February 2022 life update

Hey there, it’s been a minute

Hi, friend. I hope you had a nice holiday season, a lovely and safe New Year’s Eve, and have started 2022 on the right foot. Not literally your right foot, just in a good way.

Though maybe you’re superstitious and have to get out of bed with your right foot each day – you do you.

We did our usual tacos, margaritas and a puzzle for New Year’s Eve and caught the tail end of Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen devolving into drunken chaos, and Andy’s rant about the NYC mayor at midnight. Good times.

Blonde woman with a margarita and puzzle box

Life updates

The dreaded strep throat

Things have been relatively quiet in our house. We had a case of strep throat that was plaguing us, and it seems like it ran through the house twice, because once wasn’t enough fun.

The first time my husband, Bill, went to the doctor he tested negative, got a different diagnosis, and after a couple weeks was still sick. Went back a second time – bam! Positive for strep.

I have a long history of getting strep throat and pink eye together, so I was prepared for the worst – but for the first time in my entire life, I only got strep! Small miracles.

After a blizzard in February 2022 — Just look at our poor grill.

The blizzard

We also got a massive snowstorm/blizzard the other week which toppled us with about 29″ of snow. Took forever to dig out, and then we got an ice storm the following week, and now we’re getting more snow. It took her a while, but Mother Nature finally caught up with her calendar for winter.

A Peloton bike on a black mat — Don’t mind the scattered catnip toys in the foreground.

The Peloton

We finally caved to peer pressure and got a Peloton. We’ve been waffling about it for probably a year or so, but with how sick I was last year and Bill having knee surgery at the end of last year… well, it wasn’t practical.

But now that I’m able to sit like a normal human being again, Bill is into his PT stage of recovery, and we’re in the deep depths of winter here in Massachusetts – the timing was right.

We don’t have a good spot for it in our house. It’s a historic house with oddly shaped rooms and slanted ceilings and an awkward layout, so finding a place for it where it would be out of the way was more or less impossible unless we get rid of our guest bed (which takes up half the guest room/my “office” now).

After much discussion and coming to terms with the fact that we haven’t had much in the way of company the last two years (and don’t see it happening anytime soon either), we decided we’d place it in what we loving call “the ballroom”. Which is, in reality, just an awkward empty space between our living room and kitchen:

A Peloton in a living room — “The ballroom” – glamorous, right?

Do I love having it where I can see it when we’re eating? No. Does it really matter when the end goal is just to use the bike and be healthy? Nope! Plus, having it in our face is sort of encouragement to use it more frequently, too.

Speaking of food…

I know, this is the elephant in the room. You may have noticed that I haven’t published anything new to the site since my no chill chocolate chip cookies in November. I didn’t do a single new holiday recipe, and I didn’t send any emails. I updated a few older posts, made a silly recipe video for Nielsen-Massey, and helped promote by friend Dan’s awesome new cookbook “Nachos for Dinner” – but that’s it.

And I’m not thrilled with myself about that.

But the reality is that I don’t know when I’ll get back to making new recipes and posting new content. There are a few reasons for that, and I feel like I need to share the most impactful reason with you so that you understand why I’ve sort of vanished – and why I don’t know when I’ll get back to it with any consistency.

My sense of taste has never fully recovered

As you may or may not know, I got COVID-19 in March 2020 before we knew it was here and what to do about it. So I was just told to isolate at home for a couple weeks, and — long story short — I’m part of the long haul COVID community.

One of the symptoms I got near the tail end of my active infection was the loss of taste, but when it came back everything had a metallic taste to it.

… and still does. Everything tastes at least a little bit like I’m licking a penny, and some foods are way worse than others. I’ve made tried and true recipes that I’ve been made for years, and everything tastes off.

Without my fully recovered tastebuds, I can’t effectively taste test my own recipes and be able to trust that what I’m making would actually taste good to other people.

And as much as my husband might like my recipes, there’s only so many baked goods I can make him shove in his face!

So… what now?

Honestly? I don’t know. And I’m trying not to put too much pressure on myself to figure that out right now – here’s why:

The world is still in disarray and trying to navigate this “new normal”
I’m continuing to work with doctors on long COVID studies to try to find some answers
I started taking Prozac a few months ago and it’s helping give me clarity into the things that truly need my energy, versus what is just additional stress and I don’t need to tackle in the moment
I’m recovering from a minor knee injury myself, trying to get into a lower impact, non-running workout routine with the shiny new Peloton
It’s the dead of winter and New England and when you’ve already been stuck inside for the most part for ~2 years… well, Seasonal Affective Disorder is real this year
I’m only a few months into a new job and starting to settle into a new groove
Our cat, Puck, is officially a little old man and requires a little more help these days than he used to

So right now, my priorities are basically to stay alive, settle into a routine that doesn’t cause me undue stress because it exacerbates my lingering symptoms, and find joy where I can.

The only plans on my calendar right now are:

Celebrating our third wedding anniversary on 2/10 by inhaling the 8″ version of our wedding cake we get each year
Playing Wordle each morning
Mess around on TikTok when the mood strikes me
Re-watch Encanto and Bob’s Burgers 100 more times

Stress Baking isn’t going anywhere

I’ll still try to pop into social media and re-share content you may have missed, update the site with the content that’s seasonal and trending, etc. I just might not have new recipes to share with you for a while longer.

So this site will still be here. The recipes are all still available. And so am I! You can always email me at leslie@stressbaking.com (and frankly, I love when you do).

Super Bowl

I don’t have a horse in the race for the 2022 Super Bowl, so I’ll be settling into to watch the Puppy Bowl instead. But either way, we still need snacks, right?

Valentine’s Day

If you are the type to celebrate Valentine’s Day, I’ve got tons of recipes that you could make to celebrate that aren’t necessarily tagged under the Valentine’s Day category. But here are some of my favorites:

Until next time – stay safe, watch Peacemaker (and don’t you dare skip the intro!), eagerly await the streaming release of Free Guy, and take care of yourselves in whatever ways that make you happy ❤️