Saturday, December 30, 2006

MUSTARDED CATCHUP

Sorry for the lack of posting! The irony is that I've been eating insane amounts of food and spending much more money on meals out than I have almost all year. And yet: I've been neglecting my food blog. It's because The Holidays just got the better of me! So: Let's hear it for The Holidays! Right?! Yeah! This time of year is SO GREAT! I am very lonesome.

This will probably be my last post of 2006, and for some reason I'm finding that fact intimidating. I want to make this good for you guys! I want to make this good for me!

I started writing Put It In Your Mouth almost one year ago, and one thing I never mentioned about this blog (probably because it was only interesting to one person: myself) is that I maintained a private set of writing guidelines as a kind of self-imposed challenge. For one, I decided early on not to post pictures; I did this because I am very lazy when it comes to posting things, let alone uploading digital files. But more than that, and more pretentiously, I didn't want to rely on short-cuts. If I was going to write about food, I wanted to really Do It. Posting pictures seemed like an easy (or--for the lazy--difficult) cheat. I did post pictures of my trip to Holland (you can see them in the March archives), but after that I stopped taking pictures of food. I did, however, continue to eat.

Another pretentious challenge was that I would only ever publish first drafts. That way, I wouldn't care too much if my invisible audience didn't like a post. You wouldn't think that someone who keeps a public blog would be self-conscious about her writing, but I really kind of am! I know I'm a Cuckoo Bird for having no shame in admitting to botched booty calls, and yet shrink at your potential judgement of syntactical errors and/or boring entries, but that's what it is to be a nerd. A sexy nerd* who tried this year to get some tasty food and hot action and succeeded, sporadically, in attaining both.

So: what else? I guess the most surprising thing to me about keeping this blog was that my interest in food decreased. I used to proudly call myself a "foodie" but not only will I no longer make douchey pronouncements like that, I really don't think I'd qualify as being one anymore. I hardly keep up on the new restaurants, at least not nearly as much as I used to. I dine out less than I used to, or, if the frequency has stayed the same, I'm eating at my same old haunts, and haven't tried as many new places as I used to. I still read Menupages.com for fun, but, I'll admit, it's less fun than it used to be. I WAS about to buy the 2007 Zagat's Guide To New York City Restaurants but then I didn't. But that's only because today I switched bags at the last minute when leaving my apartment and forgot my wallet.

I suppose what I'm saying is that I don't know if 2007 is going to be a year where I care as much about food as I did in 2006. I mean, I'm still me -- I love to eat and hate to be hungry (SO UNIQUE!), and let's face it, "yummy" is a permanent, and permanently overused, part of my word arsenal. But right now food's a little less of a priority. Lately, I get all Spazz-Hands on music, graphic novels, and sustained emotional intimacy. So we'll see what 2007 holds in those departments, and we'll see if my interactions with any of the aforementioned merit the attention of this blog.











*Right?! Who's with me? No one? How about you, pillow? What? You're soaking wet with tears? Those aren't mine! I don't know...maybe someone else cried herself to sleep on you while I was out. Oh, I ran errands and had dinner at a nice fish place. Hey that's mean! YOU are the one with fishbreath, pillow! Look, I'm sorry you are soaking wet. The truth is, those ARE my tears. Really?! You think that's sexy? Oh, pillow: I love you, so.