If I haven’t been posting about the food much in the last few days it’s for a few very good reasons. First, I’ve had some technical difficulties that are finally cleared up (I hope). Second, I’ve been wanting real comfort food lately; old standards that I probably don’t need to give you recipes for, like French onion soup, pasta with red clam sauce, grilled ham and cheese, bangers and mash, macaroni and cheese. I think I might even make meatloaf and mashed potatoes this week. We’ve also been having some of our favorites that I’ve already told you about like pizza, sirloin on arugula, lentils, milaneses, and roast chicken.

I think I’m also feeling a little of the post-holiday deflation. My parents went back to western Michigan, my sister and her boyfriend have gone back to the West coast and I miss them. The tree is put away, though there’s still glitter all over the place that needs to somehow be cleaned up (any suggestions on glitter removal?). We’ve made our New Year’s resolutions and have put ourselves through a mini-detox. Now we have to get back to work and back to fixing up this new old house of ours.

On that note, I was having a serious light deficiency issue in the kitchen and with the sun setting at around 5 p.m., it was just too dark in there to do dishes and forget about pictures. We solved that problem with a little trip to Ikea for a light fixture that my parents helped me put up. Why is it that seemingly simple jobs like that always end up taking hours? For this one I even learned how to use a bolt cutter. I love the fixture and I absolutely love how much light there is now in the kitchen, but there’s a problem people. Without any light, we hadn’t been able to see just how filthy it was in there.