[NOTICE OF HIATUS]

Oh, boy. This was a tough one to draft out. For those of you who know me only as the vegan chef I pretend to be on this platform, the following news is going to feel like it's coming out of nowhere. I probably should have eased you all into this development in my personal life, but I was honestly so afraid of getting too excited about it and then having it not work out that I couldn't help but keep my lips shut tight. I'm very superstitious in this way. All of the misfortune in my life is god punishing me for being a bad person.

I'm just gonna go ahead and rip this bandaid off right now: after two months of flying by the seat of my pants as an unemployed individual, I have finally found another (temporary) full-time gig to hop on to. This time, I'm going east coast, back to my roots, on a month-long tour of The Nutcracker, shooting photos of ballerinas for the entirety of December; we're in a new god damn city every day, I'm gonna get to sleep on a tour bus and make friends with all of the grizzled and wise stagehands. I know, I can barely believe it either. I'm moving up in life; it's going to be cold as hell, but I'm so excited I could shit.

I fly out Monday; the team is intercepting me in Boston. We're gonna rent a big lens and everything.

Here are my rations. The company feeds us when we have both a matinee and a show at night, but on days where there's only one, we're left to fend for ourselves like sewer rats, so as a vegan more than familiar with the harsh culinary conditions characteristic of the east coast, I went a little pink and packed a field kitchen so I'll be ready for anything. I basically gutted my entire pantry the second the show coordinator's confirmation hit my inbox a few days ago. I've got everything a hippie could ever want here: nutritional yeast, beans, oatmeal. In some divine twist of fate, walnuts were on sale at Sprouts this weekend, as you can probably see. And my dad got me a huge honkin' bag of rotini for my birthday this year, so I've got plenty of pasta, too. That's going to be perfect for eggplant ragu on the road.

Basically, I've got two twenty dollar bills in my wallet, right now. In two weeks, my goal is to still have at least one of them. No promises. In addition to these things, I have some plantain chips, a package of dried chili mango, a sesame square, and a bag of homemade granola, which no doubt will be the first casualty of the trip.

I was in the middle of a jog right after getting off of the phone to finalize all of the travel details when I realized that a month on the road means a month without an oven. One last thing that is very important to understand about me: I'm a weak little bitch. I don't like being far away from my oven; it's very warm in the kitchen when I bake with it. While I believe there will be a microwave available for the crew to use on the bus, there will be no semblance of a stove, a toaster, or even a hot plate. Proposed solution? I'm packing the fucking rice cooker, right in with my socks and undergarments. I'm going to be making chili, soup, and maybe even some shepherd's pie if I can get my paws on a potato.

I figure having the option to prepare heartier stew-like foods for lunch and dinner will help stave off the bitter east coast winter. I fucking hate the cold. With a hot jar full of broccoli soup keeping me company late into the night, though, I'll feel unbreakable.

I know a lot of you probably think this is some elaborately orchestrated cop-out, an indicator that I'm simply too slow to keep up with the big dogs of the vegan blogosphere; not entirely the case. This job came out of nowhere; never in my life was I expecting these people to give me a call, the listing felt like it was way out of my league. After officially signing on to the tour, I would fantasize about pre-shooting and pre-writing all of the recipes I had planned for December, but now that I'm actually looking the logistics of the trip in the eye, I'm realizing that it just would not be practical. For one thing, I can't fucking stand canning these pieces to post later; the writing always comes out tasting stale, I definitely prefer to churn the words out the morning of. For another thing, and this is probably going to make a lot of people laugh, I almost find that I can't keep up with the recipes calorically or in terms of cost as it is. When I only have to stay a few days ahead of myself, it's not as big of a deal because I can make stuff out of what I already have and just eat the resulting food for lunch and dinner that week. To expedite a month's worth of recipes, on the other hand, would do significant damage to both my waistline and the little notebook I write down all of my purchases in so I am able to feel properly ashamed about them after the end of each quarter. The unfortunate truth is that we simply won't get to do any Christmas baking here. Maybe next year you'll get a chance to try out the holiday-spiced dump cake I had in the works for you all, a classic pinkbelly original (spoiler alert!).

This is not the dump cake I mentioned previously; the rest of these photos are just random shots from some of the recipes I already had prepared for the next few weeks. I'm doing this mostly to prove to the haters and naysayers that I've still got it, I didn't just decide to quit out of laziness, and also to talk about this trip that nobody cares about but me. It's going to be great; I have so much to say and nobody to say it to. Having no friends to feed all of the excess food is another excellent example of why I'm not responsible enough for something like this right now.

Here are some apples; I sliced them for a recipe. From what I understand, these next four weeks are going to be long and action-packed, so I figured just shooting all of the photos before leaving and writing the entries themselves from the road may be a poor choice in terms of productivity. Trust me when I say, I'll miss this more than you will.

With all of that being said, I just wanted to thank you sincerely for your viewership, from the bottom of my little piggy heart. It may be a little while before you see me or my big sharp knife again, but this definitely isn't the end. We have much to explore in the world of vegan cuisine, and I will not rest until we have seen it all. In the meantime, have a safe holiday, whichever one you and your family does, eat lots of food, drink cheap wine with your friends, and next time you scrape down the sides of your mixing bowl with a silly pink spatula, I want you to think of me, and my, silly, pink, spatula, as well.

This is pinkbelly, signing off for the rest of 2017. Have a great week, everybody, and a tasty new year.