About This Blog

I don’t think the usual welcome message is appropriate here; I’m not sure what is. This blog was essentially an experiment that failed in terms of my original goal. It is a long story that will bore (and possibly put-off) the reader so I’ll skip it.

I have cooked for most of life, having started when I was child, but in recent years I have lost some of the passion I once had for it.  I still love to cook for parties, holidays, births and deaths, the kind of cooking that takes hours upon hours—if not days—and usually ends with me finding an eggshell on the ceiling and  a tray of cookies on top of the fridge that I forgot I even made, but as far as cooking daily, I’m just not all that enthused.

There’s a certain irony to this given the moment we are living in . . . When I was in high school and cooking chicken satay, caponata, hummus and other exotic fare, no one I knew had ever heard of them. Now, with the popularity of cooking shows to people of all ages, those foods are routinely made in a home kitchen. People who twenty years ago wouldn’t have eaten sushi, are rolling their own, and making pizza dough, and buying tomatoes that have names like Purple Krim and Mr. Stripey.

Returning to me, I like food, but preparing it on a daily basis no longer interests me all that much. There are perhaps many reasons, but I think there is one at the forefront. I feel very strongly I am in a period of transition—just how damned pretentious does that sound?

I recently turned forty and it is quite likely that half my life is behind me; I have no idea where the second half will lead, but I don’t think I want it to be entirely spent in a kitchen chopping onions or scrubbing pots. (That statement is not meant to discount those things; I hold the people who choose to feed others—be they home cook, line cook, barista, or baker—in very high regard)

Today, I want to be in the dining room for a change. I want to sit at a table and be waited on, and watch the street scene from a window. I want to observe the happy people celebrating a birthday with a warm Scharffenberger chocolate cake, and the sad people at the bar on their third martini. And I want to find out what it is I have to offer the world beyond leek soup and cornmeal cookies, because I am realizing there are ways to nurture ourselves and others, without the aid of unsalted butter.

So for the time being, this kitchen will be updated when inspiration strikes, and the recipes already here are yours for the taking.  These recipes are rich in my personal history, in the joy I took in preparing them, and in the hours spent staring at a computer screen trying to decide between a comma and a semi-colon, so it will please me to know they are being used.

PS. People associate Julia Child—and for good reason, to be sure—almost exclusively with food, but Julia said something once that has far greater significance than her trademark “Bon Appétit.” She said “Life itself is the proper binge.”