Poco-Cocoa

Brunch: crescent rolls with ham, and some with nutella, plus coffee with soy milk and vanilla sugar (made by my friend Cheri, from vanilla beans she brought back from Dubai!).

Roux wanted to go outside with Justin.

But instead he took a nap with Little.

Well! I didn’t plan to take a blog break, but I suppose I needed it. I took a break from lots of things this week, but I think I’m ready to re-join the world.

I thought about a few things:

• I want to appreciate my life more. Lately I feel like I’ve been negative, whiny, unhappy with what I have, always wanting more. I think a gratitude journal would help, though I think I really need to somehow write in it all day. In those moments, say, when it’s 10pm on a Friday night and I’m still at work, schlepping computers from one floor to the other, I want to remember that I’m grateful that my coworkers are fun to be with, that I have a job, that I have a comfy bed to go home to, and that at least I didn’t have to work on Saturday or Sunday. You know what I mean?

• Justin works with a lot of chefs and food people in his design work. One of his clients, whose restaurant I adore, who makes amazing dishes and does amazing things, said something like, “I want people to stop overanalyzing the food. I just want them to come eat dinner.” That really resonated with me. I’m tired of the pressure to be a food critic, an analyzer, a reviewer, a foodie. I just want to eat dinner, whether that be from a package or from a farm, from a restaurant or from the freezer. I want to somehow remember that in the end, it’s just food.

• I want to eat at home more. This is really hard for us, because so many of our friends work at restaurants and bars. So if we want to see friends, it’s a no-brainer to go eat at their restaurant. But I miss being home. I miss simple food. I think if I simplify our meals, make them easy and fun and tasty, it will be easier to get back in the habit of eating at home. Rather than starting with complicated recipes, I’m going back to the basics. It’s just no fun to get home late, and then realize that you have to chop 84 vegetables and saute tofu and cook noodles and make a sauce and dress a salad and steam broccoli. So for now, I’m going to just make dinner.

• And just in time, just when I feel ready to go back to the good, simple foods that I grew up with, my mama mailed me a package of all her recipes. We’re talking pot roast, beef soup, squash and corn with Velveeta, red enchiladas, chicken spaghetti, and Mississippi mud cake. I can’t wait!

So that’s it I guess. I dunno whether Daily Eats will really be daily, or if it will really be everything I eat, but I miss the journaling aspect of my blog, being able to look back and remember meals and days and fun times. So here we go!