Monday, August 29, 2011

My friends, it's been a long, long time...

Sorry for the long time between posts. It has been a crazy year.  So much has happened and a lot is still going on. So as not to leave you hanging, I’ll do my best to intersperse those stories with what's going now and happening in the future. 

Over the past 15 or so months, I have joined the Adjunct Culinary Faculty of Wake Technical Community College, put our house up for sale, been interviewed by websites twice, moved into an apartment, tested recipes for national magazines and an internationally renowned chef’s recently published cookbook, been dragged into a ridiculous ongoing lawsuit, taught tons of classes at A Southern Season and Ger Nis Culinary Center, become a member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and Triangle Area Freelancers, watched my daughters dance in Disney World, and been elected Vice Chairman of our town’s Board of Adjustments.

Currently, I’m the food editor for the Raleigh Downtowner, preparing for my second year of teaching at Wake Tech, still trying to sell our house, testing recipes for one of my favorite magazines and a colleague's soon to be published cookbook, helping form the Culinary Historians Of the Piedmont, NC (CHOP, NC), and revitalizing my blog.

During the final four months of 2011, I’ll be attending the Symposium for Professional Food Writers, publishing a monthly e-newsletter, growing my Linked In and Twitter followings, writing and pitching my own cookbook, tweaking my blog and website designs, and writing a new blog post every week.

Aside from my little corner of the block, there have been wide spread food calls on everything from ground turkey to cheese, a war of words between two food TV icons, bans on shark fins, foie gras, and toys in Happy meals, arsenic and ammonia found in chicken samples, plastic routinely found in a popular frozen pizza, and US Marshalls seizing seafood shipments. As well as the debut of baguette vending machines and breast milk ice cream, a lawsuit over Vienna sausage recipes, the retirement of the "Burger King", and popular family restaurants serving alcoholic beverages to kids instead of juice.

...And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head. So, stay tuned as we learn, taste, get caught up, and plot a course forward … together.