pull up a chair

I'm passionate about food and drink. As a child, I was a very picky eater, but when I moved away from home, I realized it wasn't so much that I was so incredibly picky, it was that my family's food was so terrible. I'm originally from Maine, and the prevailing cuisine was baked meat accompanied by boiled vegetables. The only spices in everyday use were salt and pepper. To be fair, there were joys, such as the one or two times a year my parents would splurge on lobsters, and corn fresh from our garden. I also enjoyed visiting my grandmother, who has always been a role model for me in the kitchen. Although she didn't own a single cookbook and cooked only traditional New England food, everything she made was excellent, and her industry was unparalleled. As a farm wife, she served a giant feast every day for lunch for everyone who happened to be on the farm that day, and her brown breads were legendary (my hot-tempered grandmother stomped out of her Protestant church in a snit one day and never returned for services, but she continued to provide her brown breads to all the church dinners).

After I moved away from home, I taught myself to cook, and the joys of great food began. I like to say that I'm the best amateur cook you'll ever meet, which is probably not that far off the mark. I've never worked in a restaurant or gone to cooking school, but I can make a twelve course meal (but only if I spend two days in the kitchen). My personal idols of food are Hubert Keller (Hubert, not Thomas), Jack Bishop, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Deborah Madison. I studied abroad in Spain, and I've never quite recovered from that. I make a mean tortilla espanola, and every now and then I go on a tapas jag. Now that I have small children, I can't serve the searing hot curries I used to love, but I won't let myself be limited to macaroni and cheese (although admittedly I do make it out of the box for the children on lazy days).

I've been blogging about my life for over a year now at the Drunken Housewife. Periodically I post recipes and talk about food I've cooked, but the blog is more about my crazy children, herds of foster kittens, and neuroses. I'd like to focus more on food, my passions and interests, trends, cookbooks, etc.., and so, if you like, pull up a chair and join me.