The first Consider The Sauce post was foisted on to the public on August 25, 2010.

This is the 1444th post.

In those 10 years, Consider The Sauce has enjoyed more than 1,792,016 page views and there have been more than 7000 comments.

As of today, Consider The Sauce has 902 email subscribers and 2666 FB followers.

Of course, this solitary post was NOT what I had in mind to celebrate the CTS 10th birthday milestone.

Planning, in my mind and early this year, took the form of a fabulous and big fund-raising dinner.

But circumstances have rather intervened, eh?

In hindsight, my unseemly departure from the regular journalistic workforce late last year can be seen to have been rather timely – a nice segue into the enforced idleness of pandemic times, a chance to take many deep breaths after a 40-year career and blessed opportunity to revel in what has become a truly magnificent music collection.

There’s ink in my veins, so I have not ceased to be a journalist, but I’m pretty sure that whatever non-CTS writing/editing endeavours await in the future, they will not be of the orthodox kind.

Some people have suggested we should be forging ahead with CTS on the basis of take-away food and deliveries.

Well, yes, we’ve done some of that – and will doubtless continue on a sporadic basis.

But it just isn’t the same as getting out and about and meeting wonderful folks and eating their food.

I admire immensely those in the game – both food providers and food media – who are gamely going about their business during lockdown.

We are cheering you on – from the sidelines!

In the meantime, we really are enjoying taking a blog break and doing a surprising amount of good home cooking.

Bennie has grown up with Consider The Sauce and is now a fine young man with a pronounced taste for Spicy Food. He regularly drags his mates all over Melbourne to enjoy CTS discoveries. Or, at least, he used to!

Likewise, he regularly messages me when he finds cool food stuff when he is not actually “in the house” at CTS HQ.

He finished school last year and entered the workforce early this year – just casual labor through a nice, small recruitment agency.

Dreams and plans are being formulated in his noggin, but in the meantime he is basically taking a year off – and that is fine by me.

After a sometimes meandering and maddening approach to school life, he took to the working life with gusto, aplomb and – gosh! – discipline.

So much so that now the phone has stopped ringing, I am equally and perfectly at ease with him NOT working – given that all his work, including at FoodBank, has to date been in the rather risky supply chain world in the west.

We will return!

We miss eating out SOOOOOO much!

In the meantime, thanks so very much to all our readers and fans, including the lurkers, the tipsters and the leavers of comments!

And thanks most of all, and as ever, to the amazing multicultural communities of Melbourne’s western suburbs and their food traditions and welcoming smiles.