Happy Second Anniversary, LovBites!

Today marks the second anniversary of the day I said, "You know what? I think it would be fun to catalogue all of my recipes in a food blog. Let's do that." A crazy idea, maybe. And maybe it's had it's ups and downs. But I haven't regretted it for a minute along the way.

Admittedly, LoVBites' second year wasn't quite as eventful as its first. I wrote only about 25% of the posts I did last year (ouch), I didn't achieve any recognition from America's Test Kitchen (or otherwise), and I didn't make waves in the Milwaukee food scene. But rather than lamenting or making excuses for all of the things I didn't accomplish this past year, I thought our time would be better spent celebrating what I did do.

I did make three trips to my beloved city by the Bay. Though they weren't quite "vacations" in the true sense of the word, I was able to squeeze in visits to many of my favorite foodie spots (Boudin, Original Joe's, Stanford's) and try a few new ones. We ate at Guy Fieri's Johnny Garlic's restaurant in Dublin which didn't quite live up to the hype Guy would surely create, but wasn't even remotely as bad as the New York Times would lead you to believe his restaurant is in Times Square. We also made our first trip to Tyler Florence's Wayware Tavern in the city which surpassed Guy in terms of quality, but certainly not in terms of service. We've had fantastic experiences at celebrity chefs' restaurants before (Mario Batali, Bobby Flay), and I'm glad we added Guy and Tyler to the list, but these two don't quite rank at the top.

I did complete a full round of P90x. That's certainly one of the things that prevented me from blogging as often as I have in the past, and it interfered with my habit of cooking all out, full blown feasts on the weeknights. But all that time and energy and sweat and tears resulted in dropping ten pounds and two pant sizes, which is peanuts compared to the overwhelming sense of accomplishment when you finish that final workout. It was worth it even if it did eat up my blogging time. So worth it that today is day two of round two!

I did keep cooking. This whole thing wasn't a fad and it wasn't a phase. While I may not have cooked as often or as extravagantly last year, I didn't lose my passion for conjuring up deliciousness in the kitchen. There were dozens of recipes I didn't write about, and maybe someday I'll whip them up again and share them with the world. I have a backlog of photos of meals I can barely remember, but if they were good enough to photograph they must have been good enough to eat. I added at least a dozen cookbooks to my collection and most of them were put to good use. I had quite a few Sunday cooking marathons where I filled the freezer in the garage to feed us through the winter. And, most importantly, when I did hunker down in the kitchen, I made it count. The feasts may have been fewer and further between, not they were certainly no less delicious.

So I'm not going to promise more consistent posts in 2013 and I'm not going to commit to taking LoVBites viral. But I will promise that you can still find me in the kitchen, still embarking on a variety of culinary adventures, and still sharing them when I find some spare time. (And I swear I won't keep any of the best ones from you!)