Why a Food Blog?

I've been asked by a couple of different people why I decided to start a food blog, and I thought, where better than the aforementioned food blog to explain?

When I was a kid growing up in a mid-sized town in the sort of Souther US, I never ate anything too crazy. If mom talked about making hominy, it was like she was putting a grilled cuttlefish on the table, there was just no having that sort of weird food. We were a small family, just my mom, brother and I, and I think mom had no desire to fight about food. Really, whether we went to the drive-thru's of Taco Bueno, McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken in one night so everyone had what they wanted for dinner was the least of our worries!

But that being said, I remember some meals being on regular rotation, spaghetti with meat sauce (ground beef and Ragu jarred sauce, pasta and Kraft parm), chicken fried steak, old el paso taco mix tacos, fried chicken, smoked sausage and macaroni and cheese, slices of steak cooked in soy sauce with mushrooms, etc. I loved (and still love, make no mistake) Kraft dinner and Chef Boyardee.

I remember the first time I went to the restaurant, The Olive Garden. It was my friends birthday, I was in high school, and the menu seemed, sad to say, exotic. I ordered ravioli because it was something I recognized, and was shocked by the offering. A few small ravioli's, cheese only, with this sort of thinish "fresh" tomato sauce. It was not the Chef, no sir.

Now let me explain that this was in no way my Mother's fault. I was a picky eater and loved eating at restaurants so much that I was mortified that I would order something I didn't like and be denied the joy of eating it, so I tried to stick with what I knew. I would go to steak houses and order the hamburger. The horror.

Then I went to University. My first foray into "weird" food was my friend's version of Fetuccine Alfredo. I was in love. Creamy, rich, cheesey. Oh my goodness oh my goodness. So it became my staple (and while I lost the friend, the recipe lives on with only the most minor of differences).

From there, I began to move towards Indian food, Thai, etc... And it just kept going. I began to love cookbooks, and started buying them, but, in all honesty, made very little from them. All of a sudden, I was eating this wide range of food and enjoying all the different tastes and textures. It seems so silly now, but Oklahoma was not the hotbed of ethnic foods.

Then, I moved to Toronto and my life kept sort of moving along, and I started travelling more and now I am a person who can say, "I ate cassoulet with duck confit at a small restaurant in Chinon, France!" (Not to mention that I got to Chinon, France on a bike, having started the trip in Montrichard, France.)

Now, I have this great love of food in all its forms. I love reading books about food, cookbooks, and I can't get enough of food magazines. I buy an obscene number of food magazines each month, including Donna Hay, Olive, BBC Food, Cooking Light, Delicious (when I can find it), etc. etc. Then I started reading food blogs. I began reading Slashfood, then moved on to the Food Pornographer, the Girl Who Ate Everything, and so on, to a slew of blogs that I now read regularly, including the ones to the left.

So, I thought, I have work that I enjoy, but food is something I am passionately interested in, and since I started this blog and I began reading more about sustainable agriculture, and all that, I have found just an unquenchable interest in this hobby. No one may ever read this who isn't my indulging friends and family, but I don't care in the slightest. And I know that it's not perfect, and my pictures still kinda suck, but it's going to get better, and more sophisticated, just like my palette.

And here's a food pic, just because, at the end of the day, this is still a food blog.



MOOOOONS OVERRRRRR MY HAMMMMMMMMMMY!