Bye Bye Pie O My

I'm retiring. No more spending my weekends planning and cooking and plating and styling. No more fretting and fuming over pots and pans and whisks and spoons. No more shopping and buying and searching for ingredients. No more pictures and writing and editing and posting.

This blog has been so interesting to create. I started nearly five years ago in May 2008 on a whim and it morphed into at times, an all consuming project.  I've posted 348 entries; an average of seven posts a month. Some recipes turned out great. Others were a complete fiasco. But I learned something with every dish cooked, every photo taken, and every post written.

Over the years I've been doing this I've made a little (and I mean a little!) money which I most often used to buy cookbooks for my ever growing collection.  I have received an amazing array of sample food products and gadgets from companies all over the country. It was always fun to come home to boxes on the front porch and open them up to see what kind of goodies were sent my way.  My blog also generated some press with two mentions on Bon Appetit's website; once for Christmas cookies and another time for shrimp and grits. Locally, a weekly newspaper reporter interviewed me for my take as a hometown food blogger. That was certainly fun to see in print.

But the best part of doing this blog was hearing from readers and enjoying their comments, especially from my dear friends. Such generous words were always motivating. Yum! Of course my in-home fan club, The Husband, was another great motivator. I love cooking for him and he is always most grateful.  He also contributed to my recipes by year after year producing fantastic vegetables in the garden for me to put to good use.

I am going to retire my blog now and move on to some other hobbies.  Who knows, maybe someday I'll work up the energy to compile all of these posts into a cookbook. It's been fun, and through this experience I hope I have become a better cook, a better photographer, and a better writer. GOOD BYE and thanks to all of you who have followed Pie O My!