I'm baaaaack!

I know it’s been absolutely forever!  It’s not that I haven’t eaten or enjoyed noteworthy meals in all these weeks and months it just seems my creativity has been regrettably suppressed and all the other stuff has just got in the way.  But it’s a new year, I am taking myself in hand (weaning myself off the extremely addictive iPhone apps, I am blaming games such as Charadium, mmmm – maybe just one more round!) and definitely getting back to writing again (work emails don’t count!)
I also found that having my blog besieged by ‘spamdexing’ or it is ‘splogging’ extremely dispiriting. Maybe I should have been flattered that a group of Japanese open-minded individuals wanted to use my blog as a vehicle for their sometimes depraved discussions on their sexual proclivities but it felt like an unwelcome invasion, and wholly inappropriate.  If there was some tenuous link like them combining sex and food I could have maybe seen why my blog was targeted but thanks to some handy internet translators out there I can confirm that it was way more sordid than that and as asking politely to stop didn’t work, I’ve just had to insist all comments are vetted now.  I guess my new-found audience of Japanese swingers have been curtailed but hey, I can live with that.     
I originally started a blog to record some of the fabulous foodie experiences that I enjoyed so that I would always be able to be instantly transported back to that moment of sharing a morsel of something magical, that stupendous unctuous egg dish that I didn’t want to forget, to be able to relive every nuance of a well crafted tasting menu, record all the details of those restaurants I would rush to recommend (and a few I would steer clear from) and jot down those recipes that I’d loved and may want to whip up again. I started my blog just before the first magical journey via the Orient Express.  I knew it would be a voyage of discovery in every sense, the joy of living on a luxurious art deco train, waking up and seeing a different country out of the window and the elegant served and delicious tasting food.  It was truly breath-taking and has given me a real love of that sort of holiday.  Combining the getting there with actual holiday seems to extend the pleasure and makes for a more relaxing time.  It’s not that I haven’t always enjoyed flying but I have really fallen out of love with airports, the endless security restrictions and all that drama.  And budget airlines have certainly expanded our horizons and given us the opportunity to explore exotic places too prohibitive to consider before but there’s certainly little joy in sharing a cramped, parsimonious plane with a large group of noisy stags dressed as nuns trying to see how much lager they can neck, screaming children who remain un-admonished for violently kicking your seat back for the entire flight and the mysterious extra charges incurred if you intend to carry onboard anything more than a credit card – bitterness here perhaps?  I may have always regretted not taking the opportunity to travel on Concorde before it sadly folded its wings forever but probably the QE2 would have been more my style!  As 2010 lies before me I am poring over guide books and web sites and planning where to holiday this year - I know they’ll be excellent, inspirational food, they will be a train journey to and through France (the only decision made so far) and they’ll be a huge amount to write about.  I have a new Leica baby (a D-Lux 4 in fact) to aid photographic creativity; I have been hankering to branch out further than point-and-shoot to inject a little more artistry in my food photography.  So armed with my new toy, a raft of foodie destinations – the world is my oyster, or scallop even!               
I stand by the quotes and words of wisdom that top my blog,  currently “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well “, so very true and another favourite, “Cooking is like love, it should be entered into with abandon or not at all”.  So I intend to heed that advice and re-enter blogging with abandon. I have a huge stack of photographs to reacquaint myself with, reams of half-finished snatches of edible musings to complete and an appetite for even more culinary adventures.  Let the feasting begin!