Celebrate local

It's been too long since my last post. I know. I have good reasons, I swear. I've been through more whirlwind changes in this little life of mine and spent the last five weeks working two teaching jobs so that I can get travelling back to beautiful New Zealand. It's been a struggle. The return to teaching has meant more income. The money for rent was actually in my bank account, for the first time in many, many years. It was astonishingly surprising that money made me happy since I've done so well without it but working all those hours was worth it for the money and now the dream of travelling again is becoming a reality.

Unfortunately, all other pursuits in life during the week had to go by the wayside, which not only included blogging but to my dismay, the willingness, drive or energy to make myself a decent meal at all. No more taking loving photos of the step by step phases of my cooking experiments. Wilted, dazed and incomprehensible to myself, let alone others, my breakfasts have been the same every morning for five weeks. My dinners have consisted of Asian noodles 'fecked' into a frying pan with some greens and soy sauce or (the horror) plastic packets of fresh pasta with a jar of red sauce thrown on top. Arriving home exhausted and hungry, I barely tasted the flavours of the meals I've made.
All struggle is necessary though. If I hadn't undergone food boredom, I would not have been so blissfully elated to finish the five week madness with a bank holiday three day weekend. I would not have delighted in the idea of going to the veggie market again for the first time in months or having the time and energy to photograph it all.

 

Having faced dinners that did little to inspire anyone for the last while, I was over the moon to have the chance to wander around Temple Bar on a sunny Saturday morning and chat with the vendors, smell the smoky, bitter, sweet and fresh smells and get an automatic and much needed fresh food feeling lift. If you think about, you know what I'm talking about. Eating packet pasta, its stodginess and bland colours merging into a gelatinous mix of feed is one thing. It fills a hole but that's about it. Fresh vegetables lovingly wrapped in crinkled brown paper bags, rubbing fresh herbs between your fingers to catch the smell of lemon balm or mint, seeing the purple chalkiness of bunches of black kale and hearing positive, friendly communication between vendor and customer. It's all a wonderful, intoxicating, colourful and alive anti-depressant and it all makes me feel very good.

This blog is a revival, a celebration of a renewal towards balance in my life again and making space for what's important to me. Food, real food with all it's freshness, beauty, healthiness, love and reality, makes me very happy indeed. The blog has had a lift and I'm no properly happy with its appearance. In my neglect of posting on the blog, I have still managed to accumulate plenty of ideas and recipes I'm very excited to share. This blog is a recognition of the unnoticed work I've put into food, even when I didn't have the energy. Now the energy is coming back, trickling slowly into this new river I've found myself on. Another journey. Let's see where this one takes me.