Dear Food Blog,

There is no denying it.  We both know that I have been ignoring you.

Between travel planning, an endless Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training, Spanish classes, and all the yoga I’ve been teaching, there just hasn’t been space for you.  There has barely been space for cooking.

I’m sorry for neglecting you for (yikes!) over a month, but today I made you breakfast.  Chocolate chip pancakes.  Fluffy, sweet, and delicious.

Can we still be friends?  I promise to be back more regularly when life gets a little less chaotic and I start cooking interesting food again.

I’m off to teach another class, but you stay and enjoy your pancakes.

I’ll see you again soon.

Tracy

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
1 egg
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)

“Es possible a comer pantalones en Antigua?” John asked our cabbie, as we drove from Guatemala City to Antigua.

That’s right – he asked the guy if it was possible to eat pants in Antigua.

Of course, he meant to ask if he could buy pants.  (Comer and comprar are rather similar I suppose.)

After I quickly assured the cab driver that my poor husband (then boyfriend) just didn’t know his Spanish very well, I realized that I needed to do a bit more of the talking.

That happened about three years ago, but John’s Spanish hasn’t gotten too much better since.  In all fairness, neither has mine.  I can read and listen well, but speaking isn’t my strongsuit.  So in order to avoid embarrassing situations like the one above while we are on World Tour, I’ve just signed myself up for some Spanish classes.

“Me llamo Tracy, y me gusta margaritas.”

Looks like I’ve already passed the first test.

If you also like margaritas, make the recipe below.  Just don’t plan to drive anywhere for like an hour – they’re kinda strong.  And don’t make the mistake of thinking that tequila makes your Spanish better.  It just makes you more likely to use a funny accent while speaking incomprehensible Spanish.

Ingredients

1 oz light agave nectar
2 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
2 oz tequila
1 oz triple sec
Lime wedge
Sea salt

Directions

Rub the rim of your cocktail glass with a lime wedge and dip into sea salt.  Pour the agave nectar, lime juice, and tequila into a cocktail shaker with ice.  Shake vigorously until very cold.  Strain into the prepared glass and serve.

Source: Baking with Agave Nectar

I love my food processor.  It will be hands down the biggest cooking tool I miss while we are traveling later this year.

I’m pretty sure it will be too heavy and cumbersome to sneak into my backpack.  Darn.  So while I have it, I’m using it for everything.

Sure, you could chop up the cranberries and hand blend them into the cream cheese.  But what fun is that?

Zip the two around in your food processor and you’ve got whipped cream cheese that turns a delightful shade of pink.

Way more fun.

Ingredients

1 8oz package cream cheese
1/2 cup roughly chopped dried cranberries

Directions

Place cream cheese and cranberries into a food processor.  Pulse, scraping the sides often.  Continue pulsing until cranberries have turned the cream cheese a pink hue, and it has become fluffy.  Serve with crackers or on your morning bagel.

Just look at that map.  Someone got an A for presentation in college, and it wasn’t me.

(Well, it probably was me.  I got a lot of As.  But I didn’t make the map.)

John took this little project upon himself both for explanatory and inspirational purposes.  He mounted it on poster board and everything.

How cute is that?  Very cute, I say.

I find this map very inspiring.  It makes me want to add pins to Africa and Russia so we can cover more of the globe.  Not that we aren’t already being crazy ambitious.  This route we have planned is a little intimidating.

I’m sure that from the photo you can’t even remotely tell where the pins are.  But trust me, there are a lot of countries under those pins.

A lot of cool countries.  Countries I’m excited to visit, and not entirely sure we’ll have enough time for.

So some of them may have to be removed.  Some may get added.  That’s the fun of this little map, right?  We get to keep playing and changing our minds, looking to see what we want to add or delete to our tentative itinerary.  Then once we hit the road, who knows what will happen to this plan – we may change the whole thing on the fly.

For the next couple of months, we get to keep playing with our potential itinerary and trying out ideas.  Adding, removing, and rearranging pins on our giant map.

Awesome.

I am having a week.  You know the type.

The kind of week when taking the cat to the vet for an annual checkup ends up costing you hundreds of dollars (and several more hours) than you budgeted for.

The kind of week when all of your accounting software decides to crash, and you are forced to buy a new (expensive) version and spend hours re-entering your data.

The kind of week when canceling a service your business no longer uses seemed like a great way to save money – until they told you about the ungodly $500 cancellation fee.

You know the type of week.  Expensive.  Time consuming.  Emotional.

And I haven’t even gotten to the end of the week yet, which involves a dentist appointment.  I am so not looking forward to whatever is going to happen there.

A week like this needs cookies, stat.  Even if they are vegan and sorta healthy.  They are also peanut butter and chocolate in a dough ball.

They may not solve my problems, but they will make my little emotional eater happy.  At least until this week is over.

Ingredients

1/2 c. non-dairy margarine (i.e. Earth Balance)
3/4 c. natural peanut butter
1/2 c. organic brown sugar
3/4 c. organic powdered sugar
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
3/4 t. salt
1 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 c. unbleached organic flour
1/2 c. natural peanut butter chips
1/2 c. non-dairy chocolate chips