Back again after two months of writing but not posting! It feels redundant introducing and telling you about myself; if you have clicked over here, we are surely already acquainted. Whether you know me as Cak, your sister or aunty, or think of me as Katy or Miss, from Tasty Crust and Lahainaluna years on Maui, or, if I know you here in southeast Missouri and you still call me Cathi, (and that includes those who call me only “Greer”), I definitely welcome you! Each name, and nickname, combine to supply my voice and each contributed in creating, this, my Country Ohana Hawaiian Southern Methodist Kitchen! Hele Mai, do come in!

A new year begun, fresh calendar pages on our walls and our i-phone screens testify to it, and hopefully you are as excited about the year 2015 as I am. I LIKE blank calendar pages and the idea of “new beginnings”, and after much mental hemming and hawing, two things have become clear to me. One, Waiting on Things To Be Perfect is useless because, Two, Things Already Are Perfect just as they are. Those conclusions led me to making my first New Year’s Resolution in the past twenty years, and that is to remember this truism, “The best time for anything, is now.” And so, here we are.

As this new adventure begins, I mightily thank all of you who so highly recommended retirement! Purposefully choosing how to spend my time is a new concept for me; I think of it as a gate, standing, as my Lahainaluna colleague, Mr. Manzano, so clearly wrote on overtime slips, “WIDE open!” Passing through that gate has revealed to me interests never fully explored, a primary interest being that I enjoy writing about food, and, I like spending time talking story about food. Talking story is a favorite pastime in Hawai’i, and we all especially love talking story about food: you know, ‘oh this buggah some onolicious!’ and ‘Aisus! This really broke da mout so ono!’ and that is how you get ‘da scoop” on all things Yummy. If my personal slant on Life 101 creeps into these pages too, well, that’s just the way I roll. Writing a food blog seems a simple exercise in journaling and I see this space less as a formal exercise in writing and more as appending my kitchen notebooks. Somehow, that takes the pressure off. I expect to enjoy this journey, especially with your company as you share from your seat at the table as well.

Do come back again, and often. I will do my part by posting lots of recipes and photos, but it is your participation that decides the success of this venture, so post a comment, share a story, alter a recipe and tell us how it turned out. I have so much to learn about writing a blog and your patience is not only needed but much appreciated. Thankfully, I can take advantage of purchased help available from the web hosting company of this site, and I do so because knowing what I want to feature here is a far cry from knowing how to make it happen. Making it happen, however, is exactly what the technology wizard fella did for me today and you can expect to see more positive changes to the site as I learn  to make them. You surely KNOW I did the happy dance today when, with the web tech’s help, there suddenly appeared shiny links for clicking, sharing buttons for pushing, and favorite web sites showing up all sparkly in the sidebar! My great-grandmother Minnie would say that I am “flat out messin’ with God Almighty” no doubt but then Minnie probably never resorted to writing down a  recipe in her life. Soon, I hope to learn enough to feature ALL the Blogging Bells and Whistles I find on other web sites, but Not Having Everything Perfect immediately means only that I am comfortable in believing that you are kind enough to keep reading as construction continues. I do know that clicks are good things in the world of blogging, and I am so grateful that you made a First Click and a First Visit because the perfect time for visiting, you know, is now.

Readers who use my cookbook will recognize many recipes posted; I began with the  dishes I made leading up to and through the holidays 2014 because they are fresh in my mind . Don’t fret now, if you are feeling you have no reason to read my blog since you already have the cookbook because I love trying new recipes every bit as much as you and I’ve been cooking up a storm the past few days so that you have some new recipes to check out already! If you fill out the short ‘sign up by email’ form on the left sidebar, you will receive notifications of all new posts and know quickly when a recipe is new to you. I promise nothing too fancy, nothing overly time-consuming (time-consuming for me equals ‘special project’), and nothing that I can’t stand behind recommending. Your time is valuable and I don’t expect you to waste it. My pledge is to keep improving the content and the quality you find here, especially the photography. Please feel free to change and alter and share these recipes in any way you choose and to use the comment and sharing buttons. If you are sharing, please link readers back to this site.

Finally, (how did I become too wordy so quickly?) the intent of this site is NOT about my ability as a cook because many people who read food blogs are already excellent cooks. What the site IS about is sharing and being of use to you, the reader. Think of this spot the same as you would if you were sitting in a doctor’s waiting room leafing through one monthly magazine or another and coming across a great-sounding recipe; the only difference is you don’t have to scrabble around in your purse or backpack looking for an old envelope or receipt to write on and tracking down a pen to use; just click the shiny new printer button and there you go! We’re all in this together you know: everybody, all around, together, at the table, ho’okipa style. Remember, the perfect time, for sharing, for anything, is now.