The Bully is Back!

The Bully has been AWOL now for several months…  and I apologize to my readers. 

My initial goals were too ambitious, trying to put out a column every other day is a great deal of work, and over the course I several months, I found the blog more of a job than a labor of love.  When this happened, I put on the brakes.

A great deal has happened since that time, and much of the news has not been great.  While President Obama’s election is clearly a victory for helping to remove pre-conceived barriers to individual, country, and world progress, it remains to be seen whether he’s the right man to address the historic economic, environmental, and political challenges remains we face.

New York sports teams continue to struggle, but there is Jets hope with Rex Ryan.  Now if we can only stop talking about A-Fraud (can’t he just go-away) and let us Yankee fans enjoy the new stadium and the recent spending spree…

My bullies will not help to solve these issues; but hopefully they’ll provide a little bit of levity and enjoyment to both you and me, as we watch our 401K’s plan becoming 201K’s, and hope for our teams to do better as we spring forward today.

My plan is to update the site twice weekly. I believe this is a doable, even with a heavy work load that is increasingly challenging in today’s business climate.

I will continue to blog about food, restaurants, quick getaways, and cooking as in the past, but plan to focus on a couple of trends that I see emerging:

1. A return to comfort food as people seek relief from daily pressures, reversing a period of over the top excesses. 
2. More home cooking, consistent with the comfort food focus, but with a continued emphasis on fast, but high quality, tasty meals. (Is it any surprise that there is discussion about whether both Conde Nast’s Gourmet and Bon Appetite magazines can survive independently?)
3.  The ongoing movement to more natural, local, fresh ingredients--- whatever this means.  There’s a great deal of noise in this space, and a good deal of price inflation in the grocery and at restaurants based on the use of these terms.  My sense is that people will continue to ask for, seek out, and expect this “higher quality” food, but will not pay more than a small premium.

The good news is although this blog has been silent, I have been actively eating and continuing to explore food around the country, and I look forward to sharing. 

Look forward to your feedback and ideas, and hopefully to your increased feedback and participation.

Thanks for your encouragement to re-start this blog!