Hi! Welcome to my new blog, where I will post about food I am cooking. I've been tossing around the idea of blogging for awhile now, since I realized that people seem to like my Facebook posts about food, though it was much earlier that someone pointed out to me how much I like talking about cooking. I was on the phone with my sister W, and she asked, "Are you going to tell me about what you cooked this weekend?" I said why do you ask? Apparently every time we talked on the phone, I had been reporting on what I was cooking, and I hadn't noticed the pattern. I'm not always very observant.
The name of this blog came to me one day when I served a group of friends a vegan lasagna made with teff "noodles" (that will have to be my first real post, after this introductory one). They were all raving about it, to the point where I felt bad for the other people who had also brought dishes (but not that bad) and I thought, "You know, this dish is really weird. I think people are willing to eat it because they've eaten other foods I've made, and I have a reputation, and they trust me." I then proceeded to test that by serving them kale brownies. haha!
Then, once I had a name, it seemed like it was time to start a blog!
The focus of this blog will be a little different from the food blogs I read. For one thing, I am not a good photographer and usually take pictures in my messy kitchen where you can see the food processor or the stove in the background. For another, it is not that often that I invent recipes, though I sometimes combine things in unusual ways, so I may be doing a lot of linking to other sites. If I do invent something, I'll write it out, but mostly I expect I'll focus on stories. Besides loving good food, I also care a lot about what the food means in context.
I love cooking for myself when I'm feeling down; it makes me feel so taken care of to have healthy and yummy food! Plus concentrating on cooking gets my mind off whatever is upsetting me. I also love cooking for friends - the art of planning a menu that balances different colors and textures and nutrients while including flavors that feel connected yet varied, and the way food can bring people together. Food provides a way for me to help people out - if they've just had a baby, or their spouse is dying, or some other emergency. A friend once told me she'd forgive me not coming to her father's funeral if I made her my homemade Twix. One of my favorite compliments I got was from an acquaintance whose wife was in her last week of life. I'd brought them tamale pie, and he wrote to me two days later to say "Your food continues to nourish us, body and soul." <3
I also enjoy the challenges of cooking with limitations. I once cooked a seder meal where one of the guests could not eat nuts (nuts usually feature heavily in Passover cuisine), and at another seder one of the guests had celiac and said this dinner was the first good meal she'd had since her diagnosis. About a year ago I was having issues with stomach acid and was not eating citrus, chocolate, garlic, onions, tomatoes, mint, dairy, or alcohol. It was terribly stressful, but it taught me a lot about food substitutions, and now I get over-eager to make suggestions to other people when they need to go on elimination diets.
As I have time in the coming weeks, I will post some pictures of food I've made recently with stories about what occasion it was for and why it was meaningful to me. And then we'll see how it goes!
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