The Wandering Cook turns 1 today!

...and this, in case you are wondering, it's me turning one many, many years ago. The one on the left is my great-aunt Maria, while the one on the right is my grandpa Andrea. I had never noticed how perplexed I look in this picture —I'm guessing either the cake or the flame had caught my attention while my mom was talking this picture. My blog and I don't share the same birthday, nor we have the same chubby cheeks, but I couldn't come up with a better image for a first birthday because, unlike many other bloggers out there, I really didn't feel like making a cake to celebrate the fact that I actually followed through for once in my life and kept writing for a whole year.

I have many good reasons for not wanting to make make. If you want to hear a couple of them, here they are:
I'm lazy.
I don't overly like cake.
Who the hell was going to help me eat a whole cake since I live by myself?
Good reasons, right?

Anyhow, when I posted about risotto alla milanese exactly a year ago I had no idea what writing a food blog would be like. I wasn't even sure I was going to keep doing it for a whole year because I know myself and I know how fast I lose enthusiasm and interest in things. But I kept writing and posting about food and about my life as the days turned into weeks and months, and as life kept happening around me. Many things have happened in these 12 months —some very good, some very bad, some insignificant, some life-changing—but food, and cooking, have always been there for me, making happy moments even happier and making the sad and crappy ones more bearable. And then, of course, there's you, my readers, that have come to read me and left comments that kept me cooking and writing even when I didn't much feel like blogging.

So thank you, to all of you, wherever you are.