Hello!

While I'm not a fan of jumping on bandwagons, (and food blogs are a hell of a bandwagon at the moment), I've decided to start my own food blog for a few reasons.

1. I freaking love food. I love to eat it, I love to talk about it, I love to read about it, I love to learn about it, and I love to cook it. But mostly eat it. 
2. I've recently discovered the Daring Bakers and Daring Cookers challenges, and I was inspired to participate. Each month they post a new recipe to cook, photograph and write about. This will force me to try cooking and eating things that I might otherwise not think of or be brave enough to attempt.
3. My bridal shower is coming up in a week and a half, and I'm going to be getting some pretty sweet kitchen equipment. And I refuse to be one of those people that has top-of-the-line gear and lets it rot in the back of the pantry. 
4. I want to spend more of my free time cooking, and writing about what I cook will provide a way for me to keep track of what I've attempted, what I've liked and didn't like, and what I did wrong (which will be all the time). I've read a lot about food over the past couple of years, but all that has done is made me realize that you can't learn food from a book. It's strictly trial and error.

This ultimately boils down to a way for me to learn from my cooking disasters experiences in a more structured setting than just throwing pots and pans across my kitchen and vowing never to cook again. In that sense I don't actually expect anyone to read this besides me. So I'm laying out a few guidelines that I intend to follow:

What I Will Do

• Post recipes, pictures and comments on the food I make. Always recipes. It makes me sad when I read a food blog that talks about how great something is that the author cooked, and then doesn't even give the recipe. I'm not terribly creative or skilled in the kitchen, so I need detailed instructions! For that reason most of what I cook will come from someone else's recipes (I'll always cite them) and not from the top of my head. I'm just not there yet.
• Post a discussion of the food that I eat when dining out (because I do that a lot too). Maybe pictures, but I don't know if I want to be that guy in the restaurant taking picture of the food.
• Use complete sentences, proper grammar and spelling, and keep exclamation points to a minimum. On my days off from being a food nerd, I'm also grammar nazi.

What I Will Try To Do, But Can't Promise

• Post every day. Not sure how this is going to go, but I will try.
• Post even my most embarrassing culinary failures.
• Try anything that is considered a food in any culture, anywhere. This means the nasty bits of obscure animals, daring combinations, even durian. Nothing good can come from sheltering yourself from trying new things. Most of the time I don't like the new things I try. I'm a very picky eater. But that's precisely why I have to keep trying new things. How else will I know what I like and don't like?

What I Will Probably Not Do

• Talk about my life outside of food (HAHA as if I had one!). It's annoying when I'm looking through the posts on a food blog and we have a roast chicken, ooh that looks pretty, oh wow, she made lasagna with eggplant instead of noodles, that's interesting, aaaaand now she's talking about her kid's play date that he had yesterday. Really? I don't care. And I don't expect you to care either.
• Not dumb down food. No short cuts. No quick fixes. No pre-packaged, pre-sliced, pre-cooked. No Campbell's Soup recipes. If I'm gonna cook, I'm gonna cook. If I find a recipe that calls for something pre-packaged, I'll try my best to make that thing from scratch too. Of course now I'm reminded of a quote from the great Carl Sagan (my nerd-ness transcends the food world), "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
• Bake often. I just don't have much of a sweet tooth. I'll probably throw in something that really strikes me now and then, but overall I'd rather save my calories for butter, oil, breading, cheese, cream, pasta, and other savory goodness. Which leads me to ...
• "Lightening" anything up. If a recipe happens to be naturally low-fat, low-calorie, whatever. That's great. But if it calls for milk, I'm using whole milk. Not only does the dish just come out better, I am strongly suspicious of any process that takes the calories out of a completely perfect and wholesome food. Give me real, full-fat butter any day over some I-Honestly-Can-Believe-It's-Not-Butter-Because-It-Tastes-Like-Freaking-Plastic product. That just can't be good for you.
• Cook Asian food often. It's just not my thing. I've found some Vietnamese dishes I like that I might try. They tend to be milder. Chinese food is hit or miss for me, both American take-out and restaurants I've been to in Beijing. Obviously these two are completely different styles of food. I just happen to not be into either. The entire country and culture of Japan just scares the shit out of me. And, despite my continued efforts to try, I just cannot bring myself to stomach curry. If I find an Indian dish that doesn't call for curry, I'll try it. 

What I Will Absolutely Not Do

• Use cilantro. Soapy pennies. 'Nuff said.
• Cook any recipe by Rachael Ray or Sandra Lee. I know they're hugely popular and many people love them. I just don't have a lot of respect for what they do.
• Pretend I have any experience, expertise or career ambitions in the food industry. I am the definition of amateur. I just like food and want to learn about it.