A Food Journal

We currently live in temporary housing. Its not bad at all, to be honest. There are a ton of activities for the kids, a nice fitness facility, and housekeeping once a week is included. On the other hand, space is limited and we were only able to bring 700 lbs of our things in addition to whatever we could fit in the car. So what that boiled down to was our basic clothing needs, child-items that take up a bunch o' space such as strollers, and the dog. We said goodbye to everything else for the next year. Which presented a lot of challenges. Our favorite books and cookbooks got packed away.

Now, I read a lot of my favorite books over and over. And I used to make our favorite meals repeatedly. But what if we got rid of our tried-and-true holiday cookie recipes and the reliable BH&G cookbook and struck out on our own? Would it be fun, frustrating, or an epic failure?

Luckily for us, all four of us are adventurous eaters (which I know will come in handy no matter where we get sent to live). So I came up with an idea, not from Pinterest mind you! We grabbed a large and sturdy sketchbook at the nearby craft store and started a food journal to document our adventures in DC and scribble down the new foods we tried to make in our very limited galley kitchen. I mean seriously-we didn't have a potato smasher or a muffin tin for the last five months!

Its been a lot of fun-even my hun does a lot of pages. We find recipes from the internet or magazines and try them out. Then we paste them into the journal alongside different reminders and maps and tickets from the hundreds of things we do and see here.

Sometimes we scribble on maps to remind us of the family days that meant so much to us. Like our miles of walking around downtown D.C. and the discoveries we made. The best place for cupcakes. Not the place on TV, but so far our fave has been Crumbs. So. Good.

We record our daytrips outside the city, like our hikes out in northwest Virginia and all the battlefields around here.

And now that the weather is milder, we are on a running kick, so there are quite a few race bibs and documentation of our post-race meals. So far, the journal is half-full and we have just a few months left here, so I think this may continue into our life in Thailand. We have our time in Virginia to thank for our new favorites; fresh juicemaking, quinoa, and spicier food. I can't imagine what food adventures we will have in BKK. But thanks to the food journal, I haven't missed my cookbooks at all!