I love to feed people. I love entertaining, and I love making my family look up, wide-eyed, and ask what they’re eating. I’ve considered a career in food off and on over the years, but most careers in food limit creativity. We all see the wildly creative celebrity chef on Food TV, but in the real world catering or running a restaurant requires a reliable, reproducible menu. How boring…
What I really love is a challenge. As a college student I lived in a co-op and had a choice between cleaning restrooms and cooking for 40 people. How hard could it be? In the same pre-internet era I made vegan cheesecake to sell at community fundraisers, learned to bake bread from freshly milled wheat when we accidentally bought wheat berries, and spent my spare time studying urban agriculture. Later I made multi-tier wedding cakes, was a vegetarian activist for nearly a decade, and put on dinners for 200 people in my spare time.
I’m not a dogmatic cook. I tend to avoid white sugar, except when I’m making meringues or cinnamon rolls or jelly. I prefer to use whole grain flours, but bagels and pizza crust and ciabatta demand high-gluten white flour. I love to work with fresh organic vegetables and locally raised meats. I believe that vegetables raised in healthy soil have better nutrition than vegetables raised in depleted soil. How could they not? The idea that micronutrients play no role in health seems unscientific to me.
As I get older, it seems that more and more of the challenges I solve while cooking have to do with various dietary restrictions. For myself, I’ve developed a sensitivity to walnuts, eggplant, and four times my face has gone numb after eating bivalves. You probably won’t find recipes for those items here. I’m happiest finding solutions to cooking puzzles. How can a friend with a sweet tooth who has been prescribed a low-carb diet feel nurtured? Can I create a three-tier gluten-free wedding cake that won’t collapse and is delicious?
I do NOT believe that any particular illness is caused or cured by any particular diet, or that there is one perfect diet for everyone. In my own life, I have tried many organizing principles for food, and only one appeals consistently: eat a variety of whole foods, and try not to overdo it. Fads come and go, but real food has nourished humans for as long as we’ve existed. Surely there’s some wisdom there?
Whether you’re going through a “rainy day” in your life, or simply looking for cooking inspiration, I hope you’ll find something you love. There’s truly something for everyone here, and the only consistent ingredient is love.