First–I want to thank all of you not only for sending emails and posting comments of concern here after I dropped off the face of the Internet again. You all have and still do mean a great deal to me–having so many friendly readers and a community of folks who post incisive, interesting comments that spark discussion is like having a huge extended family that spans the globe. The joy I have taken from writing with you–because I do think of this blog as a collaborative effort–you ask questions, start discussions, suggest topics–has been a huge part of my life for over five years, and I will never, ever forget it. The love I have felt from all of you has buoyed me up on many a dark day or even darker night when despair has threatened to cast a pall that even the sun cannot lift.

But, the truth is this–I cannot write Tigers & Strawberries anymore.

Not because i don’t love my readers, and not because I don’t love food.

It’s because of this–I am tired of lying. Or, rather, I am tired of not telling the whole truth. The truth should not be a burden, it should be a lodestar to our lives, but in my case, it had become something of which I was ashamed, so I avoided it.

The simple truth is this–the way I have portrayed my childhood and experiences on this blog, while true, only show a part of the experiences that make up my existence. Yes, my grandparents had a farm, and yes, I grew up learning all of the food-growing and preparing skills that people commonly learned in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Yes, I loved my grandparents and they loved me. Yes, the story about my father and the cow is 100 percent true, and yes, I went to culinary school and was a caterer, and was a chef and all of that. Everything I have written here is true.

But, I ignored the other half of my truth. I ignored the fact that I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional family situation which continued until my mid-twenties, one which continued to affect my life deeply until a few months ago when I started intensive therapy to deal with all of the rage, fear and horror I had repressed that had to do with this background.

Having a really good therapist listen to the other side of things, to the darkness that lay hidden in my heart and mind which poisoned my very body with ill-health and which threatened my life, cracked open the walls I had built around myself, and made me look objectively at how I had molded myself and contorted my true personality in order to not only repress that truth, but also to conform to what my family, and later, everyone else, expected of me.

When light poured through the cracks in the wall and illuminated my understanding of my past, present and future, I realized that I didn’t really know myself anymore. I had been so busy crafting a personality of perfection, a woman who was in strict control of her emotions, whose childhood and early adulthood had been scrubbed of all unpleasantness (it isn’t that I forgot the unpleasantness, I simply ignored it and never spoke of it to anyone) that I lost sight of the genuine person who I had been trying to protect behind that carefully crafted facade.

Unfortunately, I am now trying to figure out who and what I am! And because so much of Tigers & Strawberries is tied up with that image of a farm girl who had a nearly idyllic life in the country, I find I cannot keep writing here.

And, frankly, I’m kind of tired of taking pictures of every dinner I make! Sometimes, I just want to cook and eat, and that is okay.

But, truly–I do miss you all. And I want to keep writing, but I just cannot keep writing only about food. I just can’t right now.

So, it is time to stop writing here and start writing somewhere else.

I will keep T&S up and active here so folks can still get the recipes, and post comments asking questions. I will still monitor the site for questions and answer them when I see them. I still want folks to be able to use this site as a great cooking resource, because the truth is, I am proud of what i have created here and I don’t want it to disappear.

I am going to start a new blog, probably on Blogger, which is not my first choice of venue, but which is convenient. It will be a much more general blog, though, you know me, there will be recipes and pictures of food! We can’t get around that! But the topics I write about will range from ruminations of fiction writing, news on various projects I am working on (yes, including books, hopefully), my adventures with fabric, news on how the Kat is growing and tales of the adventures of various members of my household. There will probably also be tales that are from the darker, sadder part of my life, because, well, that truth deserves to be told. There is no way to appreciate light if we ignore the darkness.

So, I will post one more time here to give a link to the new blog, which is likely to be called, “Summoning the Muse,” because that is what I am trying to do. I am trying to find my inner self, the one who is full of inspiration and courage, the one who has kept me alive all of these years. She’s been waiting a very long time to get out and see the sun, and I think she deserves a chance to stretch her wings and tell her tale for a bit.

Thank you all again. I can never, ever articulate how much all of you have meant to me. I hope that some of you at least follow my new adventures in the new blog, but I understand very much that many of you only really want to read about cooking. For those of you, I wish you all a fond and loving farewell.

For the others–thanks for coming along with me into uncharted territory.

I appreciate the company,

New posts will once more appear starting on Monday.

Have a good weekend, all.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who has posted here, emailed me, stopped me on the street or called me on the phone to extend best wishes and the hopes that all is well with my family and myself. My readers are among the best people in the world–caring, curious, interested, intelligent, compassionate, kind and creative, and, luckily, patient.

Secondly, I want to apologize for my recent silence. Long-time readers probably noted that my posts had begun to dwindle from a hearty gush of verbiage to a steady stream to a bare trickle over the past few months, so I am sure that some of you were not particularly surprised by my sudden absence in the blogosphere. The reasons for my absence are simple, really, but are not ones I want to go into publicly–I don’t think it is proper to go into what exactly happened to cause me to go silent. Suffice to say that what has been on my mind for the past six weeks when it comes to food, cooking, restaurants and recipes is not appropriate for me to opine upon publicly. I just don’t roll that way. (Although, if one is curious, and one sends an email, and one asks nicely, one might get a private answer to further enlighten one–especially if one is a long-time reader or internet friend.)

