I’ve been a stay at home parent. I’ve taught him to stand against the odds, to face the giants, to walk away from a fight, to voice his beliefs and needs and wants. I’ve left him in the care of providers who’ve given a piece of their heart to him, so I won’t lose a part of me. He’s been a beloved member of my family, surrounded by loving aunts and uncles from birth, then, blessedly, a new family at the age of eight full of cousins, more aunts, uncles and a loving grandmother. I’ve raised him alone for eight years, then with a loving Dad for the last ten. I have no guilt over any of it. Not a moment of mommy remorse that I couldn’t be there for him every single moment, that I didn’t do enough. No one can. But his tether remains, as it always will. Nothing I’ve done, or didn’t do will ever change that.

He’s on the brink of something big, this boy of mine. He could do anything, and everything. I have no idea what’s in store for his life, but I know he’s destined for some amazing works. I can see it blossoming under the surface. And I look back on the moments of confidence that have built over this life of his, and of mine and I see the stepping stones to the here and now. He’s on the springboard, ready to jump, glancing back over his shoulder for me, making sure. I’ve held his tiny hand as he walked, ran, biked, skated and leapt from tree branches, the side of a pool and off the edge of a boat into the ocean. All these moments mirroring a final jump, the last time his fingers will slip through mine before he strides ahead.

He’s 18. A man, but a child. An adult to society, but still in need of care and direction. He doesn’t need me all the time, or even most of the time, but he needs the presence of me, and he’ll come and stand nearby, glancing at me, seeking me. I know these signs, and I stop, focus and connect until he walks away again, another moment of that confidence carved in stone. He does need me, but so much less than yesterday, last week, the past 17 years. What he needs now is to just know. Know that I’m there, whenever. Wherever. However.

I should know better than to mope about the seasons in Minnesota; just as soon as you think you’ll never surface from the drudgery of Winter, endlessly bleak landscapes and brown for as far as you can see, Mother Nature pulls a fast one and flips the switch to Spring, complete with unbearably beautiful weather – in MARCH!! – and a drenching thunderstorm and rainfall that soothes your soul like nothing else.

And with the warmth, the rain and a pending change of attitude from the Nothingness that landed on me these past weeks (and dare I say, months?) the green that’s hidden in the Earth all year long, even through the ghastliest cold, suddenly bursts forth, coaxed from it’s slumber by 70′s and low 80′s, and sunshine that feels like it belongs in June or July. Whatever the heck happened in the past week in our fair state, it was miraculous. Utterly miraculous.  The ice went out on area lakes at a record rate, the sun shone hot and you could literally watch the Spring plants burst from the ground. I sat on our patio in shorts, sipping wine at 8:30 at night on March 17th. Clearly unprecedented. But blessedly, it tore through the fog, ripping away the Nothing and filling it with a bit more hope.

Spurred by the coming Spring, and buoyed by a {hopefully} changing outlook, I have quickly shed all manners of Winter, like flannel sheets, dark colors, knee-high boots and frosty mornings for a lighter, fresher approach that includes spotting the first Crocus, trimming away last Fall’s detritus in the flower beds and eyeing the soil in the garden to see if any of the previous seasons bounty will decide they’ve got another go of it. And in my head, I’m plotting.

Thankfully, the kind folks at Red Envelope have given me something to help spur on my dreaming.

I’m way beyond the stage of creating cool Easter baskets for my child, but if you love putting together something extraordinary for your own Easter gifts, you’ll find dozens of choices from Red Envelope. This gorgeous little ceramic herb garden was a perfect choice for my Southwest facing window in our kitchen, and a terrific option to begin some herb seeds that will eventually transplant directly in to our garden. The herb garden gives you everything you need, including soil, seeds and a sturdy set of pots to put it all together. It would be a lovely gift for anyone with a love for cooking, and a sunny window at home.

This boy of mine, a man-child with the deep voice and winsome smile, self-sufficient and capable who is learning to drive and manage a bank account and negotiate girls and friendships….. so much that’s happening with him on every passing day but he can’t seem to manage taking a shower without a few heavy knocks on the door.

