Ok. Maybe calling my sliced creole tomato a “salad” is a bit of a stretch. But what was I supposed to call it? Sliced creole tomatoes that make your mouth water through the computer screen? Yeah, something like that.

It’s summer and it’s quite hot here in Louisiana. When it’s hot, all I want is fresh, mouth watering food. If you look at my Instagram feed, you will gradually see that I eat more and more cold fruit, loads of tomatoes and a lot more color over the summer than I do during the winter months.

I’m beginning to think I suffer from seasonal food disorder. Seasonal food disorder: a not clinically proven or researched term that describes the desire and need to eat really fresh food when it’s hot and comforting soups and such when it’s cold. 

I should also add that I have summer-time phobia. Summer time phobia is also a not clinically proven or researched term that describes working (or stay at home) moms who stress about not having a routine (or schedule) to keep the kids active, entertained and not glued to the television or iPads for extended periods of time. 

It’s really hard to get things done over the summer. I find myself night after night going back to the office around 9pm to work for a few more hours. This is after I’ve cleaned the kitchen for the third or fifth time that day. Yeah, it’s not fun.

I love having the kids home but I also know that they miss the routine of the school year. This summer is going to be particularly busy for all of us. In addition to working full time running MOMables, writing for this blog (cooking, photographing, etc), working on projects and campaigns with brands, traveling for work, and my family… I am also working overtime on a cookbook project.

I can’t tell you much -just yet- but I will. I’m excited to have my friend Alison working with me on this. She’s worked for me on special photography projects and has contributed to the MOMables blog for nearly 2 years. I had a feeling when I met her (online mind you) that God had chosen her back then to work on something like this together down the road.

We met for the first time in person a couple of weeks ago. Alison flew to New Orleans to shoot some phenomenal photos,go over the cookbook layout and recipes with me. The short one sentence story is:  a publisher has been following MOMables for a while and when they decided to follow one of the best selling baby food books in the last 3 years with a school lunch cook book, they knew they had to give me a ring (publisher’s words).

So, here I am. I have less than 3 months to finish a 200+ recipe cookbook (55,000 words -but who is counting!). Original recipes also mean a lot of testing, testing testing! Some are classics, some are off the charts fun, and others are new spins on the old. Hey, I can’t fill 200+ recipes of peanut butter sandwiches, you know? 

This was the long version to tell you that my meals (and much of what you will see posted on the blog for the next 3 months) are going to be very quick, fresh and busy mom friendly. Because seriously, I don’t think I can handle one more thing on my plate. Ok, maybe I can handle a few more of these creole tomatoes…but other than that, I plan on hibernating in my air conditioned office a lot. 

I should add the following:  I am most grateful to have an extremely supportive spouse, parents and in-laws who have volunteered to be “camp” over the summer, and kids who know that mommy loves them very much. For what I do each and every day, is in the hopes to secure a better food future for them and for many other children we’ve never met. 

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