Happy New Year – A New Kind of Era

I’ve decided it’s a new era. Things are gonna be different. You’ll see.

Let’s pretend that Cooking Light Magazine is interviewing me. I heard narcissism is trending.

Cooking Light: Wow, Deanna. Welcome back! It’s been a long time since you’ve posted anything on your website. It’s like a ghost town. Where have you been and why have you let the world down?

Kitchen Snob: Well, first, Happy New Year! To quote Patti LaBelle, I’ve got a new attitude. But this time, I mean it. This won’t be like the last 29 years of New Year’s commitments. We’ve been…

Cooking Light: You aren’t anywhere near 29 years old. But I’ll let that slide, as to not embarrass you.

Kitchen Snob: Um, okay. Well, we’ve been in limbo for awhile. We’ve lived in 4 different places in the last two and half years!

Cooking Light: Get out.

Kitchen Snob: Yep. It’s been a little crazy! But we’ve had some fun, too. First, we moved from Pennsylvania to Phoenix. We’ve been living out of boxes since then living with my brother, then in a rental house, and then finally to our new house that we just bought.

Cooking Light: You’re like a gypsy.

Kitchen Snob: But I also made some excuses, which I still stand by (haha) like, having a broken stove, and then, after it was “fixed”, it only worked half the time. My blogging props were trapped in boxes in our back office due to lack of storage. Or, I was just tired when I got home from work. And here’s my favorite: it actually took us 9 months, looking almost every weekend, to find a house. It feels like we’ve been living in a mild hurricane.

Cooking Light: You’re right, that is a lot of excuses. Although they’re understandable, you still let us all down and people were really, really sad about it. There is doubt…that they will ever…recover.

Kitchen Snob: Wow, I didn’t realize how amazing and important I am to people. I mean, my recipes are great. Tomorrow, I’m prepping and freezing extra portions of my Peruvian Green Sauce and my 5-minute Honey Lime Cilantro sauce so I can have ready-made sauces to bring some excitement to the steak and pork chops that are in my freezer. That’s another thing I’m doing more of in this new era: cooking!

Cooking Light: Oh, yes! We’ve tested those recipes and they are outstanding! Yes, let’s talk about this new era. What is this new attitude you’re going with? Full disclosure: we’ve been sifting through your life files and we’ve seen these false promises before. Remember all that so-called cool furniture you’d sometimes find on the side of the road and then say you’re going to “paint it”? Have you ever actually painted anything, Deanna? I mean, let’s get real for a moment.

Kitchen Snob: Wow. This is a very thorough and weirdly awkward interview.

Cooking Light: And can you really claim it’s a new era? What kind of person says that?

Kitchen Snob: Well, it just finally hit me that if I want to do something, I need to just do it. I’m responsible for making it happen. And, sure, I’ve known this my whole life. Many of us do, in theory. But sometimes we just suddenly see something a different way and then we know we’re ready for that change. I’m looking at it from a different perspective. I always pressure myself in my head and then it doesn’t get done. It’s like I rebel against my own pressure. So this new approach is a no-pressure approach.

Cooking Light: You sound like you might need a tad bit of psychiatric help.

Kitchen Snob: It’s just finding a way to make it work. Excuses or no excuses, I’m going to keep making progress and moving forward without the pressure of “why aren’t I further along”. I’m taking the 1% Infinity approach, which is helping take some of that self-inflicted pressure off. It’s not about focusing so much on the big goals and stressing about them, it’s about taking tiny small steps to reach the goal.

Cooking Light: This Bjork Ostrom guy sounds pretty smart. I bet he’s smart enough not to abandon his website.

Kitchen Snob: He is. But ultimately, I’m so ready to share some new recipes and tell you some ridiculous stories along the way. We seriously have a lot to catch up on!

Cooking Light: We do. We want to hear about your lame stove situation and why you’re so selfish to just leave us all hanging.

Kitchen Snob: Ya know? I think I’m going to get going. This Cooking Light interview fantasy has taken a dark turn. I just signed up for Hulu and I’m really looking forward to the first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Cooking Light: You really should write or work on your recipes instead of procrastinating further. Again, I must point out: we’re all waiting.

Kitchen Snob: I’ll give you a teaser. One of my upcoming recipes is a make ahead breakfast that you can throw together in the morning and seem like a Costa Rican domestic diva. That’s all I’m going to say.

Cooking Light: I’m sure this recipe will be a hit like all your others. Oprah is just dying to add your new recipes to her magazine. She’s waiting, too. Like we all are…and have been…for years. It honestly feels like decades.

Cooking Light: Hello?