Celebrating 100 Posts

We did what?

When we published our last post about the crazy delicious Malasadas, we reached a major milestone: That was our 100th post.

(It was actually number 101, but one of them way back was just an update on some technical improvements, so I’m not counting it.)

This wasn’t an achievement that we’d ever thought about, so it kind of snuck up on us. But back before Christmas we could see it on the horizon and so we started thinking about the best way to mark the occasion. We decided it would be a good time to look back at a few of the highlights and some favorite posts – yours and ours.

How it all started

Sometime in the middle of 2018, I was starting to think seriously about retirement (another thing that snuck up on me, but that’s a story for another day) and how I would spend my time when I no longer had an office job. I had always wanted to write, so I decided to find a writing project to use as a warm up for when I could do it full time.

I mentioned this to Mary, who had an immediate suggestion (like maybe she’d been thinking about this for awhile?)

Why don’t we do a food and travel blog?, she asked.

I thought about it for about a minute – the average amount of time I give to any serious, life-altering decision.

“Sure”, I said, “That should be fun. And how hard can it be?”

And with that complete underestimation of difficulty, we were off!

I got busy collecting the different technical bits needed to stand up our web site – something else I’d wanted to try for awhile. We had some long conversations about what to call it, finally settling on “The Cook and The Writer”, which represented what one of us was and what the other wanted to be.

The first posts

Our next two posts were straight out of Mimi’s book. Mary made Lobio Satsivi (Georgian green beans) and we tried rose petal jelly.

Both posts taught us some lessons about photography and writing about food. (“How hard can that be?” Now I was starting to find out.)

In the very first post we said we would “start somewhere and proceed to the next place”, improvising along the way. If you’ve been following us for any time, you know that our path has taken many twists and turns.

Up and running

Through the end of 2018 and all of 2019 we published post sporadically. Sometimes once a month, sometimes twice, sometimes not at all. We tried publishing posts while on vacation in Hawaii and found that we could travel or we could publish, but we couldn’t do both at the same time!

Having the blog gave Mary the inspiration to try some ambitious dishes at home, like Hakka Salt-Baked Chicken and Orange Roughy a la Bouchon.

Our gap years and a fresh start

In 2020 and the first half of 2021 we went silent. There were several reasons. One, of course, was the pandemic. We were hunkered down like everyone else, waiting it out. And when you can’t travel and you can’t go to restaurants, there didn’t seem to be much need for a food and travel blog.

Then the North Wind blew and for several months we were consumed with getting ready to move to Portugal.

The whole experience of moving to a new country gave us the fresh inspiration we needed to relaunch the blog. Mary wrote a new post about being a smuggler during our first week in Porto.

There has been so much to see, smell, taste, and experience that we’ve had plenty to write about since we landed.

Favorite Posts – Yours, Ours, and Google’s

Out of the first hundred posts, there are a few that stand out.

The Internet’s Favorite

We don’t spend much time worrying about where we land in Google’s search results, but every month I get a an analytics report that shows me how many people visited the site and what posts they read.

And every month I’m surprised to see the same post show up at or near the top. It’s a post we published on Christmas Day, 2018 – Bûche de Noël – A Yule Log Cake.

We can’t explain it, except to say that it was a really good cake!

Our Favorites

Mary’s favorite post is one of several we published after a trip to Italy and Sicily a few years ago. On our last day in Rome we visited the Jewish Ghetto to try deep-fried artichokes – carciofi alla Giudea. They were not memorable, but our after-lunch experience was.

As we walked through the area we saw stolpersteines or “stumbling stones” – small bronze markers embedded in the streets as memorials to Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II.

Mary said she had been thinking about the stumbling stones as she read the latest news reports coming out of Ukraine. She said the stolpersteines were a reminder of what can happen when the world turns a blind eye to a tyrant determined to wipe out a people.

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My favorite is from last January, shortly after we moved to Parede, west of Lisbon. I had a series of challenges getting utility contracts for our apartment. Transferring the water and electricity accounts to my name took multiple phone calls, visits to web sites, chats with help desks (not so helpful!), and finally, a totally unexpected intervention.

I told the story in a post titled “Mike’s Quest for Power”. I still shake my head in amazement whenever I think back about what it took to navigate the stubborn institutional bureaucracies.

Your Favorites

We can tell when a post resonates with you by the number of comments you leave. Two that got the most reaction were different takes on our life in Portugal.

So What’s Next?

It’s been fun for us to go back and read many of the older posts. We’ve captured a lot of good memories here. And we’re looking ahead to new experiences and adventures. We’ve started sampling the restaurants in our Lisbon neighborhood and will write some reviews shortly. We’re learning more about the city and how to navigate it. We’ve got one trip planned for later this year – to Athens and one of the Greek islands – so we’ll have a travel tale or two.

Maybe someday we’ll hit 200 posts, but until then we’ll just keep trying to tell a good story every couple of weeks.

How hard can that be?

Most of all, we appreciate you for reading and commenting, whether you’ve been with us from the beginning or joined us along the way.

Until next time / Até a próxima vez

Mike

The Writer

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