An Eighth Blogging Anniversary Slips Under the Radar

Nothing beats buying local at a farm market.

Where did June go?  We've been so busy with home improvement projects and yard sale preparation that one third of what we think of as summer has passed already, including this blog's eighth anniversary on June 11.

How could I not have noticed?

I was writing tomorrow's post when it hit me. It was the summer of 2006, my last really quiet summer, that I tentatively tested the waters with this post.

My blog had a different name then, one I began to regret about five years ago. It took another four years to come up with a name that better described my kitchen and my culinary efforts. I'm not a really fancy cook, although I love making French country dishes.

My approach is pretty frugal; I try to eat well and healthily without wasting anything; it fits in best with the idea of Frenchtown, the sections of Upper Midwest and New England area communities that drew French Canadian immigrants in the latter decades of the 19th and the first part of the 20th centuries. Close-knit and working-class, residents of those neighborhoods often shared food and produce from their gardens. That's the neighborhood in which I (very proudly) grew up.

I've learned so much from blogging. Here is just a smattering:

• Food bloggers are generous and helpful. You make friends when you blog.
• Fresh really does taste best.
• Eating locally is important. It really is good to know where your food is grown or produced.
• Once you start making your own soup, you will never buy canned soup again.
• Sea salt is incredible.
• Less is more. Keep it simple.
• Be you on your blog. Find your voice. That's not as easy as it sounds.

There's much more, and after I post this it will come to me. That's how it works. Another thing I've learned.

Happy Anniversary to A Frenchtown Kitchen!