December flew by, didn’t it?  I looked up, and it was a few days before Christmas.  Most of the month was spent doing adorable little toddler crafts and reading every Christmas book the library has to offer.

We had a lovely holiday just the three of us in very rainy Georgia.  Samuel was thrilled with his new toy train, and he has hardly put it down for more than a few minutes.  Nathan surprised me with Bouchon by Thomas Keller {I’m obsessed with Keller} and a new rolling pin that looks like it is just what I need after being disappointed with my last three {yes…really…including 2 Kitchen Aid rolling pins}.

We are heading to my parents’ house in Pennsylvania for the New Year.  Once we return blogging will be back to normal!  I have a few recipes ready to go that just need pictures uploaded.  There are also some posts about toddler crafts and books to read in the wings.

Oh, and while I haven’t posted here in December, I was over at my other gig Hip Homeschool Moms!

Have a great New Year and see you in 2012!

Look up. You may notice that a new header is gracing my page.  If you follow my Facebook page,  you knew this was coming after I posted something last week.

A few things have been happening in the background.  Mostly they are administrative: leaving Foodbuzz as my ad network {effective at midnight tonight}, putting together a real live editorial calendar, and trying to decide where to take this blog.

I love posting recipes.  I love every step of putting a new recipe together from some obscure idea that sounds good in my head and hope it tastes as good as I imagine it will.  It is probably a large part of the reason Homeslice is not a picky eater.  We eat some weird things some days.

I’m also ready to start posting about our education decision.  I’ve touched very briefly on the fact we have decided to homeschool.  It isn’t a decision we made lightly or quickly, but we’re there, and I’m embracing it.  I’m excited to the point where I have read more books than I care to admit and may have bought my child an old school desk {like from the 80s…sigh}.

We will start preschool in Fall 2012 when his friends all head off to school.  In the Atlanta area, preschool generally starts at 2, and so, we will be starting right along his playgroup friends.

I want to write about this whole experience, and I wanted to be sure my blog reflected that.  So I changed my tagline – where home cooking meets homeschooling.  I expect TBF to remain 75% food and 25% homeschool posts, but we’ll see what happens.

So, thanks to Krystyn, a good friend who is responsible for everything graphic and technical on this site.  She has come through for me…again.

I hope you will stick around.  Changes are fun.

The most common question I get is why don’t I use salt.  Most people assume it is for health reasons, and they ask me how I deal with having high blood pressure.

Confession: I just hate salt.

I grew up in a home where it wasn’t used.  It never sat on the dinner table, and my parents never added it to the veggies or any dishes.  I didn’t realize people ate food salted until I was well into high school.  I can almost remember the exact moment sitting at a cafeteria table sophomore year, and a friend got up to get salt packets.  I was floored.

So as I grew up and moved out on my own I never used salt.  One container could last me a year.  When Nathan and I got married he originally put salt on everything.  Unlike me, he grew up in a home where salt was used in cooking and at the table.  Unfortunately for him I refused to cook with it, and slowly but surely he stopped using salt too {although it is more because I keep it in a cabinet out of eyesight}.

Salt leaves a dry and burning feeling in my mouth even if I use just a spec.  Not to mention it makes me want to chug water.

{Also I don’t put butter on vegetables either…why ruin something that naturally tastes so wonderful?}

When I post recipes please know that if you are a salt person, you need to go ahead and add it yourself.  Aside from baking {where salt is necessary for the ingredients to work}, you will almost never find it in a recipe.

So tell me…are you Team Salt or no?

It is about to get lecture-y and rant-y up in here. So hold to your hats.

Thursday is my grocery day.  Samuel and I go to playgroup, and then swiftly move on to Publix.  I go on Thursdays, because that is the day the new ad starts…and Publix is literally a .25 mile drive from our house.

Anyway.  Today at Publix I was doing my grocery shopping for 5ish days worth of food, and I landed in line behind a woman about my age with two young kids.  I’d guess the kids were maybe 1 and 3 or so.  She was unloading her cart, and I was watching as she put the food out for the cashier.  There were packaged pizzas, Kids Cuisine meals, high sugar cereals, and other really heavily processed foods.  I remembered that most of these foods had been in the ad, because I had been telling Nathan I was sick of so much processed junk on sale each week.  She put exactly two fresh things out: apples and green bell peppers.

She was nice, and she chatted with me as I unloaded my groceries.  She looked at what I was placing on the belt and said, “I could never afford to shop like that.”

I just kind of looked at her puzzled.  My cart was nothing special.  There was no organic food or specialty items – just a lot of fruits, veggies, and some meats.  Oh there were other things too – Cheerios, V8 Splash, BBQ sauce.  However, almost everything was fresh.

I cracked some joke about grocery prices going through the roof, and she nodded in agreement.

I glanced up at her total: $43.87.  I would estimate we had about the same number of items.  Now she did have coupons, but she didn’t have that many.

My total was $70.18, and that was after a savings of $27.74 from in store sales and a few coupons I had with me for things like butter and yogurt.  I feed three people.  Prior to Samuel turning about 8 months old {when he started eating enough food to make me wonder if he is secretly a linebacker} that total would have been closer to $55.00.  She was feeding at least four mouths for more than $20 less than my total {she mentioned a husband…I’m not being presumptuous}.

