It's Been a Year and I am... Still Alive

I never thought I’d be celebrating this, but happy birthday to my blog!!

It’s been a whole year since I've been There and Back Again. An entire year of my favorite recipes shared, my dry humor documented, science dropped, and bad jokes shoved in your face. A lot has happened in my life since I started this little endeavor. Too many things to list here, but the 2 biggest blessings are the new home my wife and I moved into and the new baby that is on an express train, due to arrive in a few short months. It doesn't take a lot to make me happy, but thinking about those two things puts a smile on my face on the cloudiest of days. Coupled with Seb and his fast growing, turning from a crawling baby to a nonstop toddler before my eyes, all make for one happy, happy man.

Judging by my numbers that I may or may not check more often than I would care to admit, it would appear the same people check my posts out regularly. To those of you that do, and you know who you are, I humbly thank you for taking your time to at least open the page. I surprisingly have a few posts that have some fairly high numbers for me, so the internet is doing something right in my favor. So to everyone else who has ever checked out my stuff – thank you. Yes, you’re special to me too.

While doing this for a year I've learned things I didn't know before. My standard that I gave myself sometimes forced me to look into why a certain process works and another doesn't or why something is named what it was named. I’m glad I gave myself that challenge for not only my education, but for you, my reader. From day 1 I knew I wanted people to walk away with something more than a recipe. I always tried to teach you the things I’ve learned in my career, and in my research. And more importantly, I always tried to talk you through the recipe rather than instruct you. My blog may not have a straightforward, traditional recipe card that’s easily printable, but I don’t think I’ll ever change my format from how I’m doing it now. Yeah, I talk a lot and I tend to ramble (like I’m doing right now), but that’s just the way I am.

…Because I have no one to talk for the better part of my days other than my kid and my dog.

As far as how the blog is doing, I’m happy with it. While it’s great knowing I’m getting my thoughts and recipes out there, I’m doing this for me just as much as I’m doing it for those that follow it. I looked back at my earlier posts and comparing them to what I’ve done lately, all I could think was… Holy crap, I put some terrible pictures on here! …Yeah, that’s pretty much all I could gather from any of it, they’re that terrible. I think I’m going to follow Jenn Bauguss’s advice and redo some pictures when I get the chance. I already started with my first post which was about Pancakes. When I started the blog we were living in an apartment and the kitchen got as much light as a dungeon. So now that I have a lot more natural light to play with I’m glad I can do better with less editing.

Oh, what? The pancake post doesn't have updated pictures you say? Hmm, that’s weird.

Oh! I know why… That’s because it’s actually here on this pancake post over at TheManTheChefTheDad.wordpress.com.

And there we have my gift to the blog: A makeover and a new home. Blogger has been good to me with no issues really. I just wanted to update the look and feel of everything and I felt like WordPress had more options for me as far as new looks go. So far, I am happy with the decision. I wasn't at first, heck, I quit WordPress at least twice before I finally grit my teeth and tried to make it work. It took some time to get it up to snuff, which explains where I've been since my last post on Valentine’s Day, but there is still plenty of work to be done. It’s at about 80% from where I want it to be, and 80% is good enough to unveil it for the birthday bash. Once everyone has transitioned I’ll eventually phase out this Blogger version of the blog. Yes, it will be a sad day but it’s a by-product of progression.

If you'd like an official welcome to my new home, check it out over at its Introductory Post.

I guess that’s that for now. I have a lot of things that I want to eventually do so I hope everyone is excited. I know I’m excited. Getting the WordPress site up and running has been crazy fun and it sparked a fire back in me for not only blogging regularly but for cooking. I've had the urge to do a lot of stuff just to blog it. Hell, I even bought dishes that don’t match for the sole purpose of picture taking! That’s gotta be one of the final steps in becoming a full on food blogger.

I already said it, but I’ll say it again… Thank you to everyone who has supported me throughout my 1^st year. Kind words and simple acknowledgement mean more than anyone could understand. I hope everyone who visits here is entertained and finds what they’re looking for even though they may not have known they were looking for it.