It has been a while since my last post. Since last year in fact!! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season!  My absence is fully attributable to a complete “check-out” from all things computer after a grueling semester which immediately followed a grueling legislative session and special session immediately following a grueling semester…you get the idea. Between working full-time, grad school work/class/projects/papers/research, and job searching/interviewing (which we all know can be a full-time job) and house hunting – I really wanted to throw my computer out of the window. As you can imagine, I really lacked much time to cook during all this and fully intended to use my nice, nearly month-long break from work and school (god bless excess vacation days) to do three things: work out, cook all the new ideas I have, and run a giant list of errands. I succeded in working out. I minimally accomplished two but most cooking took place in a dutch oven and most errands were pushed to the wayside. November 2011 will forever be remembered (at least by me) as take-out month. I pushed out a few posts the second week of December, but just lacked the desire to do anything more than work out and sleep.

My cooking is usually a spastic process similar to what was just outlined.  I admit I have been more organized and maybe there is a half-truth to the saying practice makes perfect….I will not ever be perfect (especially if you throw in a vodka whilst I am in between apps and mains), but practice certainly does make better, more thoughtful and organized versions of food in Andiland – for example…I managed to have Christmas dinner ready in time and without a huge mess or crazy kitchen. Most ingredients are still thrown together haphazardly – I have accepted the fact that I will probably never be able to follow a recipe – they are usually well thought out (in Andiland – this may not be applicable in the real world) and rarely come out inedible. That said, after my hiatus from cooking – I was off my game, or maybe I was even apathetic toward my food (sacrilege I know) and actually had to throw out a batch of gnocchi that I made. This is likely more of a reflection of my extreme lack of the essential patience it takes to make proper gnoochi or risotto, than the ability to make it, at that particular time. So I took out that frustration on a new endeavor – soups and stews. I have made stews several times before, but it has never been a permanent guest of my dutch oven. I have done a 180 apparently, because I made soup about 90 percent of the time in December. The trend continues; as I write this, I am enjoying a delicious black bean soup that benefitted from an accidental addition of roasted tomatillos that was intended for the Chicken Mole I was planning to make to accompany it (when I was not making it, I was eating eat from my favorite Austin eats).

The moral of the story: even though I had to feed myself out of seemingly endless brown cartons and slept less than a colicky newborn – I completed grad school with high marks, landed an amazing position as Director of Advocacy, and had enough vacation time to take a month and a half off my old job with pay! Life has a funny way of working out sometimes…so Happy 2012 everyone and I cannot wait to resume my cooking and blogging life.