And on occasion, shutting off the hot water and giving him ‘The Big Chill’.

As battles go, I know this one is pretty low on the priority scale. When we say ‘Be home by midnight’ he’s usually walking in the door around 11:30. When he has a sleepover with his friends, the worst thing they do is consume too much junk food and pop.
He makes his own breakfast and lunch. When we ask for him to manage dinner, he makes us a feast. If I leave him a task list before I go to work, it’s complete by the time I come home. He still likes to hang out with us, watching a movie or TV show. He washes his own clothes without our prompting, he willingly goes to church, he loves to read and he enjoys good friendships with his band of brothers from his Youth Group, and with his cousins.

But, he still needs ‘The Big Chill’.

He’s not sneaking out of the house after we’re asleep, to meet friends who encourage illicit activities. He’s not coming home from hanging out with his pals sporting telltale signs of substance abuse or alcohol consumption. He’s not stealthily smoking cigarettes, chasing after all kinds of girls, committing vandalism, TP-ing houses, terrorizing neighbors. We trust his friends, and that goes far. If the worst offense he encounters away from the protection of our wings is a trip to Chipotle after his rec league basketball game, then I consider us pretty darn lucky.

Then come those morning, and we have to flip that knob that cuts the flow of hot water, because the knock at the door and the responding ‘Ok.’ haven’t made a bit of difference.

He turns 18 in April, and yet, in no way in this man-child an adult. Maybe in some ancient time, when life was far different and everyone needed to be so much more self-sufficient, and when the life expectancy was more like 30, when we didn’t have the ability to thrive in to our 80′s or higher, when the dangers of life could take their toll far quicker and more exacting, maybe then 18 was adulthood, worthy of responsibility, of letting go and watching them spread their own wings to fly. Used to be that a girl of 18 who was unmarried was considered too old. A time existed that man of 18 had all the markings of adulthood;  a wife, a homestead and his own team of horses. But this isn’t the case now.

And that’s all right with me. I wasn’t ready to fly by myself either at that age. And although he moves closer to finding his own freedom every day, and we plot to move him in the right direction, he still has moments where he sits down by me, just wanting my proximity. He still loves it when I grab him in a huge hug, and hold on tight. He can figure out his future, take stock of what he wants from it and try to make it all work out and I can sit back and enjoy the process of seeing him test those wings, listening and supporting his ideas. I find a few things to tease him about, but it’s a huge stretch to do so, because this boy of mine, for all those moments of forgetfulness, when he doesn’t recall the task list I left or simply decides he doesn’t want to do what we ask, well those are few and far between. And as parenting a teenager goes, it’s an awfully good thing going on here, worthy of the pride it evokes.

If my only vice with him is that he is soothed by a long, hot shower in the morning, then I’ve got little to complain about.

January 23rd, yesterday, I strapped on my cross-country skis for the first time this winter.

This Winter, waiting for snow cover deep enough to kick through has nearly killed me in anticipation, especially given that last year I was out almost every week between late November to well through March. Every snowfall that came our way found me holding my breath, anxiously awaiting the perfect amount that never came.

Certain activities are just part of who I am. Cooking, for one. But this, the strapping on of tiny thin skis, grasping the little poles and facing an open path of fresh snow, wind in the trees and clouds scuttling overhead is also a part of me that goes back to moments in childhood that seared to my brain like fire. I don’t even know how old I was the first time I put on the skinny skis. But I was a kid, and our school class went to a golf course one winter day, lush with a endless expanse of unbroken snow and we all were given those skis, the long poles and funny shoes and we set out over the empty golf course, where it clicked within me.

And in repeated winters, over growing years, those endless snows spread out in front of me as I faced them, tall poles in hand, face to the wind. Then at some point, they just stopped. But the call within me never left and finally several winters ago, I urged Mike to get ski packages and join me on the trails. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.

Because the first time  I headed along a trail, pushing every muscle from shoulder to ankle over the snow, I felt that thrill again. I felt the flood of oxygen to every working muscle. I felt the quiet cold air and saw those dancing clouds. I felt alive again, working with muscles that still held the perfect memory of how this was done, even though it had to be more than 20 years since we’d moved in this way. I marveled at a body that remembered, when I had nearly forgotten; marveled at muscles that snapped into recall, pulling memory from some long ago moment in time. And I wondered why I’d stopped.

