About
The Blogger and Cook That is Me
My blog came into creation back in 99, when out of a homework assignment I needed to learn HTML. It saw many faces before evolving into what you see today, all of which I feel were steps in the right direction. Just this January 07, my food blog came to life as an outlet for talking about a passion.
Cooking is my source for relaxation and over the years I’ve grown reasonable at it — humbled by the amount I’ve yet to learn. I could sit around for hours talking about food or planning the upcoming week’s menu. The beauty of food and cooking is that it’s ever evolving and despite having learned through books, restaurant chefs, and admitedly FoodTV, my knowledge of food is miniscual.
I blog out of a desire to share my thoughts, personal experiences, family & friend updates, and culinary adventures. I love to share updates with those who care enough to read them. Outside of my space on the world wide web, I develop software and web applications for a living.
The Stage
Who says food isn’t a form of art? My kitchen is my stage, a horribly impratical yet somehow manageable slice of space in a mid-sized DC condo building. It has a long breakfast bar that, albeit being roughtly 1′ too high (I stand on paint cans), I use as a countertop, an electric stove with lopsided burners, and a variety of gizmos, gadgest, plates, pots, and pans.
My favorite kitchen items include my plating spoons used @ Willow for nastalgia and their usefulness, my 9.5″ Mac Professional Knife, a recent holiday gift that’s wicked sharp a makes quick work of most anything, and a certain 5′2″ someone who’s usually there to nible at and critique my creations.
The Site
Right next to my interest in food, I’m a geek. A computer geek, more specifically. Forget the packaged blogging software (Wordpress, Moveable Type) — I prefer rolling my own solution. The site display is standard HTML, with much talk with Perl and a mySQL backend. Future developments to include an RSS feed, so stay tuned.
The Recipes
Between my several dozen cookbooks, the various cooking websites (Food & Wine, Chef2Chef, and Gourmet Magazine, to name a few), Food Network inspirations, Willow Restaurant dishes, and food-related magazine subscriptions, I have more recipes than I know what to do with and hope to gradually work through them all, cataloging the keepers.
The Photos
My photos are taken with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 and edited for size, lighting, etc. on my Mac using iPhoto and Adobe Photoshop. I have no prior photography training nor much experience, so taking pictures generally invovles snapping shots until one is mostly suitable. I could use a better lense, more lighting, and a tripod to start. In addition, a bit of reading on digital photography and editing.