Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The Beginnings

If my life were a book, the chapters would all be named after all of the phase I went through of cooking one ingredient obsessively. This blog is named for my perhaps most famous (or infamous) long lasting phase of using balsamic vinegar in just about every meal. It is still one of my favorite flavors in this world.

My sister is the kind of person who was born knowing exactly who she is. When she was three she wanted to be a fashion designer. What does she do now? She's a fashion designer. In this area I may be the polar opposite of my sister. I spent most of my life with a big fat question mark hanging over my head like a dagger. I tried several careers - each of which has made me mostly happy, but never enough to satisfy me for long once the learning curve was over. At one point, during my freshman year of college, I was a triple major. The only thing you can really say about someone who is an organic chemistry / philosophy / art triple-major is that they clearly don't know anything about what they want to do with their life.

The one thing that has always made me happy is cooking. Oddly even eating hasn't consistently done it for me, but cooking (ravaging kitchen experiments is almost more accurate)... cooking has always been my comfort zone. I take the world one piece at a time and explore it to it's limits. My pork phase lasted at least two years, until it was cut off abruptly by my older brother's remarks about whether I had the ability to cook anything else (I immediately went into a 9 month salmon phase - but that's another story). This pattern I have continued and I see no stop to it in sight. I am never satisfied to make something once. I need to make it better the next time. Since my friends and family can only handle but so much of my indulgences - here I am. Trying to share them with you. I hope they inspire you to try something new.