There is a tiny little park near our house; hardly a spot on a map but it’s flat, and just large enough to make for a perfect workout. I carve a trail around the perimeter, and go four, five six, sometimes eight laps or more around that park. It’s enough to make my lungs pump fiercely. It’s enough to drench me in sweat. It’s plenty, and it’s close and it’s 45 minutes to an hour of intense cardio work. If I can do this a few times a week, it’s all I could ever ask for from Winter.

The snow flies, and I hear the siren call from the trails. Yesterday was that call, and barely a half hour after I was home from work, I faced that empty park, with a wicked cold Easterly wind on my back and stepped in to my skinny skis. The first path over the snow cuts my trail, and every lap gets easier as I go. My lungs engage, my muscles warm, the wind doesn’t seem so bitter and Winter doesn’t seem all that long anymore. It’s just me and the snow.

It’s Just Write Tuesday, Version 19.0.

There’s no resolutions, no expectations for the year ahead. There’s no ‘To-Do’ list for 2012, rich with lofty goals and making better all those little things that make me who I am and there’s no Bucket List. Definitely no Bucket List.

But this morning, as I sipped my coffee and watched the sun rise over the neighboring roofs, much like I do each morning, what came to me was a word: mindful. And I began thinking of all the ways that being mindful could benefit the 12 months ahead. More than making resolutions, more than tackling a Bucket List of items to cross off before I die, more than the desire to drop a pants size once again (sigh….) more than any of that and even more important than any of that is the need to be mindful to my life and all these little areas of it that slide up against one another. The job. My family. These incredible friends. The cooking. This blog. My need for space and nature. The desire to keep my body from stagnating with age. My deep need to learn, stretch, grow and evolve, still.

I need to be mindful of all of that. Mindful of the hours I spend at my job, and that it always, always lifts me up to step inside those doors, don the deep blue chef coat and do what I do, even when all I’m thinking about is being home, snuggled up with a cat and a book.

I must be mindful of the foods I place in my belly, to know that the best ones give me the best feeling inside, that the wrong ones seem to insult me, pushing my head in the wrong direction, and sadly, make me want more of the bad, less of the good. Funny how hard that is to fully understand and accept what my body so clearly knows.

There needs to be mindful thought to the interactions I have with others; to not be selfish in our discussions, to be mindful of their needs and wants, to meet them on their terms and convenience even if it means I drive across the city to them, to sometimes just close my mouth so they can open theirs. To embrace and accept them as they are, where they are and who they are. Celebrate the joys, empathize with the sorrows, support the new endeavors, cheer on the small victories. Mindful of watching, learning and gently cradling what we have, these friendships that lift me and flutter within my heart.

I must be mindful that a story exists in each day, that a simple photo can capture more that words can express. Mindful that a few hours outside can make me understand God far more than anything else, that a charged phone goes a long way in grasping tight this daily shuffle of life and light, and even a short walk around my house on a sunny day can find so much simple beauty.

My cooking. This blog. It’s all important, and worth some thoughtful attention. I need to remind myself that it’s an ever-changing, evolving, rotating place of food and life. I need to be mindful of stretching and exploring the means to nurture and feed, that it’s not only body, but soul. And heart.

Mindful. No resolutions. No Bucket List. No outrageous expectations. But mindful thought, interaction, growth. Grace.  Always mindful grace.

I debated a recap type post, to ring out 2011 with panache and style, but let’s face it….. those aren’t my strong points, regardless of how you look at it. I’m pretty basic and down to earth. And after 5-1/2 years of blogging, recaps are sort of old hat.

And there’s no list either, of stellar accomplishments I’ve set down for 2012. While I love the idea of making positive change, and growing a bit more of myself each year, I don’t publicly declare those. I just try and make some little changes, in baby steps and in the right direction, and I realize that my human-ness will always get in the way of these, every single year.

