This past weekend, we were traveling yet again, this time to Illinois for our niece’s wedding. This particular niece, Katie Hopkins, who is Dave’s brother’s daughter, just so happened to be our flower girl, 25 years ago, at our wedding. She made an even more beautiful bride than she did an adorable flower girl – hard to imagine!

Thankfully, my jet-setting days are over, done with, and finished, for the rest of 2010. It is exceedingly difficult to put up new blog posts about cooking when one is spending countless hours in airports, having items confiscated by the TSA, and visiting faraway lands all the time! Maybe Canada and Illinois aren’t exactly exotic, but travel is not only exhausting – it is expensive and hazardous to your health! Expensive not only because of ticket prices but also paying for bags (which was necessary on the week-long Canada trip – luckily not so on the Chicago weekender) and having to replace those confiscated nail scissors and hairspray -oops! Unhealthy because I (and only I) had to go through the x-ray body scanner, 3 out of the 4 trips through security, these last couple of weeks. That just can’t be good for you. Even at the dentist, one is shielded from the harmful rays – but not at the airport – “Here is a tasty plate of cancer, cooked up, especially for you, Bon Appetit,” is what I imagine the TSA is saying to me!

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