When I finished the original A Food Year project, a lot of people asked me what was next. Would I do another project like it again? Did I have something else planned for the future? At the time, I had no intentions of ever repeating a daily dinner project. Not because the cooking was difficult or that I didn’t enjoy it. The actual act of eating a different dinner every day for a year paled in comparison to the website maintenance; the blogging, the recipe writing, and all the other things that went along with it. It just sort of burned me out and left a lot of things unfinished and unpolished. A Food Year must’ve taken literally over a thousand hours of effort.

Recently I have been toying with the idea of doing something like it again. Twitter seems to make the “daily dose” concept all the more accessible now. I might still have a tiny sliver of an audience leftover from 2006 that I haven’t alienated with Montreal-centric content. The idea would be to expand upon two questions I was asked during A Food Year more than any others. “Isn’t it expensive?” and, “Have you gained any weight?” These questions were always a little surprising to me because learning to cook can not only save you money but help you eat healthier. We barely spent over $200 a month on groceries during A Food Year (I kept every grocery receipt from January to September in a file folder), I am still the same weight as I was three years ago and I’m feeling pretty good!

I am also far more knowledgeable than when I did A Food Year, and can only imagine that such a project would help me learn even more. But what it would ultimately do, is allow me to share that knowledge to more people, more often, and hopefully inspire more people to spend more time in their kitchens, cooking actual food. If there is anything that I am good at, it is knowing how to eat very well for cheap. Although a lot has changed in what we eat in this house, very little has changed in how. We still spend roughly the same amount on groceries each month as we did three years ago, and I still, almost by nature now, have a hard time eating the same meal twice within a month period.

Charlie and I are slowly plodding along at creating a spin off, sister site from A Food Year. When the day comes that this is completed, that is sort of what I envision the future of A Food Year to be. Not only a sort of preservation of what we did that year, but the development of a calendar of nutritious and delicious meals to prepare at home on a budget. Most of the efforts that I have seen put forth to do something like this are depressing, and I honestly think that I could do it better. Don’t hold your breath though. We will see if its time comes.

The real reason that I am writing this post has nothing to do with that though. It is because I recently discovered a new website that I wanted to share. Shortly after A Food Year, Charlie and I spent roughly 6 months trying to develop a website called Cuisine Combat that never came in to being. The idea was roughly to playfully pin bloggers against each other in a recipe challenge reminiscent of Iron Chef, with a weekly ’secret ingredient’ that they would submit recipes for to be judged amongst their peers. The winners would have their recipes featured on the site, which would in turn direct traffic to their blogs. It was to be a way to showcase lesser known blogs along with the more well known ones, as well as drum up ideas for food that people might not have previous thought of before.

Food52 is more or less what Cuisine Combat could have evolved in to, with many striking similarities to things we had tried to implement. Almost halfway through their year long project, Food52 is essentially what I have already described. Each week for 52 weeks a recipe contest is held for a specific ingredient. The winners of each week will get their entries published in a cookbook designed by HarperStudio, sponsored by Oxo. The only real difference is that the Food52 cookbook capitalizes on the community that generates its content. Maybe I should have thought of that and grabbed a corporate sponsor ;) It is worth checking out.

Since I became aware of Rachel Ray’s 365 Day cookbook and the Julie & Julia project shortly after starting A Food Year, and now this idea has come about, I thought I would throw one of my other fledgling ideas out there to see if anyone is familiar with something similar. Essentially, I want to create a toned-down digital copy of The Flavor Bible. Basically, a database of flavor combinations that will suggest recipes that you might want to try if you’re bored of eating the same old chicken breast. What to add if something tastes too salty, and so on. How flavors combine to make food taste great. Anyone out there know of anything like that?

As for non-food related projects, I recently wrote my second novel for Nanowrimo. You might be aware that A Food Year came about after I finished my first one and wanted an outlet to continue writing. This is both my reason for updating here less frequently in the last month and a promise that there will be more in store for the future. Thanks to all five of you for being so patient with me.

We’ve lived in the plateau since we moved here. I fell in love with the plateau as much as I fell in love with this city. There’s a common stereotype of plateau residents that I at least partially fit into – I rarely, if ever, want to leave my bubble. The plateau has not only been my home, it’s more or less been my womb, for the last three years of my life.

We’re currently residing in a loft on St-Laurent boulevard, “The Main”, one of the busiest parts of the city, but I feel an incomparable level of safety here. Midnight definitely has a different atmosphere than noon, but at any time of day or night I feel free from harm.

What I’m especially drawn to is the accessibility of everything, and by everything I suppose I mean food, since food is everything to me. I like a neighborhood where everything is within walking distance, where a vehicle isn’t required for daily routine. I’m within blocks of some of the most touted restaurants in the city, some of the best cheap eats, a wide variety of non-corporate grocery stores I find it difficult to spend more than $30 a trip at. On top of that, there are specialty shops, butchers and a selection of European charcuterie; fishmongers, a volonte sushi galore, patisseries/bakeries and a bunch of little eateries that keep popping up that I haven’t been able to eat my way through. On top of this, we just received our own farmer’s market (Marche Duluth). The plateau is sort of what Sesame Street must’ve taught me to aspire to, filled with parks, different people, different cultures and bustling streets.

What attracts me to this neighborhood also attracts many others, and for this reason space is at a premium. Real estate is certainly cheaper than many other urban areas, especially for what is in many ways a utopia for me, but it is still fairly expensive. So, in the name of progress and expansion, we’re starting a new lease in NDG as of September first.

Our new neighborhood is nothing to scoff at, but there are certainly many things I will miss about this one. The biggest perks of our new location will lie in our new home itself, featuring a yard space and garden nearly 50% larger than our entire apartment, a place to barbecue and a kitchen with a stove large enough to actually accommodate a turkey dinner.

I don’t normally post a great deal of personal information here, as it hardly seems relevant, but since this will affect the content of the website to some regard, I thought it important.

Expect…

1. Nostalgic plateau posts over the next couple of months.
2. NDG/Westmount/West-centric restaurant reviews once we move.
3. Grilling, barbecuing and gardening articles in the future.

In other related news, Charlie and I (mostly him, since I’m more or less incompetent in such matters) are trying to implement a few features to make this site more user-friendly again. Hopefully this will be actualized one day. In the meantime, I have little way of knowing who is actually reading this thing and whether or not it has any value to anyone but myself.