Ramblings from an absentee blogger

You may have noticed the blog’s been pretty quiet this week. My reason is two-fold: when travelling for work, no kitchen = no cooking; and I’m too cheap to spend $16/day for hotel Internet. (Seriously — why is it that the more expensive, conference-worthy hotels charge exorbitant prices for Internet when the Holiday Inn Expresses of the world — my personal favorite chain — give it away? I digress…)

But, I’m back now, albeit only for a couple of days, and I thought I’d tell you a little about my trip and what I have planned for Make Mine Beef when I return from the next leg of travel, which is Sunday through Tuesday.

Sunday through Wednesday, I was in New Orleans for the Agricultural Media Summit. It was great seeing so many of my communicator friends from across the country, and the sessions were very informative. Of course, New Orleans is a tough town for someone who shares a name with the city’s biggest nemesis, but overall I left unscathed and full of beignets.

While there, I got a lot of questions about this horrible drought, wildfires and cow culling. It’s always great to talk about what’s going on in your part of the world — I just wish I’d had more good news to share!

I live in a small town in Far North Texas, near the Texas-Oklahoma border. We’ve only seen a little more than one-half inch of rain since Nov. 1, have had more than 50 days in a row over 100 degrees or more (many of those days at about 110, and today it got to 116 in the shade of my yard) and have had more than our fair share of wildfires.

Cattle have been brought in to the local auction markets in record numbers, to the point some ranchers were turned away a couple of weeks ago. I moved to this area a little less than 1 year ago when I married the Mr., and just driving around the county it’s easy to see how many fewer cattle graze here than this time last year.

Like many others, I pray for rain daily and do try to remember that every day it doesn’t rain is one day closer to the day it does.

While I may have been an absentee blogger while I was away, the project definitely wasn’t forgotten. I did a little brainstorming on a sauce I’ve been wanting to create, I found a steak recipe in EveryDay with Rachael Ray that I can’t wait to put my own spin on and I even came back to a card from my mom that included a recipe she’d cut out and marked “I bet this would be great with BEEF!”

Needless to say, I think August will be a big month for the blog…and I might just get 1 more post in before the month’s end, between loads of laundry.