Yes, I’m back – took a break from blogging to work really hard and read great books to escape Covid and the elections. The “experts” say that in order to be a great writer, I need to write about all sorts of things and not just grants/proposals. So here I am – being creative with words again …

How happy are you that 2020 is ALMOST over??? Me too – it’s been too much like the worst year of my life in 2009 when my folks passed away out of the blue. I have been so careful to stay home and stay away from germs and COVID. So far – so good, except for one scare around Thanksgiving when I lost my sense of taste and smell for almost a week. Just a nasty sinus infection but I freaked out – I need to TASTE and I need to SMELL. I’m a foodie at heart and the thought of never really enjoying food again was terrifying – dying is terrifying too, don’t get me wrong – but FOOD IS EVERYTHING if you are alive, right?! At least food is everything in the Kamp family!!!

It’s Sunday – I’ve gotten in the habit of creating food happiness on the weekends and posting about the smells from our kitchen on Facebook. Today Lance and I created KIM’S AD LIB CHILI – we hadn’t planned on making chili but it was snowing and so cozy, so beautiful and so wonderful that I had to make the house smell really good. Into the fridge and pantry we went – we found polish kielbasa, the BEST Oklahoma-made sausage in the world from Kreb’s Oklahoma, onions, green pepper, garlic and all kinds of tomatoes in cans plus a couple cans of black beans. We fried the sausages in butter (of course) and then sautéed the onions, peppers and garlic in the fatty goodness of the cooked sausage … added all the tomatoes, the beans, some spices as well as a little of this and that… it smells incredible. It tastes pretty good too – I’ll give it a couple of more hours in the crockpot getting all happy and we’ll eat chili with cornbread later tonight and watch football. Life is GREAT –

What are you doing today? I hope you are healthy, happy and sharing the love with others –