Basically, I had to make a hard decision, one that affected how I felt about food while I was making it, and which potentially would affect how I felt about food in the immediate future, and I didn’t want to give an expose on my thoughts while I was thinking them.

The astute among you have probably divined the nature of the decision, but for those who don’t know me as well as all that, I decided to stop working at Restaurant Salaam, and have instead decided to focus my time and energy on my family and other projects, including this vastly neglected blog. It was a hard decision, and in poring over the facts and assumptions in my head as I prepared to make my decision, I had to keep it all to myself, for many, many reasons, especially professional ones.

Now that we have the not fun stuff out of the way, let me tell you a bit about what has been going on in my life that is more positive!

As you can see from the photograph above, which I posted for Kat’s internet family of virtual aunties and uncles, Kat has started eating apples on her own. That is her first one–she just plucked it up from the fruit basket graciously sent to us by Dan’s parents over the holidays, and took a big old bite from it. And, as you can see, as she chomped, munched and crunched her way through the crispy fruit, she had a great time. There was much lip-smacking, finger-licking and teeth bearing involved in the process.

She is finally learning to talk, although her expressive language (that means talking–her receptive language skills, which relate to how much she understands and comprehends–is above average for her age) is significantly delayed. This is a cause of concern, and we are currently working to get her in with the best local speech therapist available, who comes highly recommended by just about every professional we talk with on the issue. Just this week, Kat’s speech has improved greatly–words are starting to come out perfectly and clearly, and she has started using more of them, even in combination, which she had not done before. She also knows her letters–which makes me think at times that she will learn to read before she effectively learns to speak!

But we are being patient, reading up on the issue, taking her out to play with other kids, talking and reading with her and doing all the stuff we should be doing. It is just–well, it is frustrating, especially for her. But, we are confident that she will get there, especially with two parents around more often than not, both working with her at every opportunity..

Morganna is doing great–she started her second quarter of college a few weeks ago and is having a lot of fun in her classes. She is still working as a line cook at Salaam, which she loves doing, and she is happy, especially now that her best friend from childhood has decided to move here to Athens.

Zak is doing great–he has taken up learning how to fingerpick acoustic guitar and after a month sounds like he has been at it for about a year. He is planning on returning to playing out in public again, which is great for him, not only because it is fun, but because he even gets paying gigs now and again.

As for me–I have gone back to cooking and enjoying it at home again. I had stopped really liking food for a while, and while I still don’t eat as much as I once did and have lost over twenty pounds in the past six months or so, my passion for culinary arts is re-awakening. I also have been busy sewing gifts for my family and friends–for the past holiday season, I have completed a queen sized rag quilt, a throw sized quilt, about fifteen aprons, a case for Zak’s Japanese bamboo flute (shakuhachi), a set of patchworked and embroidered placemats, a doll quilt, mattress and pillow set for Kat and have started assorted other projects. I am looking into starting an Etsy shop to sell my aprons and other kitchen-themed quilted items, and as soon as that happens, I will let readers here know about it. In the meantime, if there is interest, I will post photos of the holiday projects here to show people what I have been up to while also being wrapped in my self-imposed cocoon of silence.

So, there you have it. The news of my and my family’s whereabouts, health and well-being.

I have some original recipes to share with you coming, so look for them in the near future.

Blessings and thanks to everyone who has asked about us–and I hope that everyone of you had a great holiday season.

Morganna’s ultrasound, like her CT scan, turned out perfectly normal. Her white cell count is still not elevated, and her pain is gone, as is her general malaise and nausea.

She is, in a word, fine.

When the ER doctor suggested it was a virus, I was skeptical, but Morganna’s regular doctor said there was a virus that almost exactly mimicked appendicitis, and it could be that she had it. There had been cases of it reported at the hospital and in his practice, so it was a possibility.

It looks like that is the case, because Sunday night. Zak started showing symptoms–the exact same ones Morganna did. He is okay now–for whatever reason, it seems to be cycling through him faster than it did with her.

And–last night, both Kat and I started having stomach pains. Neither of ours stayed in the lower right quadrant of the abdomen, and since appendixes do not go traveling around the body cavity, I am pretty sure it is just this weirdo virus.

I just wish I could remember the name of it. No one has a fever, but is is really painful. It feels like it felt when I had two duodenal ulcers about twelve years ago, but it flares up with pain more intense than that.

Weird.

At least it seems to go away semi-quickly.

She was having severe abdominal pain, and he thought it might be appendicitis–and it still may be that, we just don’t know. We spent the entire day in the ER, then she was released with the theory that it was just a virus, but with no elevated white cell count and no fever, that seemed unlikely. We went to see her doctor again the next day, and he scheduled her for an ultrasound to rule out an ovarian cyst, but of course, since it was Thanksgiving week, the soonest we could get her in was today.

So, Morganna spent the week in pain, and I spent the week in worry. We did have a Thanksgiving meal, but it was pretty quiet. (However, we discovered that Kat really likes turkey. A LOT.)

So, I will be finishing the post today and I’ll let everyone know what is up with Morganna as soon as we know something.

Then, I will catch everyone up on what else has been going on and post some more recipes–I have some really nice ones lined up.

Gotta go take Morganna back to the hospital for her ultrasound. See you later!