And this blog, really, wasn’t the highlight of 2011. While I discovered a whole new level of health and well-being this year by giving up meat, it felt so simple and easy, like I was meant to be here, filling my belly with good things. Kind of akin to unearthing a pair of beloved gloves you thought you lost, pulling them on so familiar and solid. I think I’ve belonged here, feeling this good and so energetic, all along.

The best part about this past year? My friends. My amazing, beautiful, talented, funny, touching, warm, engaging and trustworthy friends. These people were but a breath in the air last year at this time; something there, but not really, and poised on the edge of 2010, facing down a new and full 12 months ahead, I had no idea that within six weeks of this year beginning, on a very cold February night, how my life would change so dramatically. That so many incredible doors would open, that these smiles would become so familiar, that the truth of an honest and loving friendship would sustain me so well. Who knew? One month you hesitantly attend a huge social gathering of fellow food bloggers, and suddenly the rug of your normal life is yanked from underneath, but a hundred hands reach out to help you stand, in a brand new way. Could I even begin to describe what that feels like? This beating of wings inside my heart, this joy that’s been quietly administered? I’m more of who I am, because of who they are.

May you be blessed with the gift of honest friendship, now and always, and may 2012 be full of dreams realized, love and laughter.

{{photo from Google images}}

I waken, I connect, then move through the motions of prep for my day; a lunch for later, breakfast for now, then a shower, fixing my hair, some makeup and a trip in the car, mostly without noticing anything. Not anymore. Light follows me in, then darkness ushers me home.

I move through my hours, work hours that either stretch on endlessly or fly by in a flash and I don’t notice the little things, or sometimes I do. The pretty purple coat, the lovely glittering pin on a collar, the purposefully ugly Christmas sweaters worn by the staff at the coffee counter, brightly cheerful and festive. I’m too observant for my own good sometimes, but then moments pass and I realize I haven’t seen anything at all. Not the pleading eyes of two cats that adore me, not the dust settling in the corners, or clinging to the high walls in the kitchen, not the Jade plant, observing it’s annual Christmas tradition of bursting in to bloom.

And life feels like it’s whirring by, a blur of events that I’m not noticing. My world opens and shuts, morning to night from daybreak to sunset and I go here and come back from there and share a meal, then climb the stairs to collapse before it begins all over again. My friends go places and enjoy themselves and I see it all happening and I think “Why not me?” and then I’m too caught up in what I’m doing to even really care all that much. But I do care. Because the Jade plant knows when to unfurl it’s tiny pink flowers, showing off to celebrate the season, and I seem to just watch the clock to make sure I’m not late, carefully folding the blue coat for work, making sure my socks are all clean and my pants aren’t dirty and I face towards the garage and I go. And I return and then do it all again.

Can resentment live with gratitude and not mess it all up? I’m so grateful for this job that I am so good at, with people who are strong in spirit and mind, funny and yet focused, ready and willing to help. I’m so blessed by my work, the customers with their questions both silly and serious and opening one’s eyes to the wonders of amazing food. It couldn’t be more perfect for me. But it takes me away from my life right now, with it’s rush here, go there and be on, on on all the time, with a smile and clean hair and a professional manner. And I struggle with resentment that I can’t enjoy it all. Next year, I say to myself, will be easier; I’ll know more about the job {{because this is my first year at it, I remind myself about a billion times a day}} and I’ll be better about the balance and the focus and noticing the goings-on around me.

I want to strip these blinders off, suffering from whiplash as I take in the world around me, the events of the season, the sparkle and shine. Why haven’t I seen that light display? I drive by this block twice a day and I’ve missed this, every single time. Why am I not noticing, where have my deeply observant eyes gone? I don’t buy in to the excess and stress of the season; I don’t shop for perfect gifts, nor create award-winning platters of amazing food worthy of a magazine spread or decorate as if House Beautiful is coming over. I celebrate the reason we celebrate, with the birth of a baby to a barely teenage mom in a lowly barn of filth, a baby that changed the world. And maybe so much of my resentment isn’t of life, but of how far off we’ve gone from this season, how badly we treat each other, how desperate lives have become, how sad the world seems to be. And there in itself is more reason to see those light displays shine, to throw off the blinders, to observe the good that remains. I just can’t be too busy to notice.

