Now You Has Food: Post #1 - An Intro

Hi there!

Welcome to my new food blog.

I love food (probably obvious) and I love writing - so this should be fun.

I thought I'd start by telling you a little bit about myself and food, focussing on the key moments that have led me to where I am today.

I was raised by parents who loved cooking. We had home-cooked, healthy food featuring fresh ingredients on a nightly basis. While we never purely vegetarian, by the time I was 16, I had settled into the diet I maintain to this day - I'm a vegetarian who enjoys fish and dairy (octo-lacto-pesce-tarian...I think). Growing up at home, I experienced sauces made from scratch, freshly baked goods and a seemingly endless number of dishes made with excellent fruits and veggies.

As my interest in food was germinating, I got a job at a local restaurant. I worked as a busboy, dishwasher and cashier for many years of my adolescence and I always showed a lot of interest in cooking. I was fortunate that the head chef at the time took me under his wing and trained me on the job. Eventually, despite having no formal training, I was able to land a position as a line and prep cook and I held this position for a number of years while in university. I learned quite a lot about organization and time management in the kitchen that I took with me to my career as an educator. Those years in the kitchen also kept the cooking fire burning. I am quite a creative person and the combination of that plus my ever-expanding kitchen skills led to an explosion of ideas in the kitchen at home.

When I eventually left the restaurant at the age of 24, I had tired of generating 30-40 omelettes in a morning and flipping 100s of burgers and making dozens of pasta dishes. The love for food was sapped out of me and I longed to make one really great breakfast, or plan an exciting lunch or have a bunch of friends over and cook an incredible dinner. I learned a lot of techniques at the restaurant, but I was now ready to move on not only career-wise but also to cook solely for myself, my friends and my family.

Throughout my adult life I have bought cookbooks, watched every food show on television (sometimes only once), read books about food and more recently researched recipes and ingredients online.

My very first cookbook, and one that I still use frequently to this day, is the vegetarian "Bible" The Moosewood Cookbook, by Mollie Katzen. I have cooked every recipe in that book multiple times and have personalized many of them over time. I have subsequently gone on to purchase a number of her other books (The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and The Heart of the Plate, to name two) as well as a number of books by the Moosewood Collective, including Sundays At The Moosewood Restaurant and Moosewood Restaurant Favourites. I don't want to mislead you in thinking that I only draw from vegetarian sources - I consult The Joy of Cooking from time to time, I flip through a Betty Crocker book that I have, I use my wife's Best of The Best here and there and I love both the Good Housekeeping cookbook and baking book that I own.

I love food TV! I remember watching Walk With Yan as a child and I used to watch food shows whenever I could find them. The birth of Food Television was exciting for me and I remember the chefs that dominated their station when it was first unveiled in Canada: Bobby Flay, Emeril, Sara Moulton, and Ming Tsai. I watched every single original Iron Chef multiple times and actually just threw out a stack of old VHS tapes full of recordings on those shows (my wife made me). I currently religiously (and somewhat shamefully) watch all of the varieties of Top Chef, Chopped, MasterChef, Guy's Grocery Games, Beat Bobby Flay, Sabotage Kitchen, Iron Chef America and The Next Food Network Star (can't get enough of Bob Tuschman and Susie Fogelson- give them their own show! I am kidding! I am kidding!). We don't get Cooking Channel in Canada, so I miss the purely instructional shows, but I do pick up hints and recipes from the reality shows (i.e. when given something sweet for a savory dish, make a gastrique).

I frequent Epicurious, All Recipes, Food.com, Yummly and other food websites and I have a large three-holed binder full of all of the recipes I've tried from those sites. I love the recipes online as the reviews and alterations that others have made are very helpful. My favourite newer site that I have found and have loved is 101 Cookbooks - I fully recommend it - great recipes and a fun read.

I have also read a number of great books about food - Jeffery Steingarten's are all awesome, I love Anthony Bourdain, I have read all of Mark Ruhlmann's books, Ruth Reichel's books make me hungry and envious of her way with words and I highly recommend Heat by Bill Buford among many others. These books all make me laugh and get excited about food. Jeffery Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything and It Must Have Been Something I Ate are two of my favourite reads of all time and I would say are among the major factors in my experimenting in the kitchen. If you haven't read those books, and you love food, you must.

So, here we are. I am a 43 year-old husband and father of two young girls. I plan, shop and cook all of the food for the family. I love finding new and different recipes that are healthy, light, ethnically-diverse and full of colour. I try to research and plan menus for the week that mix things up while also creating leftovers and sometimes lunches too. I am also trying to find meals that the whole family will enjoy (including a picky 6-year old is tough) that don't use every pot and pan in the kitchen. We are an active and busy family trying to squeeze in activities for the kids, sports, tutoring, playing games, my creative writing blog and relaxing into a busy schedule. I used to shop, cook and clean up for hours and hours and hours. In the past few years, I have shifted towards quicker meals that free up more time for everything else in life without sacrificing flavour, health and variety, because as good as a meal is that takes hours to prepare and hours to clean up, it isn't much better than one that takes a quarter of the time. We eat as few prepared items as possible and cook most meals from scratch (gotta have pizza or sushi once a week if the budget allows) all the while balancing the budget (can't have wild salmon every night).

I am going to try to put up recipes that I love, recipes that are horrible and should never be talked about again (let alone cooked) but should make for an enjoyable read, trials and experiments and my thoughts on food and diet. I am a creative writing blogger and love to laugh, so things may get occasionally funny around here, but I will try to keep the focus on food.

I hope you come back often.