What’s going on around here?

Hellooooooooo!

Oh it’s been a long time since there have been any posts.  I don’t like that.  But I have a dilemma…

It’s a multi-faceted dilemma.  Many parts.  Here’s me, breaking it down:

1. I got a job – there was a time, not too long ago, when I did not have a 40 hour gig.  Now I have a 50 hour gig, which I love, but which takes up a huge amount of time.  There’s no getting around it.  Cutting your “free” time down by over 50 hours a week leaves considerably less time for other things (although it also provides much more funding to do even other things, and for that I am grateful).

2. I decided to start taking care of myself.  It’s time.  I’m 44 and figured if the free gym membership with my (newly-acquired employer-sponsored) health insurance wasn’t enough to get my booty in gear, then I might just lose the health and fitness battle.  So I now go to the gym.  A lot (for me anyway).  And that also takes time.

And the biggest reason I’ve been absent lately…

3. Bake like a ninja has gone…paelo*.  What??  Yep.  Our household has gone paleo.  Which is sort of antithetical (god I love a good $8 word) to baking.  No grains.  No refined sugar.  No dairy.  What the hell do you bake with if you can’t eat any of those things?  Not much.  Yes, it’s possible to make “paleo” quick breads, pancakes, and lots of things in the oven.  But let’s face it – I’m not making croissants from scratch anytime soon, unless I get bitten by a “hey it’d be fun to make a ton of yummy baked goods for the people at work and not eat any of them myself” bug.

So where does that leave the blog?  Well, I’m not sure.  But I want to spend more time here.  While we have given up eating a lot of things, we haven’t given up wine**, so BLAN may well witness the return of Wine Wednesdays very soon (perhaps as soon as next Wednesday).  And I still want to finish out the (almost) 12 months of cookbooks project***, so there are are couple of posts left in the ol’ gal yet…

And, who knows where this will all lead.  Perhaps I’ll start blogging about paleo (although there are so many people out there doing that, my contribution hardly seems interesting).  Tips and tricks always go over well here, so maybe some paleo tips and tricks.  I’m not sure.  But I miss the blog.  So we’ll work it out.

Until next time!

Cheers.

*For the uninitiated, “paleo” is a way of eating, limiting diet to lean meats, nuts, seeds, fats, and fruits and vegetables.  Which kind of eliminates all the basic building blocks of baked goods.
**One thing I like about the paleo “diet” is that there are no real hard and fast rules.  There’s a lot of scientific-type writing out there about it and there are some people who eat this way for some pretty serious health issues (diabetes, chrones, celiac, etc.).  Since we are not eating this way for a medical condition, but rather to feel and look better, we can modify it more or less however we want.  We include wine.
***I’ve been dragging my feet on that one a bit too, since we’re hardly using cookbooks anymore.  Most of what we’ve eaten over the past couple of months has been from recipes online.  Again, this might take some tinkering, but we’ll work it out.