My point is this: people are told to eat healthy and make better decisions, because it is cheaper.  Sure it is cheaper in the long run – people who eat healthier foods have less health problems.  However, what about the immediate?  What about that family that is trying to figure out how to deal with the huge grocery price hikes?  They can’t think about 10 years from now.  They have to think about how to feed their families this week.

In a perfect world we would all make everything from scratch.  We would bake our own bread, make our own juices, get meats right from the farm.  However, we live in a world where people are busy: there are jobs, activities, commitments, and a terrible economy.  When people have to decide between frozen pizzas for $1.50 a piece or a head of lettuce for $1.69, that pizza is going to go a lot further.  We can sit and preach eating real food until the cows come home, but the fact is that this country is in a place where it isn’t realistic.

Admittedly, I work hard to keep processed food out of our house, but it slips in.  Right now I have a box of Uncrustables for Samuel to eat when we spend the day at the park {whoever invented those is a genius, because a PB&J is quite possibly the messiest toddler food ever}. There is nothing with red 40, but there is a can of Pringles in my closet.

Stores and manufacturers have made it easy to buy processed food.  Coupons abound, and the show Extreme Couponing has shown people how to get even more of that stuff into their houses.

The monetary cost of groceries isn’t the only problem.  We’re raising a generation of unhealthy kids.  Kids who eat more frozen meals than vegetables and who watch more TV than we ever did and who run around outside less.  Diabetes is becoming more common among adults and children, and the average adult exercises less than an hour a week.

We need a solution.  That woman in front of me today should have never been able to turn around and say she couldn’t afford the fresh food.

I think today reaffirms what I’ve thought for a while: that not all people are buying processed foods because they want to…they are buying them because their budget forces them to, and that is unacceptable.

I had hoped to have something to post today, but unfortunately things have been a little crazy here.  I’m in the midst of two recipe development projects for two companies and testing recipes for a cookbook I’m reviewing for another project.  Everything coming out of my kitchen can’t be published on my blog.

Things should be back to normal later this week when I am finally done the two development projects, and I can make something that doesn’t involve me asking “what do I need to change?” and making the same food 9,000 times.

I promise I’ll be back on Friday with a bang.  I bought a huge bag of bruised peaches at the farmers market on Saturday.  This means I’m going on a peach spree once I get out from under these projects.

I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend.  We’ve been taking advantage of the gorgeous weather here in the Atlanta area.  Saturday we ran errands {including another haircut for Samuel}, went to Sprayground, and then went to a free concert at Riverside Park.  Sunday we did Mass and the beach!  Today we’re cleaning and organizing, and then we plan to either go to a baseball game or do the local fireworks.

Today I’m also letting Samuel decorate another cake.  He has so much fun doing it that I thought 4th of July was the perfect time to let him have another go.  I’ll be sure to post pictures and the recipe this week.

Have a great day!

Things won’t be back to normal around here this coming week.  We had a family death over the weekend amongst a few other things, and quite frankly I’m running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Give me another week, okay?  I have a fabulous guest post that I am going to try to schedule for my absence, but I can’t make any promises.

I swear when things get back to normal around here it will have been well worth the wait.

I know things around here have been a bit slower than normal, and you’ll have to forgive me.  Last Wednesday night Samuel had a fever of 102 and was holding his ears.  I knew that probably meant ear infection.  Thursday morning we headed to the pediatrician where they confirmed it and wrote a Rx for Amoxicillin.

Everything seemed fine until Friday afternoon when we noticed he was wheezing every so often.  A call to the doctor’s office calmed our nerves for the time being, but we were told to bring him in on Saturday AM if it got worse or didn’t stop.  By Saturday morning the wheezing had stopped, and we chalked it up to him learning to make new sounds.

Saturday morning we woke up and put Samuel in the bath.  His entire body was covered in an awful rash.  We called the pediatrician, and they saw us immediately.

Homeslice had a reaction to the penicillin.  We had to switch his medicine and watch him carefully.  I haven’t taken my eye off of him since then.

Usually I write at 5:00 AM when I first get up, but it’s The Mommy Show around here this week.

I promise things will be back to normal next week.

This week has been crazy, and I realize my posting has been sporadic at best.  I have a few non-blog things going on this week, and I’m lucky if I can get on my laptop 20 minutes a day {thank goodness I have an iPhone}.

I am so excited to announce a new venture for me!  Earlier this year I signed on with Cook That Book, the popular cookbook review site, to be one of the first contributors to the site.  I’m working closely with Jasmine to provide you with comprehensive cookbook reviews that are great for the family cook!

My first review went up today, and I hope you will hop over and check it out.  I’ll give you a hint: there’s chocolate involved.  And soup.

Make sure to add Cook That Book to your Google Reader.  I’ll be regularly contributing 2-3 reviews each month.

Here’s to a new and amazing opportunity!

Hey, everyone!  I just wanted to let you know that I’ve over at Frosting for the Cause today.  This is an amazing project that brings 365 cookie & cupcake makers from across the United States and Canada.  The recipes have been and will continue to be amazing, and we’re all reaching out to local women’s hospices by donating our baked goods and further we’re donating money to charity.

If you haven’t been following this project yet you should start now!

Check out my post on Chocolate & Peanut Butter Whoopie! Pies.