Tuesday, December 21, 2004

The Beginning

For a while, I've been thinking about starting a blog. But the things I might write about seemed trite and uninteresting. And then there's that whole idea of strangers reading about my personal life and such. But there is one aspect of my life that I'm quite excited about sharing. I've gotten into home cooking and I've gotten pretty good at it (Okay, my husband is a great cook as well - I can't take all the credit). So I thought I'd share my plan and experiences with the Net at large.

Let me tell you a bit about my feelings about food. If it was only about nourishment and getting rid of hunger pains, I'd probably eat Ramen, Kraft Mac and Cheese and oatmeal. In fact, when I eat by myself, that's usually what I eat. I see food as an experience to be shared with others. I love going out to restaurants or having people over. I'm from the South where feeding people could be considered both an Olympic sport and a mission from God. I love being around people enjoying food and I enjoy food more when I'm around people.

When I got out of college, my culinary skills mainly consisted of pasta with any kind of sauce on it, as long as the sauce came of a jar. Oh my bank account emptied quickly as I worked my way through the many fabulous restaurants in DC. When I moved out to San Francisco, my now-husband and I each went up a size as we ate out ALL the time. He learned very quickly to not try and finish my plate as well. When we moved to Davis so I could attend law school, we started eating in more to save money. Unfortunately, we got stuck in a cooking rut. Here was the basic week: Monday - pot pies, Tuesday - spaghetti, Wednesday - chili, Thursday - chicken Caesar salad, Friday - enchiladas. We had a few other meals in the rotation but we definitely had a pattern. We probably ate out more than we should because neither one of us could handle the idea of one of "those" meals again.

During my last set of finals, Zeb went on a trip with his parents. He knew that left to my own devices, I would eat crap (see above for details). So he had me sit down with a few cookbooks and plan out a menu and grocery list. Here's the crazy thing - it worked so well, that I decided to do the same thing for the entire time I was studying for the Bar. Zeb and I sat down with all of our cookbooks and pulled out all of the recipes that sounded good. I put them in a spreadsheet and we were set. During one of the most stressful times in my life, we didn't have to worry about what we were going to eat. The monotony wasn't going to set in. We ate better that summer then we ever had before. And probably saved money too since we weren't going out!

After the summer, we decided that the system worked so well, that we should just keep it going. I'm working now so we go out to eat more then we did during the summer but we still having great meals at home. I want to share my experience doing this. Maybe no one will care but I need some sort of outlet to share my excitement because my friends think I'm nuts.