The sun presses gently on my back. It’s late spring, so the heat doesn’t feel too harsh, more like the reassuring weight of an arm resting on my shoulders. The weeds have crept their way toward the perennials in the garden bed. I stand there, hands on my hips, looking at the dirt, assessing what needs to be done and how much effort cleaning out this portion of my parents’ yard will require. I’m only in town for a couple of days, and I don’t want to leave my newly widowed dad* with a half-finished chore.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote a short story called “Leaf by Niggle.” The main character, Niggle, is a painter. He envisions painting a grand tree set against a countryside and even a forest in the picture, along with mountains and birds and the tree's deep, strong roots.

But he keeps getting interrupted in his work by neighbors, the needs of others, and the responsibilities of everyday life. Those around him don't understand why he even bothers painting at all. There's far more important work to do. And so despite Niggle's best efforts at painting, he can't quite make the image on the canvas match the image in his mind. Parts of it are barely completed, “and only so so, at that.”

I have a book releasing in three days. It’s hard to believe I’m even saying that, that I’ve even finally made it to this point. Most people only see news about a book once it’s ready to be shared and read. They don’t see the time spent living out the stories, wrestling with ideas, shedding more than a few tears over the content. It’s been a journey, to say the least.

We’re a few weeks from the end of another year. As I look back over the last 12 months and take stock of what’s happened in the world, it’s easy to grow discouraged. Personally, my year has been exhausting and full, but relative to other years, it’s not one that’s been particularly marked by grief. Yet when I lift my eyes and consider so many others in my community around me and in the world at large, this year has overflowed with suffering. Just glance back at the headlines, and it’s obvious that suffering runs rampant.

This past spring and summer, I felt stuck in a cooking rut. This activity that usually gave me so much joy left me feeling completely depleted. I didn’t want to cook for my family. Having four-year-olds complain about what you put in front of them certainly didn’t motivate me to work harder in the kitchen. I didn’t even really want to cook for the blog. I felt lost in a sea of food bloggers and writers, not totally fitting in in either space, and I felt creatively depleted.

If you’re a writer, maybe you bristle at the thought and feel like the “p-word” is as vulgar as any four-letter-word out there. I’ve felt that way, too. (Just so you know up front, this post won’t include practical advice on how to grow your platform. Kind of the opposite, actually.) The thought of “having to grow my platform” in order to ever write a book is daunting and frustrating. Can’t I just write a book about Jesus and pray someone will buy it?

I am a total cookbook junkie. I'll flip through a cookbook as if it was a magazine, reference one like an encyclopedia and sometimes even read another like a novel. I'm obsessed.

I firmly believe that a good cookbook is meant to be cooked from - not to just sit on the shelf. The best ones have worn pages, oil splatters, smears of batter and markings in the margins. Sure, many are designed beautifully and chock-full of incredible photography (which I love), but even these cookbooks are only as good as their recipes.