My love for food came in large part from my family, especially my mom. Her name is Sue. She is spunky. She grew up in a small town in Canada living off of produce from the family garden and game and fowl hunted by my grandpa. So when she cooks, she cooks good. (Note to the grammatically sensitive: I know that "good" is an adjective, and as such should only modify nouns and pronouns. But let's be honest, saying "she cooks well" just doesn't pack the same punch. Thank you for your flexibility. Or, if you're still upset, you can send hate-mail to the address at the bottom of the post*, and I promise I will read it.)
So, I grew up eating meals that my mom made from scratch. The only food we ate from a box was pasta, and the only real junk food we had was red licorice and fancy potato chips. (Note: While I am grateful now, this comparative lack of junk was a seriously traumatic element of my childhood. When I would get out my sack lunch in 4th grade and compare, as 4th-graders invariably do, I would see that the other kids had motorcycle-shaped String Thing, or Froot-by-the-Foot, or other sugar-loaded, cool-shaped, fruit-mocking abominations. What did I have? Actual fruit.)
But more important than the food my Mom cooked were the memories that revolved around those meals. Maybe the family meal is a lost art, but we preserved it faithfully and with diligence in our house. And with great results. Dinner time was one of the few times all seven of us were together, and it was normally spent trying to keep our food in our mouths because we were laughing too hard, while simultaneously offering praise and admiration to anyone who could successfully cause a spew. This was dinner.
Or, if we didn't eat at home, we would find some foreign restaurant and impose our camaraderie on it. Where I'm from (an undisclosed city in exotic Minnesota), there are immigrants from just about every place in the world. I never verified this, but I've heard that one of our rival high schools was one of the most ethnically diverse in the country. So what does this mean? Lots of ethnic people means lots of ethnic food. Of course we had the standard Mexican and Chinese joints, but from an early age I was also exposed to excellent Thai, Indian, Greek, Italian, and later on French, Turkish, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean food. Also BBQ, which isn't ethnic, but it is awesome.
So flash back to about a year and a half ago. I had recently returned from spending 18+ months in Mongolia, where I mostly ate Mongolian food (mutton in various forms), rice, fried eggs, and kimchi. Being back in America, where you can get any kind of food from anywhere, I thought to myself, "You know what? I love pesto. I bet I could learn how to make pesto." So, I looked up a pesto recipe, and made pesto.
This was a significant moment, in the same way the apple falling on Newton's head was significant. I realized that if I want to eat something, all I have to do is look it up on the internet, follow the recipe, and then eat it. Thus, a chef was born.
So now, I'm back in college, cooking away. And this is my blog.
*Send hate-mail here:
Haha! There is no address. Now you will stew in your own angry feelings.
