A Time to Pause

A friend is moving out west today. From here in Chicago. I’m going to miss him.

Another is going to visit tomorrow night, as she travels from the density of the east coast to the prairies of Canada.

A family member is in incredibly poor health. Updates have been a roller coaster ride and no one knows what’s next.

In-home things have slid to the side as we travel, deal with bad news, with seeing friends, and more.

It’s time for a pause, to collect thoughts, writings, friends’ visits, our family’s updates, the in-home movements. This week, and part of next, I will be taking that pause. I won’t be updating MetaCookbook during that pause. I’ll update again August first.

I hope you find time for a pause (big or small) too, and that we all are refreshed in our pauses.… Continue reading →

Welcome!

Welcome to the new MetaCookbook! It’s been hard work to redesign it into something beautiful, functional, and more representative of what MetaCookbook has become and where it and I are going.

This has gone from the shared internet space where Bill and I challenged ourselves to cook ~2500 recipes to my blog, somehow, to the space where I, Tasha, accidentally started learning how to cook by trying to cook ~2500 recipes. I haven’t yet hit 200, though I thought I had recently. Wishful thinking.

Recipes and learning to cook aside, though, I’ve had a lot to just plain say about food. So, I’ve said it. I’ve also started showing you how I’m winging it, on occasion. Bill and I are still in discussions about the challenge that started this all.… Continue reading →

Changes are afoot at MetaCookbook!

And they’re going to be super cool changes.

First of all, we’re changing up the software. We’re moving from Serendipity to WordPress. Serendipity has been okay for us, but mostly it just made both of us crazy. Not something we expected when we selected it as a platform, but there’s some things you only discover as you go along.

On top of that, the site’s getting a complete makeover. We may have to spend some time in a transition space, basically Wordress’s default design, until the kinks are ironed out in the makeover design. I hope not, but it’s a possibility based on having to change the software when we did. Basically, if we hadn’t done it now, we were looking at November at the earliest.… Continue reading →

Welcome to MetaCookbook!

So, you saw something on Twitter or Pinterest that intrigued you, and you want to know more about me and my web-home? Thanks! I’ll try to keep it informative, but brief.

h2. About Natasha

I currently live in Portland, Oregon, but I’ve also lived in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and its surrounding suburbs; Baltimore, MD (briefly); and all around New Mexico. Bill and I so regularly contemplated moving to Portland, OR that we did so. I still consider going back to Baltimore, MD. I don’t know if Bill still contemplates it.

I’m in my 30s and discovering how much I am obsessed with food. My obsession is rooted in my undergraduate days, but didn’t really bloom until I landed in Chicago for a Ph.D. program. I have since left that program, and sometimes I very much miss it.… Continue reading →

Help me out, please?

A little while ago, I realized I had one category called “recipes” and was putting any post that resembled a recipe in that category. However, I felt that category was bulking up and there were a lot of recipes that were not the “main dish” of this blog in there. So I broke it up into “Challenge Recipes” (aka – the main dish), “Wedding Recipes” (aka – the smallest category) and “Our Recipes” (aka – HOLY CRAP I’M LEARNING TO COOK).

However, what do I do with a recipe someone gave me that is in none of those categories? It’s not in the “Challenge Recipes” category because it’s a recent gift (so it wasn’t part of the challenge stash). I’m not serving it at my wedding.… Continue reading →