It’s ‘Just Write Tuesdays’ with Heather of The Extraordinary Ordinary. This week = the 15th installment.

My routine every morning is pretty much the same; awaken to the sounds of my husband coming in the room and placing a steaming cup of coffee at my bedside, dropping a kiss to me, then putting up the shade before exiting. Sometimes a cat curls up next to me, paws kneading the quilt, purring hard and fast, and as my mind becomes clearer and I sip at my cup, I reach for my glasses and suddenly the world springs to life.

Since I was six, my day can’t start without placing glasses on my face. The wedge dug deep into bone on the bridge of my nose attests to a lifetime of pressure, as the prescription gets worse and the glasses become thicker. I can’t see more than half a foot in front of me without them, but without clear sight, I’ve gained other senses in compensation. Like the ability to smell far too many things that others can’t detect, or such delicate hearing that any noise in the night, even a cat sighing in contentment at my feet can waken me. Taste is sharper, touch is sensitive but knock off my glasses and I’m helpless.

Most of the time, I never think about it. Glasses are all right, even chic and fashionable. The lenses are designed to be less thick, more invisible and the styles are beautiful. And when I remove them, and gaze around me, a world opens up that only the sightless can know; shapes are undefined, colors bleed in to one another and the world hovers, dream-like and ethereal.Those with perfect vision can’t know the beauty that bursts forth in my mind when I take off my glasses.

I’ve tried though; tried to describe to someone what I see when I don’t see. But I get a puzzled look, and a smile that says they can’t possibly know. But I want them to know, that even half blind I might see better than those with 20/20. If your eyes were closed and I dropped a handful of cotton balls to your palm, would you ‘feel’ the color white?  If a searing hot pan touches your skin, do you think the color red? Do ice cubes make you understand what blue really is? This sight that’s blurred at the edges, hanging in suspension,  it’s like a secret only those of us with gouges on the bridge of our nose can understand.

The lights are my favorite thing, sans glasses. And when my face is bare, they become like colored fuzzy blobs floating around, with no anchor or connection. If I squint a bit, they dance and shimmy. Christmas lights are the best; an explosion of colors and magical shapes that evade even the wildest of descriptions. And I could never make sense of it to anyone.

But then I found this……

This….. it almost brings me to tears. Because for all these years, in trying to explain what I see, the magic in staring at tiny spectral lights that are blurred, unfocused and seemingly floating in thin air, this photo captures it all. Perfectly. I could spend hours gazing at blobby hazy lights and I never get tired of it. Like my teeth, or my ears or my hair, it’s part of who I am. This lack of good eyesight, the lifetime of fuzzy images…. it’s not a disability. Not to me. I can remove my glasses and the rest of the world slips away, and sometimes this is not a bad thing. This is my world, my life.

Because when the world is out of focus to some, it’s breathtaking in it’s clarity to someone else. I don’t need to see clearly what I know is really there; it’s perfect, just exactly as I see it. And this photo? This is enthralling, pure magic. Kind of like Christmas itself.

And now, thanks to Grace, from the website ‘Habit…. a collection of days‘, I can share this clarity with others.

 It’s Just Write Tuesdays. Stop over at The Extraordinary Ordinary for our 14th week.

There are moments, as someone’s Mom, that you can’t change regardless of how much you wish you could.

The fall on the concrete, scrapes to the face and nose and a mouthful of sand.

Slipping on ice and little teeth slamming down on a tender lip; blood….. so much blood. And a scar for life.

A door accidentally shut on curious fingers.

Oh my poor heart as a competent nurse holds down my trusting baby…. my baby! and jams sharp needles in to both his chubby thighs. Watching that face crumple and the shrieks that rip in two your poor Mama’s heart.

The betrayal of a friend, the first of so many that will inevitably come. Or the good friend that moves away, and suddenly, there is loss.

The taunting of classmates, horrible teasing, the story of having a chair pulled out from underneath and hitting his head, or a mean kid pushing his face in to a pile of mashed potatoes at lunch while everyone laughs. The way he bravely tried to hold back tears as your heart sinks to your feet.

