I never drink soda, usually prefer red wine, and one beer takes me an hour. But my drinking habits have diverged from the norm lately, as my food adventures broke off from this blog and my usual topics. I still slurp the juice from farmers market peaches, yes, but I quit my gig writing about it for Examiner.com (farewell post here) and took the summer to try a few new concepts.

White wine was one. Drinking beer two bottles in one sitting (or boat ride) was another. And if you want to know more…

I popped open a can of policy assessment–via the topic of soda taxes–in a July post on PursueAction.org.

The same website started posting a series of mother-daughter dialogues between everyone’s favorite YouAreDelicious blogger and her “e-ma“–a Hebrew word that takes on more meaning when she and I are emailing more than we talk on the phone or see each other.

In August, I spent a week sipping the bubble gum-flavored soft drink known as fruit champagne and Prestige beer in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. And I came away with more than a couple of duty-free bottles of Barbancourt. Actually, the beverages were a very marginal part. I posted my first installment of a series on the trip last week.

On my way back up to D.C., I made a stop in the Tampa Bay area, where I figured my first trip to a tiki bar by motor boat to eat fried grouper was as good of an occasion as any to try a Bud Light Lime. Actually two of them during lunch and another couple of beers on the boat ride back. Not that I plan to write about that. Oh wait.

Anyway, then I came back home and started hitting the workahol, as a friend of mine would say, a little too hard.

Yet I’m staying on the extra-curricular writing wagon.

I may throw raw eggs into the mix this month by writing about the salmonella scare for The Jew and the Carrot. Is our kitchen culture changing, I’ll wonder, now that we’re deadly afraid of cookie dough and even omelets? And when was the last time you had a minute to make cookies from scratch, anyway? Since I last wrote for JCarrot, it has moved into a new home at The Forward‘s website. Of course, my renewed interest in writing for the blog has nothing to do with connecting my byline to that respected beacon of progressive Jewish thought.

On a more serious note, I’d also like to write about derogatory language–and that old debate about whether it’s just words–through the lens of terms about deafness. This has little to do with drinking, except that to consider if the ‘B’ word (“bébé”) makes Creole-speakers feel patronizing toward deaf people, or if it’s the patronizing attitude that generated the demeaning word, could drive you to it.

When that got too heavy, I started an article about stuffed stuff. Soft, translucent cabbage and light ‘n’ crispy phyllo rolls. Look for that article with recipes around Simchat Torah.

And finally, when I’m not working 12-hour days at Gallaudet, I will stream some brainpower toward a new concept for this blog. The “15 minutes on…” feature was fun for a few posts. I could bring that back. I’ve also considered pulling in other food writers for this site, switching gears to short essays on other topics, making this a place to post scraps working toward a book-length project, or just giving this a rest all together. Mama needs  some time to grow up her internet tendencies, after all, and develop a professional website already! I think I can do it. I’ve already proven I can change.

Thoughts, dear readers?