Happy (almost) summer!

You may have noticed I haven’t updated WhipSmart Kitchen in a while. If that bums you out, first of all I really am sorry and it has not been out of disinterest. Second, thank you for your support and I’m glad you enjoy what I do here.

Now to do some ‘splainin.

Why I’ve been away

Now, the reason I’ve been away is because we’ve got some big things poppin’ around here. The most notable of which is my belly!

That’s right, been eating a little too much pasta.

Kidding. There’s a kid in there!

We found out in early March that I’m pregnant, and I cannot tell you how excited we are. This is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, and I’m enjoying every moment of it as much as possible.

Just to be clear, enjoying every moment isn’t why I haven’t been around here. In fact, the weekend I found out the first things I did were shoot highlights at the NCAA DII basketball tournament, then shoot photos of a black bean taco recipe that was next on the schedule for my blog. Literally, all within 48 hours of getting the positive.

Then I got sick. REAL sick.

Not morning sick. All-day-every-minute sick. For almost two months. My midwives and the OB who did our first sonogram said nausea is a good sign because you’re producing enough hormones, but like… that didn’t help when I almost threw up in the hospital elevator.

I will honestly probably write an entire post on this just to help out other expecting moms who can’t eat anything, because as a person who gets so much joy from food, it was so incredibly hard to deal with.

I couldn’t eat vegetables—usually the primary thing I eat—unless they were snuck into fruit puree or (when I could stomach it) subtly hidden on pizza. For about a month, at any given time there were only one or two things in the world I could handle at a time, and the primary focus of my day was figuring out how I was going to get it, and then I usually didn’t want it ever again after one serving.

My husband, Adam, was an angel who did whatever he could to make sure we found something I could eat. He also didn’t complain about our food budget, which suddenly ballooned despite the fact that eating was a miserable experience. Fun, right?

I barely cooked. Maybe once or twice, when I usually do almost every day. We spent so much more on restaurants than we ever have, and I ate more processed food than I ever have or ever want to.

I couldn’t tell if I was losing weight because eating was so miserable, or gaining because everything I ate was white/brown/fried/starchy/processed/sugary.

The kicker? I was still in my first trimester, so we were hiding this from everybody. Ugh.

I still haven’t finished editing those taco photos. Food aversions in pregnancy can be powerful. The fact that they were the last thing I had before it started means I’m honestly still grossed out by them, even though I’ve been eating mostly normally for a few weeks now.

When I’ll be back

Mmmm, pretty much now!

I’m feeling much better, and I’ve been hard at work since I started cooking again. I’ll have a new recipe for you in the next couple of days, and I’m super excited about it—make sure you read to the end of this post if you are too!

I also may write a post on what I’ve been up to, because life has been moving fast, but it’s been super fun lately. Lots of travel, lots of celebrating loved ones’ milestones, and recently, lots of good food.

Right now we’re at week 18, eating ALL the veggies and generally loving life. We’ve told our family and friends who are so excited and, holy cow, so generous! From an ultrasound frame ornament, to ginger chews, to a bump box, to books, to personal tokens and guidance… we’re so grateful for everything.

According to my various apps, the baby is the size of an artichoke or a sweet potato. We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, and we’ll be thrilled with either. I’m living proof that girls can prefer blue over pink and like sports, so we don’t feel torn in either direction.

What all this means for WhipSmart Kitchen

Not much, honestly!

I’m sure I’ll mention baby in some of my posts, but my recipes posts won’t suddenly be devoted to what my kid will or won’t eat, and this won’t turn into a blog with exclusively so-called kid-friendly recipes. I know we’re in for some big changes at home, but I don’t anticipate my general aesthetic changing all that much.

I can’t promise there won’t be subtle changes, but I can promise you I’m not going to be slinging manufactured cheese-product anytime soon—not to put down anyone who does. There’s a time and a place for that stuff, but that’s never what I wanted this blog to be.

I probably will blog about some pregnancy/baby/parenting/lifestyle topics from time to time, but they’ll be separate from my usual posts, and this will not become a mommy blog. If you want to avoid those posts, I totally understand. That would not have been my jam when I first started cooking.

Big takeaway: the recipe posts will keep coming!

BUT there are some other changes coming for WhipSmart Kitchen

First I’m in the process of switching from Squarespace to WordPress. Hopefully the change in your experience will be minimal. You’ll see a new version of this website (aesthetically at least) sometime mid-summer, but things should function pretty similarly. The big difference is I’ll be able to use recipe cards which will mostly be a benefit to me, making it so that I don’t have to code them all and design printable PDFS and buttons for each recipe, but I imagine they will be a little more clear and streamlined from your end as well. I’ll also be able to customize things through code a little more easily, which again, should mean a better experience for you.
In keeping with the new EU GDPR regulations, you’ll begin to see some notifications around the site soon explaining how WhipSmart Kitchen keeps cookies and other information, and asking you to opt-in in. And yes, you’ll get one of those privacy policy update emails if you’re on my email list (which, um, you should be if you’re reading this!). I know it’s annoying and a little overwhelming (for you and for me), but it’s good progress. This way you have more information about your own privacy and decide what to do with it to a greater extent. You likely are starting to see things like this on most websites you visit, and that’s a good thing. It’s a little bit of a challenge keeping up with the regulations for small bloggers like me, but I’m happy transparency is becoming more of a priority across the internet.

These two changes are actually the biggest reason I haven’t been posting in the last month or so. It’s taken a lot of work to get up to speed and get things rolling. It’s not an easy feat with all the travel we’ve had to do lately along with figuring out baby stuff—no, we haven’t started a nursery or a registry, and we’re not going to until I’ve done ample research.

Listen, I can barely keep up with watching WestWorld once a week. I’m doing what I can without driving myself completely insane. These violent delights have violent ends, after all.

That being said, I’m making progress in both areas and will do my best to keep posts regular in the meantime. If there’s something you’d like to see, let me know! I want to keep making content that helps people. There’s really no better motivator than knowing people are looking for my posts and using my recipes.

Otherwise I’m just rambling, which I can do without even having to make sense in my notes app like I did before people started telling me to put it in a blog.

Now I’m off to work on my next post. Here’s a sneak peek: