One Year Later and Still Blogging

Tonight I didn’t cook, but I did want to post to mark my blog’s 1st birthday! I can hardly believe it, but I have been a cooking, blogging fool for a year now. My first post on March 5, 2006 started it all. Russ, Cash, and I have all had a fun time with it and it really has become a family project.

Despite the fact that the blog is named after just me; Russ plays a big role… in fact many roles in the blog. He is my official photographer and looking back at the posts from a year ago I think his food photography skills have only gotten better and better. He really amazes me with the beautiful pictures he takes! Russ also serves behind the scenes as my technical support and there is no way that this blog would work without him. There have been countless times that I have downloaded new pictures, saved them, and then can’t find them…. Russ always manages to find them and help me post them. He also surprised me by getting me the domain name for www.rebacooks.com so for all of you still using the blogspot address it still works, but rebacooks.com should load a little faster and is an easier address to remember!

Russ also serves a big role in the cooking and tasting process. I don’t even want to know how many times he has helped air the kitchen out, taken the batteries out of our smoke alarm, and ordered pizza when dinner just didn’t work out. He may have put out a couple fires too… Russ also does a fantastic job grilling and has produced some of our best meals off of the Egg. Lastly he is my faithful food taster and rater. He tries everything I make and is always supportive of the recipes I want to try even when they don’t turn out quite as planned. I love that he rates the meals too and am always curious as to what he will rate them.

Cash is my faithful cooking companion as he tends to hang out in the kitchen whenever I am cooking and is always available to clean up anything that falls on the floor. He is also very helpful when Russ grills following him in and out of the house. I love that he likes to be wherever we are and that he loves hanging out with me while I cook!

This blog started as a way for me to explore my interest in cooking even further and for Russ to remember what I made and what it tasted like, so that when I asked him about a meal I made two months earlier he would remember it. As cheesy as it may sound, this blog really has come to mean even more to me. It has become a creative avenue to not only explore new recipes and cooking techniques, but also to write. It has pushed me to try different kinds of recipes and things I never thought I could make before. Until this past year I shied away from many ethnic dishes since they would include ingredients I had never used before and now I really enjoy cooking all types of ethnic foods including Asian, Indian, and Moroccan. This is just one of the many examples of ways it has encouraged me to flex my cooking and baking muscles. I never would have guessed a year ago that I would enjoy and put as much thought into writing posts as I have. I don’t consider myself a writer and I know I tend to leave out commas, but I have really enjoyed putting into words how I feel about cooking, past experiences that inspire and are reflected in my cooking, how family has been an influence, what something tastes like, why I love stirring a warm a pot of soup and on and on. It has been a fun year and I look forward to another year of cooking and blogging! I hope that you, as a reader whether frequent or infrequent, have enjoyed my blog as much as I have!