Hello, and Happy New Year, interwebs!  I decided to take last week off from blogging–from the internet in general, actually–which is why there were no postings last week.  I probably should have announced it in advance, but it was a spur-of-the-moment decision.

Taking the week off from social networks was strangely refreshing.  And this is speaking as someone who normally gets twitchy after twelve consecutive hours in The Land Of No Internets (a.k.a. my parents’ house).  It helped that I was off work for the week, and therefore not in front of a computer for 8+ hours/day.  It also helped that my main desktop machine at home was malfunctioning for most of that week.  Nor did the cold I came down with four days ago hurt matters any.

But I’m back now (well, I still have the cold, but otherwise…), and in the meantime, I did make some progress on the cookbook project.

I printed out a full-sized prototype and bound it with a comb-binder, then took it along for Christmas to show to the relatives.  My thought was to get feedback (Did the format work? Were there any really obvious recipes that I left out?), as well as to gauge interest so I would know how many to print up.

Feedback from Beloved Husband’s family was somewhat indifferent.  I have one person who wants a copy, I think.

Feedback from my family was somewhat more enthusiastic.  Mom was thrilled.  Tickled to death, even.  So much so that I left the prototype with her.  Both brothers and that niece want copies (Older Brother even paid for his up front!).

Also, Mom suggested a few recipes to add, which was good.  (Except that I still forgot to get the Watergate Salad recipe, dang it!)  So now there are a couple more fudge recipes, and an egg casserole, and one or two other things included in the book.

But you know you’re really obsessing about a project when you start dreaming about it.  And Thursday morning, I woke up from a dream about those cookies we used to make with Eagle Brand Milk and chocolate chips and coconut and butterscotch chips, where you layer everything in a pan and then pour the milk over it all and bake it.  I haven’t had them in years, but I used to love them.  Well, I thought, it’s not like I can’t just make them anytime I want to, because the recipe is right there in the book….

Oh, wait.  It wasn’t.

So of course, I had to hunt it down and add it in.

I’ve pretty much decided that once I’ve gone for a week without thinking of yet another recipe to add, or another change to make, I’m going to consider the book “done” and ship it off to be printed.  So that might happen later this week.  We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’ve also done some work on my OTHER cookbook project:  The one containing all of my SCA recipes.  That one, at least, is shorter.  But in some respects, it’s also more difficult, since a lot of the recipes refer to source materials that are still in storage.  So if I need to look something up, I’m kind of stuck.  (But only kind of stuck, because a lot of the historical sources are in the public domain and freely available on the internet.)  But that one is also coming along nicely, and should be ready to ship off to the printer about the same time as the other one.  Which means I have to come up with some quick-and-dirty cover art for it….

So that’s how things stand with that project.  I’ll be back on Thursday with my regular writing post.  See you then!