Raised from Scratch

Well…I suppose it’s time to begin again. With 6 yellow notepads full of recipes and my camera’s 16 GB memory card completely full, I’m self-imposing a pause in production so some of what I’ve been doing can be shared with YOU.  And, by the way, THANK YOU for being here despite my 8 month absence from the blog. It seems I need these long term breaks from time to time. Not great for anchoring an audience, I know, but establishing a following was never my intent. I just wanted to share with whoever could benefit from my work. There are beautifully creative capabilities within all of us, and when I began this site a few years ago I know I was struggling to recognize my own and to find a way to share my talents with others. While spending two years in Chicago from 2011 to 2013 I was so focused on raising my little girl and helping my husband thrive in grad school that I neglected my own creative urges, and my spirit really suffered. So I closed the computer, tried to allow cooking to be compulsively fun again, looked for ways to heal and carry on. I moved to Portland, Oregon and spent most of my days outside exploring, in awe of my surroundings, photographing the natural beauty that existed beyond my home walls. I felt like I was slowly breaking out of a concrete full-body mold that had formed around me one day/one drop at a time over the course of my two year stay in Chicago. So slow I didn’t really know what was wrong or why I felt so low sometimes. Walking through redwood forests and happily soaking in Pacific Northwest rain showers brought my spirit back to life. Chicago is amazing in so many ways, but I was ready to leave it behind by March, when I coincidentally stopped feeling inclined to blog.

Fast forward. I’m living the last few days of 2013 fully loving my life again, believing in myself again, feeling empowered to share more art/create more art and propel myself to even happier places. Oregon is outrageously wonderful. It took me 30 years and 9 states to make it my home, and I am so incredibly content to finally be within its borders, surrounded by mountains and verdant forests. So here’s a sampling of my recent photography from the past six months. I hope you’ll understand why I’ve had trouble keeping the camera focused on food.