Remember that blog-cation I took in August?

I took the blog-cation with this idea that I could finally catch up on all things blog-related. Little did I know, opportunity was going to knock on my door in the form of a cookbook deal, a cookbook deal that I would need to finish in 7 weeks.

So in case you haven’t noticed, not much has changed on the blog, but I have had a whirlwind of activity in the kitchen. I thought I would share with you some snapshots of a cookbook writing life….

dirty kitchen

Unfortunately, I became very good at cleaning my kitchen. I’m all about “cook like a pro and clean as you go”, but I also got good at “dirty every dish and have one clean working space until I can’t stand it anymore” style of cooking.

To be honest, our whole house became a temporary disaster area.

studying recipes for cookbook

As I was working on recipes, I read every recipe I could find, at least a dozen at a time. Then, I took 6 versions that were the most different and copied them down. I looked for similarities to find out what needed to be in the recipe, what was negotiable, and tried to figure out why the variations were there. After this “reverse engineering,” I put together my own version and crossed my fingers.

And when you are writing a cookbook, sometimes you have to do experiments to perfect a recipe. Like bread….

breads cooling

In my efforts to make the best whole grain bread, I ended up making 7 different variations. Leftovers were made into bread crumbs, croutons, frozen, and sent to Manatee’s office.

I also tried my hand at homemade whole grain pasta.

pasta drying

Happy to report that you can make an AMAZING whole grain pasta with no white flour whatsoever. Yum!

(What you won’t see are the two batches of variations that got thrown directly into the trash. I still need to work on flavoring the pasta, perhaps in the next book…)

Manatee lucked out because his birthday fell on the week I was doing the Cakes chapter.

cupcakes!

My favorite are the chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter cream frosting. Those just may become my trademark.

And with all this food, and one refrigerator, you can imagine we got good at our own version of tetris.

full fridge

Opening the fridge became was like a game of roulette. Manatee and I got used to opening the door and jumping back instantly to avoid food flying out at us.

I became the most popular person at his office with all of the food that I sent with him and I may or may not have gained a few pounds, because there was very little, if any, that we threw away. Considering I wrote and tested well over 250 recipes in 7 weeks, I am just happy that it was a few pounds. Thank goodness that we are very active people and the recipes were all super healthy otherwise I would be talking about how this blog was going to turn into a weight loss blog.

Updates

So, in other news, an early frost killed what remained of my garden. 🙁

This is what remains of Badger Girl’s Garden 2012.

empty pots

It’s sad, but the pots will be put to rest until next year.

I also have to admit that I really missed blogging. I missed hearing from all of you and taking pictures and putting together layouts. I am super happy to be back and sharing with you again.

So, what’s next?

I am going to ease my way back into blogging over the next few weeks as I try to tackle the changes I intended to make during my blog-cation.  Expect some great new recipes, and (fingers crossed) some book reviews and local chef interviews. I also may have a few surprises in store for you, but you will just have to keep checking back to find out about them.

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How did your gardens fare in the end? Any requests for what you would like to see on the blog in the next few months?

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