Long Time No See

Hi readers! It’s been a while. What have you been up to? I’ve been taking a break from this exhausting blog.

Nearly three years ago, I set out to write the kind of blog I like to read — full of ideas for new things to make.

It was great! Except I didn’t actually have a kitchen. Or a well-lit photo spot. Or a high-functioning camera.

Take this unfortunately grainy photo for example. Here, I am using a water bottle and a hairspray lid to roll out sugar cookies.

The pressure to write came from my journalism professors. For three consecutive semesters, I was required to share a new post every week.

I scrambled during breaks to store up a hoard of fresh material (using my mother’s kitchen and my father’s camera). Then I doled my ideas out, one by one, to you.

Take a look at my last post. See, the bagel one? By the time I wrote that post, the pictured bagels were long gone — nine months gone, in fact! And I knew I’d never make them again, because of what I had learned in the interim: a gluten allergy was behind my strange medley of health issues.

But those photos were all I had left, so I wrote about bagels.

Then, after 16 months of blogging belatedly, it was a relief to stop ransacking my computer for material. I even loved not having to stop and photograph everything I made.

I spent nearly all the next semester in a ceramics studio. It was like heaven!

In a post that never happened, I intended to share photos of my pots here. However, I quickly found out I couldn’t stand seeing them in two dimensions. So I abandoned that plan. (If you visit, you can look and touch and use them all you want!)

But now, here I am — I have a kitchen!

And I found I have ideas for this blog again — not just food on my table, but also words in my head.

I still don’t have a fancy camera (and I cook under fluorescent lights), but I’m learning a thousand things, and I want to celebrate by sharing them!

So, coming right up on Spicy Life, you’ll be seeing my new favorite things to cook, artsy gifts for new friends, and who knows what else? My life is full of new challenges — and finding words to fit them may be the hardest and sweetest of all. You’ll hear more from me soon!