Yikes, I’m not sure what happened to yesterday. Or today frankly. The 5th prompt for this month-long reflection on 2012 is:

What community has engaged you most this year and what did it you get out of your participation?

And I’m actually a little bit stumped about how to answer this one, since I’ve been pretty terrible at participating in communities this year: MQResource, the online machine quilting community I started keeps clicking along, but now that I’m not quilting, it’s having to manage without any input from me.

As far as photography goes: I hit a wall with my daily photography project, and while I was having fun participating in the forums at Capture Your 365, I…just stopped. There didn’t seem to be any point when I wasn’t actually, you know, taking photographs.

So, the only community that I’m truly active and engaged in would be: the school that I work at. I have some pretty specific reasons for being there, and while I enjoy the people I work with, sometimes, you just need to talk to someone else about other things than the crap that you are going through on a daily basis. So, that’s why I’ve started blogging again, and participating in some different things, especially book related, trying to find some different connections.

And then prompt #6:

What was your best recipe/dish of the year? Share it!

Hmmm. Cooking is not something I am passionate about, and while we do a pretty good job of eating decently, I am basically feeding a crowd of boys who would eat the same thing at every meal if I let them (and corn dogs would feature pretty high in the choices of the shorter 2). The only NEW recipe I can think of right now is a sloppy joe recipe that I made to take to school one day:

Dog Food Dip

2lb ground beef
1 can tomato sauce
1 can tomato paste
1/2 cup ketchup
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 8 oz container sour cream

Brown the ground beef (I usually season with salt/pepper/garlic powder/onion powder as I cook, it would probably be even better with, um, actual chopped up onions and garlic…), drain if necessary. Add the other ingredients and cook until heated through.

I’ve also put this in a crockpot, and used it for a potluck.

Mark eats his on a bun, but I like mine with those Frito Corn Chip Dipper thingies. Or some other kind of chip that’s good for dipping.

And yes. It totally looks like dog food, but the addition of the sour cream is oh so yummy.