Currently :: January 2021

Oh, hey there, friends! Happy Friday, happy January 1st, and happy first day of 2021! Before we get into all the reflections and so forth that are going to happen in this post, let me just say thank you – thank you for all of the visits you’ve paid to Homefront Cooking and for all the recipes you’ve cooked and tagged, for all the comments you’ve left, for all the questions you’ve asked and suggestions you’ve made, and for all the engagement you’ve brought to the blog. That has been my absolute favorite thing about entering the land of food blogging – meeting so many people who are engaged and passionate and excited about cooking good food!

I’ve got some stats updates and some recipe updates and a whole lot of random thoughts about the past year stored up here. So without any further ado, here’s what’s going on…

Currently…

1. Christmas is magic when seen through the eyes of a child. My son is right about at the 2.5 year mark, and at the age where he gets what is going on. He saw Santa show up on the mantel, he saw the stockings come out, and started immediately asking if Santa and presents were coming. He absolutely loved this beautiful season, and seeing him have so much fun just made it all the more magical for us, despite sharing it with family over Zoom instead of in person.

2. Excitement + 2YO = Grabby Hands. As you see, in most of our pictures, all of the ornaments quickly moved above the 4-foot mark on the tree. The stockings were eventually put away until Christmas morning, and breakables were all left in bins. Because our son is 38-inches tall and he probably isn’t going to internalize “look with your eyes, not with your hands” for a while, and especially not when he’s super excited about Christmas.

3. Some bloggy stats from last year. The second full year of Homefront Cooking was a nice one! We had about 12,300 of you show up to check out our recipes and family stories, and we’re so happy to have had you visit! We had a few great sponsors show up to collaborate on posts and send us products, and Pinterest was definitely our battle buddy when it came to referring people to the site! Thanks to all of you for showing up and giving our recipes some love!

Here are the top 10 recipes from 2020:

I’m getting ready to launch a reader survey for 2021 to help me get a better handle on what you all like to see so we can serve up more of that for you, and so I can get a better feel for what sets Homefront Cooking apart from other recipe sources. We’re still trying to figure out our groove over here, and we’d love to hear your suggestions!

4. There were still “bests” about 2020. In many ways, this was an awful, awful year. There were some really dark times, for all of us. Hundreds of thousands died of COVID. A friend committed suicide far away in California and another was murdered while running in another country. One friend beat cancer, another succumbed.

There were other ups and downs that were less dramatic. I had some great job successes and made some top-whatever lists in some pretty good publications, and my wonderful amazing husband quit his job to take care of our son when his daycare closed. Family members came to visit, and we worried about everyone’s safety while enjoying their time.

It didn’t feel like a year where there could be “bests.” But I’ll tell you a couple.

It was my best year for work. Apparently, I’m really productive when I don’t have to put on a uniform, when I don’t have to commute, when I can join my family for lunch and dinner, and when I can work at whatever hour I feel productive, not just office hours.
It was my best year for fitness improvement. Losing a really long and inconvenient commute and just being able to head out my front door and run, or going walking with my family, helped me make some great strides in shedding office and pregnancy pounds. I finally feel like I’m at the point where I can start training for performance, not just calorie loss, again!
It was my best year with my family. I loved the amount of time I spent with my family – and not just Scott and Marcus, but all the family who visited. Nobody took any time for granted, there was a lot less squabbling, and we just appreciated actually having each other around. And we relished it enough that calls became Facetime and we scheduled routine Zoom calls just to keep up with everyone, when we might have relied on longer-spaced visits otherwise.

It amazes me that in a year like this, there are still “bests,” but it also reminds me to hope. We humans are a remarkably resilient species. We’ve overcome a lot in our history, and while we still have a lot to overcome, our potential is incredible.

5. The Mandalorian is everything. So I’m one of the people who hated the sequel trilogy to Star Wars. I grew up with Star Wars, and it was awesome because the good guys faced an insurmountable appointment with power and experience in the Force on his side and they won. To have them show back up again for another adventure was awesome, but…they were back exactly where they started. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there was another massively evil regime in place, as if nothing they did had mattered. Horrible message there, people.

So enter Mando and the ubiquitous Baby Yoda. And they told the story that people actually wanted to see. The story of a toppled regime that was struggling to regain its past glory, of a newly emerged Republic that realized it had to stop being a scrappy little startup and take over the whole corporation, and the people who didn’t know who the Skywalkers were and were just trying to eke out a living. It was a story that resonated, and it let them get you totally invested in new characters while bringing ones you loved from other stories in and out as the story needed.

Jon Favreau is a storytelling genius. You’re not changing my mind.

6. We’re behind on movies. And shows. So other than The Mandalorian, I really haven’t made time to watch much. And Scott gets stuck watching whatever Marcus wants during TV time, so while he’s well versed in what’s going on in the world of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and has probably watched more YouTube videos of helicopters, trains, and Gecko’s Garage than a sane person should, he’s behind on other shows. We have still not seen Soul or Wonder Woman 84.

What would you recommend to a pair of parents who are willing to give a couple hours on Friday nights to a show, now that there’s no Mando until 2022?

7. Planning to move makes you want to minimize. We are working with my job to get relocated – hopefully in a way where I get to do the same job. COVID opened a lot of eyes to what work should look like in a digital age, and showed us a lot of possibilities. We haven’t really started on the move plans yet, but we’re thinking enough about it that when I put away the Christmas decorations, I was ruthless.

Why? Because there’s a 95% chance that our next Christmas will not be in this house, and that the U.S. government is going to move us, either as a job-related relocation or as my last retirement move. And if you hold up every cheapo decoration you bought for fun or every joke gift someone gave you and ask if, when people need as much help and charity as you can give, you would ask the American taxpayer to pay to move it…well, let’s just say you end up throwing out a lot of stuff.

The American taxpayer does not need to pay to move my junk. I’m pretty sure that when we move, there will be a lot of things that stay in this house, a lot of things that get donated, a lot of things that get recycled, and some small amount of things that just plain get tossed.

8. What are we cooking tonight? Scott’s grilling steak to ring in the New Year. One of these days, I’m going to get him to jump on here and go through his grilling technique, because the man makes an absolutely amazing steak. He was a good cook to begin with, but during quarantine, he took Aaron Franklin’s MasterClass and watched a ton of tutorials and spent a lot of time bonding with his grill and smoker.

Chances are pretty good, though, that if we have left-overs, we’ll want them in a salad or these delicious open-faced steak sandwiches.

9. WVU vs. Army in the Liberty Bowl. College ball is our jam. We honestly don’t really care about any of the pro teams in this house. We’ve moved too many times to really have a team. Maybe one of these days, we’ll live somewhere long enough that we feel like the local team is our team, but it’s just not happening here. However, when college ball comes on? Look out.

Especially in this house, when we found out that West Virginia {Scott’s alma mater} was playing West Point {my alma mater} in the Liberty Bowl. There was smack talked. There were wagers made. A competitive streak that I hadn’t expected to see emerged from both of us. Until the game came on. And then we were rooting for both teams. Scott stood beside me and cheered on Army the years when we lived at the academy when I was teaching. I’ve been to plenty of West Virginia games with him where we rooted for the Mountaineers. For us, it was a win-win – and West Virginia beating West Point 24-21 was close enough for us to have pride. West Point had a hell of a team this year – and the past couple years. It feels good to be cheering for a winning team again.

That’s as much reflection and thought as I have for 2020 right now. I’m so looking forward to new adventures and discoveries in 2021!

What’s on your adventure list for 2021?