Like riding a bicycle, or a horse.

I'm mixing analogies, or idioms or something. Something about not forgetting how to ride a bike and then something else about getting right back on the horse. 

I blog pretty much in "real time," meaning that I don't have a backlog of foods waiting to be posted at any given moment.  Generally speaking, I'm writing about foods I've cooked recently.  I have one older post that'll go up soonishly from before we took our little hiatus, but usually, if I'm writing about it, it's from this week or so.  Usually there are still leftovers in the fridge.

So that means that when stuff comes up, there isn't content I can just push out automatically.  I don't have stock posts.  

That means that if something happens, and I don't cook for a while, like, say, for a month, you'll know. 

This is a food blog, and not a lets-talk-about-our-feelings blog, so let's just go with "something came up."

Something came up a few weeks ago and I got out of the habit of cooking.  Does this happen to you?  I'm shocked sometimes at how weak my grip is on that routine.  Once it's shaken, it's really hard to pick it back up.  It's like I forgot how to use the oven.  There was one time when I got some local tortellini from the CSA and I managed to boil it and also add spinach and sun dried tomatoes, but other than that I haven't cooked a vegetable.  At all.  In weeks.

There's a portion of it that's emotional.  Stuff happens and I'd rather be on the couch, under a blanket, watching The West Wing on DVD than planning a meal or trying to season the sauce.  But there comes a point where it's not sadness keeping me out of the kitchen, but that going into the kitchen is so far removed from my experience, I might get lost.  I can rationalize and say that some of that is logistics. I've been out of town a lot lately.  I've had houseguests.  I've kept strange hours.  But when I'm here, it's not like the kitchen is calling out to me.

I'm really glad this is a cooking blog and not a vacuuming blog, because if you want to start listing off things I haven't been doing, vacuuming is right at the top of the list. 

There've been salads and lots of cheese and crackers and crudités* and a few sandwiches.  The freezer stockpile was really great because I had precooked chicken for salads and sandwiches, pre-made (homemade) burger patties and frozen burritos, and even frozen rice that was easy to defrost and eat with random fridge veg added to it, so that all worked out.  

And I haven't been to the grocery store in - seriously - 7 weeks, but the CSA produce keeps rolling in so whether I want it or not, there are veg in my house. And that's handy. 

So even though I checked out, there's a watermelon on my counter and some kale in my fridge, a really good looking pepper and an eggplant... et cetera. The veg are staring me down and I'm out of excuses and tired of ordering sandwiches in.

It's time to get back into the kitchen.  What's next?

*I'm not fancy, but I call cut up veg crudités. When I was like 20 years old I was less fancy than I am now, and I had this job where my boss was this pretty fancy older lady and we weren't friends and we were planning a party and she said we should get some "crud ate," and I was like, "What?" and she was just as shocked at the fact that I'd never heard of "crud ate" as I was at her mispronunciation.  She explained that "crud ate" was veggies and dip but that calling it "crud ate" made it sound fancier. I didn't correct her, per se, but I did use the word crudités often and loudly near her. I didn't have that job for a real long time. 

Much funnier than "crud ate," my grandmother called hors d'oeuvres "whose ovaries."