I Miss This...A LOT!

I just came across some recipe ideas from 2009 that I was working on for this blog and I thought, "Man, do I miss blogging!"
It's not so much the sharing my cooking with the world (or more realistically the few of you who were kind enough to follow my posts) that I missed, but the actual menu planning and recipe executing that I did.
I still menu plan and I still recipe tinker, but not with focus like I did when I was keeping this online record. So I think for me, in 2011, I'm going to try this again. But a little differently.
And it's because my life is a little different now, I'm a working mom. Just a little over a year ago my husband Peter and I became the proud parents to a baby boy.
So, the days of idly flipping through cookbooks and food magazines whenever the mood struck me are gone for the time being. Now when I go to the store it's in and out, no more wandering the aisles (well, maybe not "no" more, but definitely with less frequency). Thanks to a very supportive husband and patient baby I am still able to have at least one day in the kitchen just really going to work on a meal. So I will use that time as a jumping off point for this new foray into blogging.
Almost every Sunday we host a family meal. My cousins come over for dinner get together just like we would if we were back home in Omaha. When family is in from out of town they join us. Sometimes friends get included, but for the most part it's simply a weekly family meal. It's also when I usually do my recipe testing.
I use my relations as my own private guinea pigs for whatever recipe has caught my eye that week. I do take suggestions and my cousins have logged in their requests from time to time. Depending on if I already have a menu set and the shopping done, I'm happy to oblige. Birthdays are the exception, whoever is the lucky Birthday boy or girl gets to pick what they'd like for dinner and dessert, you know within reason (unless you're Peter, then it's anything goes!).
Not all of my attempts are successes; there's a particular soupy pudding cake I served up recently that comes to mind. Some weeks I'll just go with a tried and true standard or let the weekly specials decide. My kitchen resolution for 2011 was to try at least one new recipe a week. So far, I've kept my promise and with the exception of the "soup" cake I haven't been disappointed yet.
I'm going to try and post at least twice a week to get started. So I'll keep you updated on my Sunday dinner experiments and whatever new meal I'm testing driving on the husband and the boy. I'll let you know what they thought and if it lived up to my expectations.
So here we go. New year, new recipes and a new crack at blogging.