Hoppin' on the Foodie Boat

Greetings everybody,

I realize that this is the trillion-and-eighth blog of its kind.  Everyone and their brother has a blog about food.  Why shouldn't we?  Food is sustenance, it's pleasure, it provides a reason/excuse/compulsion to meet and eat with others.  There's been a veritable explosion of enthusiasts here on the internet, and I'm happy to join in the fray.

I make lots of stuff at home.  I ferment my own wine and mead, I've started canning, I bake and cook many things from scratch too.  Okay, so I'm not that special.  The people around me tend to enjoy what I cook and ferment, and much of it I give or bring along to events as gifts.  The response:

"Wow, did you really make this?"

"Holy shit, this is really good!"

"I've never tasted anything like this."

"Did you really just spend eight hours roasting tomatoes to make snacks for an apartment full of nerds playing D & D?  You just did that."  *cue incredulous head-shaking: a quote from my friend Mike.

The thing is, I haven't really had that much experience cooking.  Before I moved out of my parent's house and into the wild world of wine (and college), I could barely cook KD.  I could use a microwave.  I could boil pasta (sometimes even this ended badly).

I lived with a graduate of a culinary program, and I went to school with a lot of people that had crossed streams of Hotel & Restaurant Management or chef's training; people that wanted to learn more about wine.  They shared with me the joys of food and wine, admonished me for using iodized salt and margarine, taught me how to cook meat and veggies properly, and usually got me well and truly hammered in the process.  (This is going to be a fairly hedonistic blog, I can already tell.)

I had come into wine from high school chemistry and biology classes.  It's an understatement to say that my palate was undeveloped.  I think I like it better this way: everything was fresh, new, intense, and a full sensory experience.  Taste, texture, visual appeal: all suddenly became my entire world.  I entered with no biases, no previous experience, and just drank it all in.

I'd like to bring more people into this world, and share my finds in food and wine, and I think I can do that by writing here.  I'm going to try and reach a lot of people, and I hope that gustatory experiences are in turn shared with me too.  I might devote a page and a half to fine whiskey, I might yell about peppers for a paragraph.  I'm not sure yet.  We'll see where this goes.

The dinner table is a fantastic forum.  Let this be a virtual dinner table: everyone brings something to it, and we all leave it with the pleasure of food and wine.

So, let the fun begin.

Cheers,

Melissa