30 Days of Joy...............Day 17

Four years ago, one of my dreams became a reality--I didn't have to go to work anymore.

Now by "work" I mean I didn't have to go manage someone else's business for sixty hours a week. Instead, I got to play by teaching kids for only thirty hours a week. ( "They" are right--when you are doing something you love, it counts as play, not as work.)  Thirty extra hours per week at home meant I now had time to do things I had neglected over the years. Things like learning to...um...cook.

It's been a rough process for me. I don't like to cook. I don't like to clean up after cooking. I sometimes don't even like to eat because it means I have to stop what I am doing and, you know...put food in my mouth... and  chew...then swallow.  Ugh. What a waste of time!

When our household was hit by the unemployment bug, I had to step up my cooking learning curve. Since finances were tight, cooking no longer meant I could just buy some frozen thing and cook it till it unfroze. No, I now had to put things together myself from...like...recipes and stuff. Do you have any idea how time-consuming it is to cook from a recipe?  Grrr....

Then last year we decided to go vegan. Yeah, way to go. Add some more time to the cooking process while I try to figure out how to make things without things, yet make those things taste like they really had the things.

Then I found Joy.

No, not the kind of joy that gives me an excuse to write something for my 30 Days of Joy posts, but Joy as in Joy The Baker.

Joy is so funny and creative that she makes me think that things like chewing, swallowing, and even cooking, can be fun. Her food photos are gorgeous and her vegan pumpkin bread is to die for. (It was her recipe that I used when I made my pumpkin bread in this post.)


Give Joy a visit!