A biological parent that makes such terrible and dangerous choices that you can only withdraw and walk away. Far, far, far away. Setting boundaries you wish you never had to lay down, to say to a broken heart “I can’t let Daddy come back any longer.”

A grandpa who won’t drive to your new home, saying ‘It’s too far.’ as an excuse not to come around any longer.

Your heart breaks because it has to, because you can’t protect from all those moments, those times of self-growth and change and the hatred in the world for anything that is out of the ordinary, or extraordinary, as it would be. Your heart breaks when your flesh and blood begin to learn of how the world can wrench you in two and tear at your soul. You can’t protect or insulate them from life, the pain, the betrayals and poor choices. You can’t stop the hurt that others inflict. You can’t change the inevitable march to adulthood, with the sorrows and sadness and aches in the heart and you can’t even begin to comprehend how much you hurt when they hurt, how much you wish for that magic to wave away the unfairness.

They break. You break. They recover and you still break. Each year, each new moment is one slippage of time which could break a heart that may never forget, criss-crossed with scars. You step back, you grit your teeth and send them forward

Because it’s what a parent does.

The very first time I did NaBloPoMo, it was in 2007 and I used the theme of ‘Food Holidays’ to blog about every day. Did you know that just about every day of the month, and every month in a year has a national food holiday?

For instance, November is National Pecan Month, Good Nutrition Month, National Peanut Butter Month, National Pepper Month, National Pomegranate Month, Raisin Bread Month and Vegan Month.

{{if you’re interested in learning about ALL the monthly celebrations…. go here}}

I first learned about these many years ago when I worked for a produce company and wrote their weekly marketing report. And having those daily prompts to write about made the very first NaBloPoMo really easy to navigate. Since then, I’ve focused on re-introducing past recipes to everyone.

And my Recipe Index has A LOT to showcase. But lately, my eating habits have turned in a new direction, and by the first of the year [[hopefully... right honey??]] my blog will turn in a new direction too, with a re-worked design and a more streamlined Recipe Index that’s much easier to navigate. And in doing so, I plan to likely wipe out several years worth of posts and recipes that have become irrelevant.

If you haven’t been around this blog long, and let’s face it, blog readers are flighty; they come, stay awhile then flit away to the next best thing. But without that history, it’s easy to consider eliminating what you don’t know is there.  I’ve been writing for 5-1/2 years. No one who hangs with me now goes back that far, and frankly, that’s fine with me. The first few years of this blog are scattered, unfocused and raw; like life itself, really, they lacked any kind of direction and my photos were terrible. I’d no more introduce you to those posts than I would eat a block of Velveeta. So, onward and upward.

There is a lot, each year, that I am so thankful to have in my life, and although it’s been the source of a great deal of angst and hair-twisting anxiety for me, this blog is one of them. In going back over the recipes I’ve collected, I’ve watched my life, and my eating habits unfold, change, grow and mature since 2006. I’ve seen photos turn from something that evokes a cringe and an ‘Oh dear….’ to a gasp and a ‘Wow’. I’ve seen recipes develop, tastes change and habits both form and disappear. Friends have come and gone, and family still opens the site with each new post. My boy has turned from a budding adolescent to a mature young man, and Mike and I covered a lot of ground together through these pages.

There is gratitude this time of year, and then there’s celebration, of the abundance, the fruits of our year of laboring through life, the joys of another bountiful harvest (or so it was, in the past) and it all comes together with feasting and family. The personal harvest this year, for me, has been a new-found level of health and well-being, new friends that are blessing me continually, and a bit more financial security, now that I’m working again. In years past, the last few months on the calendar have been filled with panic and fear. This year, these weeks feel much more calm, with far less anxiety. I’m so grateful for that presence in my life. I’m grateful for the willingness from Griffin to explore and be open to navigating the changes in our kitchen as we embarked on healthier eating; I’m grateful for the farmers who worked so hard to share the bounty with us, and I’m grateful for the ability to stretch, explore and learn about new foods, new ways to consume familiar options and the creativity to make it all delicious, fun and flavorful.

What’s on YOUR plate this month??