Life Lately Archives - Cooking In Stilettos™

Life Lately – May Edition and My Battle With Stress, Depression and Anxiety

May 7, 2017 By Aly 1 Comment

Grab a coffee and let’s chat, shall we. If you are looking for recipes, I pinky swear there will be one shared with you tomorrow that you will love. Right now, I wanted to share a little something something. If you have no desire to read something wordy – no worries. Deliciousness will be back tomorrow as #BrunchWeek will begin!

This year has been a tad rocky and yes, I know I have been a bit quiet as I handle a few things around here. Thankfully, I had some great friends pull me out of a severely deep funk and remind me how much things have changed for the better. I changed careers, cut some toxic people out of my life and have been hitting milestone after milestone. But still – my mind races and tells me that I’m not accomplishing enough and that perhaps, I am failing.

Do you ever have that little negative voice in your head that you would love to muzzle? My voice – let’s just say it’s been screaming at a fevered pitch lately.

To be totally upfront, I have been battling severe stress, depression and anxiety for years, which I can mostly attribute to the former 9to9s and it reminds me of why I left my legal eagle life. However, the adjustment from legal eagle wench to the new digs has been a total 180 and if anyone ever tells you that stress is “nothing” – I might beg to disagree. When it comes to my stress, depression and anxiety, I’ve always been good at hiding it and when I read this article as well as well as one on what it’s like to have high-functioning anxiety was like a punch to the gut. How did they know what I’m dealing with? It was also comforting to know that my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me. To deal with this I often retreat into a ball and bury myself in my work – clearly that needed to change….

Life Lately – October Edition

October 31, 2016 By Aly Leave a Comment

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links to things I adore. Thank you for helping make Cooking In Stilettos possible.

Wow – this month has FLOWN by – one minute I’m heading to NYC, and the next minute you know, November is knocking at the door. I feel like I’m 20 paces behind and if I’m not careful, life is going to Gibbs’ smack me upside the head. Don’t even get me started on holiday planning.

While October was busy with lots of recipe development, appointments, meetings and the like, the month ahead has me contemplative. November is always “interesting”. This week, I’ll be turning yet another year older and with each approaching year, I wonder “what if”. My bff, Meowmix, always tends to tell it like it is, reminding me what I have done and what is ahead but still. …

Life Lately – August Edition

August 31, 2016 By Aly 3 Comments

This past month has been a mixture of emotions. My Aunt Peggy, one of my favorite aunts and one of the strongest women I have ever had the privilege to know, passed away suddenly and it has rocked our family to the core.

Peggy took care of everyone in the family and was always a phone call away if I ever needed a listening ear, advice or just to chat. Growing up, I have such fond memories of her – no matter what she was doing, she would drop everything and spend time with me, even if it was for a rousing game of Barbie. At family dinners, while everyone else was all about the cocktail sauce for the mandatory shrimp cocktail, Peg and I were breaking out the ketchup – same with for the turkey. Ahhhh the looks my Bampa would give us – assaulting the delicious and perfectly cooked turkey he worked so hard on with a puddle of tomato ketchup slyly placed on the side of the plate.

Aly with Bampa, Nana & Peggy | CookingInStilettos.com

One of my absolute favorite photos – with my Bampa, Nana and Peg way way way back in the ’80s

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Life Lately

April 24, 2016 By Aly 3 Comments

Things at the Cooking In Stilettos’ homestead has been crazed to say the least. For those that follow my Snapchat or Insta, you might have an inkling of what has gotten essentially my full attention lately.

My beloved Junior Sous Pug has had a chronic issue with his esophagus for the past year or so and he’s been on a steroid treatment to deal with that. In January, his steroid was switched to another steroid that was a bit more aggressive. Well, in February, we found out that Jeffie had full blown canine diabetes and pancreatitis. We caught the pancreatitis in time, but the diabetes – don’t even get me started. It is what it is – I don’t know the direct result – whether it was the new steroid that triggered the diabetes monster, the weight gain he experienced from the year’s worth of steroid treatments that set him on his path, the pancreatitis or, perhaps he was already prediabetic and it was waiting in the wings. Any way I looked at it – I couldn’t figure out the why, I just had to figure out how we were going to deal with it going forward and do everything in our power to make his life as pleasant as possible. Having had a diabetic pug before, I had an inkling of what was in store. …

Life Lately…

April 10, 2015 By Aly 4 Comments

Or, in the alternative, why you don’t attempt to make pickles at 9pm on a Sunday night…

Some may have seen in my Insta that I had a bit of an ER situ a few weeks ago. I decided to attempt to make homemade pickles for a recipe I was developing and, sadly, my swanky Japanese mandoline decided it was going to bite me instead. Next thing you know, it’s a scene from ER in my house but sadly, sans George Clooney. The side of my right thumb had met the mandoline when the veggies that I was slicing slipped sideways and it was game on then. I’m trying to get things to stop gushing, the mandoline laid on my cutting board mocking me and I’m going “Ummmm… I think I need to go to the ER” when I realized that a bandaid or three wouldn’t do….