The Big Blog Dilemma

Gosh.  It’s been a while.  Sorry for being missing for such an age.  It wasn’t intentional, it just happened that way.  September came & went in a flurry of people, places & pixels.  Forty or so of my favorite people came to Seattle for a week in early September.  We ate a LOT: Trellis, Brix, Anthony’s, Cafe Juanita, Ristorante Paradiso, The Waterfront (now Aqua), Trellis (again)…and that was just the dinners.  I shot none of it.  It just wasn’t the time or occasion to be toting a big ol’ camera around the joint.  After they all flew away again at the end of the week, I had just one week to get everything all buttoned up for my next big road-trip:  Grand Canyon, I hope you’re ready.

So then places & pixels replaced all those wonderful people & I spent 10 days traveling 4398 miles across 5 states.  I do love to drive.  Red rocks, endless blue skies, one enormous hole in the ground & mile after mile of jaw-dropping beauty all around.  Oh, and 1034 images.  That’s a lot of pixels.

I really should ‘fess up about my road-trips.  I use them as a bit of a retreat.  No hair dryers, curling tongs or flat irons.  No make-up.  No ridiculous shoes intended to carry me no farther than 5 yards.  No posh pants or beautiful blouses.  No complicated, fancy food.  It’s all baseball caps, braids & beef jerky.

Cargo pants that I don’t iron, t-shirts with chocolate stains on & my favorite, beaten up, black leather sandals.  It’s all up at 3:30 am, out the door at 4 am, on location at 5 am & ready to shoot as the sun comes up.  There ain’t no time for fripperies.  It’s all about the shootin’, baby.

As for food – on the menu we have beef jerky, hard-boiled eggs, apples & Baby Bel cheese.  Yes, for every meal of the whole trip.  Oh, except the ice cream meals.  And really, here’s where the ‘fessing up comes into it.  An ice cream meal occurs every day, somewhere between 2 pm & 4 pm.  And it involves *nothing* other than ice cream.  Well, except a little cherry sauce, maybe.

So why I am writing to tell you about my road-trip if it involves no drool-worthy food eaten in new & exciting places?  Well, you see, it’s like this.  For a little while now, I’ve been hemming & hawing over what I’ll call, “The Big Blog Dilemma”.  It’s not really big, or even very important {at all} in the scheme of things.  Nevertheless – The Big Blog Dilemma – it’s been circumnavigating my brain for several months & I am still undecided.  Except I have to make at least some shift towards a decision, right here right now.  Maybe you can help me.  Just knowing you are there helps.  So do Raspberry Smoothies made with 1/2 a pound of cream cheese.  I had one just yesterday.  Maybe that is what spurred me on.

You see, I have another website.  Another bloglet if you will, where I post all my photography shenanigans.  Except I don’t get over there very often, so it’s become more like a gallery of images, which wasn’t the idea at all.  But there you have it.  A gallery it is.  And lately, since I am tinkering around on this space so often, I’ve been sneaking a few non-food images into the mix.  You know…here & there.  Like mothers who slyly sneak veggies into tuna bakes or add sweetcorn to pasta salad, their charges oblivious to the vegetably nutrition lurking within.  Yes, like that.

And I wondered how you’d feel if I shared my trip with you here instead of there.  If you suddenly saw images of canyons & cacti instead of chocolat chaud & cupcakes.  Would that be OK?

I’m nervous.  You tell me how much you love coming here to read about my food adventures.  How you now think about food differently.  How it makes you want to go places.  How it has inspired you to cook more.  How it has even helped you find your own passions in life.  So I’m nervous.  Will it just be too weird to mix in all this travel stuff?  Should I just keep all the different facets of me in separate places?  Like those fancy dividers you can get at The Container Store to keep your socks away from your underwear.  Except it occurs to me that despite all the different facets, I am, after all, just one person with just one life.  And then I thought about my personal Facebook, where I post food stuff & feet stuff & road-trip stuff.  All of it.  And my nearest & dearest love them all.  Maybe you’ll love them all too.

So here I am.  All of me.  The food, the photography, the travel, the creased cargo pants.  The 4-day-a-week corporate chick.  The 3-day-a-week creative hippie.  The 7-day-a-week food lover.  The once-a-quarter major road-tripper.  Up-do’s & messy braids, sexy stockings & hiking socks, KFC & haute cuisine, extrovert corporate over-achiever & introvert, deep, passionate artist.  All in one place.  Yikes.  I’d love you to come along for the ride.  Let’s just see how this whole darn thing pans out, together.

I’m going in.  See you on the other side.