Not quite Writer's Block.

When I started writing on Hubpages, I understood (incorrectly) that this was a venue for specific lessons. I decided to offer my English as a Second Language lessons as means to share the experience and truthfully as a way to possibly earn money. As usual, I acted first and researched after. Kind of like putting the cart before the horse.Anyway, I discovered a couple of things: 1) Even though I have written some great teaching material in the past, my heart isn't totally in that right now.... leading to... 2) The beauty of my experience is that the only "genre" of mine, so to speak, is that I shoot from the belt and write conversationally about my myself and my viewpoint on everyday things. Now I have undertaken a challenge. The challenge is niche writing. I could have "cheated" and made my niche something I know I can do. Instead, I decided to challenge myself. Though I am an avid cooker and have always enjoyed it, I have never really followed recipes, let alone write them. How the heck did I decide to do a recipe hub?!?***

Most of my hubs are sparked by something I've heard, seen or dreamt about. Then I hust ramble on from there usually building the hub as I go. The idea for this one came to me one morning as I was preparing myself a simple breakfast of toast and greek yogurt. I put the yogurt on my toast which reminded me of my mother-in-law, Miriam. The first hub, Breakfast at Miriam's was born. It met some interest and I decided to write more. When the challenge presented myself, I thought, "Sure! Why not?"

Well, when I reached the halfway point, I began to have a bit of trouble. There are still several recipes I would still like to share but haven't yet done the shopping or carved out the time to prepare them. It looked like I may have had to slow down production for a couple of days and then slam a few out at once. That would have been ok as I had a few other hubs waiting quietly on the side that I knew would be happy to debut! But, not one to back off of a challenge, I wasn't happy about tabling it for a few days. (Pardon the pun!) So I began writing this apology hub, when lo and behold, the ideas started flowing. So here we go!

One of the fun and popular parts of this series have been my anecdotes and side stories so I thought I'd tell you about barbequing at Miriam's. A La Aish means on the fire! Everyone gets pretty excited when we are planning to cook A la Aish. Everyone gets the meat ready by preparing their favorite rub, marinade or seasoning. The favorite is a mixture of sweet and spicy paprika, olive oil, turmeric, cumin, salt and pepper. While the grill is heating up and the meat is waiting, it's time to make the salads. We usually make from at least 3 salads up to 7 or 8. We always throw some peppers on the grill, too! And,oh, what a grill we used! No little pansy grill in this family! Ours was a self made from a barrell. Imagine how much charcoal and wood it takes to fire it up?!