Hi, friends!

It's always difficult to start the first of anything, right? The first step, the first grade, the first conversation, the first friendship, and so on. This is my first blog post, which I thought would be difficult, but somehow isn't. Maybe because I'm essentially writing to my friends (and the internet...) and I like writing to my friends.

Anyway, I guess I should explain my rationale for starting this blog, which will be primarily about my culinary highs (the feast) and lows (the foraging). I love cooking for people. Family, friends, colleagues, complete strangers in the grad student lounge. It's just the best feeling to offer a chocolate chip cookie to someone who's had a crappy day or to invite a friend over for a home-cooked meal when she's feeling homesick. I won't say that many of my friends were earned through cooking, but I will say that it's what draws many of them in at first. That and my infectious good humor . . . Hah. Yeah, it's mostly the lure of freshly baked cookies.



I cook a lot. Like, a lot a lot. It started in college when my roommate and I were underwhelmed by the dining hall options at our beloved alma mater (Hark upon the gale!) and we decided to try our hands at cooking for ourselves. We started out with a George Foreman grill, an electric hotpot, and a couple pots and pans. There were some spectacular failures, which I have completely shut out of my mind, but there were many more successes. Off the top of my head, I remember mascarpone brownies (for Stephanie), smoky eggplant dip (for Alison), peanut butter chocolate chip fudge (from Meghan's dad), fruitless desserts (for Melissa E), and tons of baked goods with nuts (for Laura) and without nuts (for Alex). :-)

After college, I entered the working world and ended up making food for some new and wonderful friends. Things like birthday cakes for coworkers, Korean food (with Sarah C), peanut butter anything (for Justin), roasted chicken with grapes (for Lenore), lemony chicken noodle soup (for Marissa), chocolate chip cookies (for Lindsey), many many meals of all varieties (with and for Jana), vegetarian fare (for Courtney), non-dairy baked goods (for Sarah S), and black bean soup (for everyone).

Now, I'm in grad school and a lot of my cooking is stress-induced. I realize that I cook when I have a problem to think through or when I have so much on my to-do list that it's too overwhelming to start anything on it. Yes, I am a champion procrastinator and cooking enables me.

So, this long first blog post (I can't edit myself!) is my way of saying that I cook in fits and starts and that I want to share what I'm cooking with my friends (and the internet...). There may be other stuff, but I'll post as often as I can, about both my marathon cooking sessions and the lean times in between, when it's just whatever I can scrape together from the odds and ends in my pantry.

Enjoy!