The First Bite (sorry, I couldn't help it)

A blog. About food. A novel idea, right?

What I'm really doing here is combining two things I love to do: cook and write. I want to become better at both of these activities. So, I've come here with a plan to blog about the things I cook in my kitchen at home. Another plan of mine is to attend culinary school in the coming fall; I've previously attended college for creative writing, although I figured out early on that four-year institutions were not my cup of tea. I do look forward to getting back into the learning game, though - and I look forward to finally receiving that degree I've always wanted. Maybe when I'm finished I'll frame it and hang it in my kitchen.

I didn't always have this passion for cooking. I did always have a passion for food, however - good, delicious food has always been my biggest vice. My first recollection of really loving food was when I was about seven or eight - my memory is bad, just warning you - and there was this Mexican restaurant in Greenwood called Casa Miguel's. My parents and I went there all the time. Now my parents tell me that it's a pizza place that serves seriously sub-par slices and has no ambiance whatsoever. When it was still Casa Miguel's, we went every year on my birthday for the 'big sombrero': there was a giant sombrero (I think it was turquoise velvet) that they plopped on your head, sang you Happy Birthday in spanish, and gave you this awesome snickerdoodle-vanilla ice cream dessert bowl.

But I digress. The food experience I had at Casa Miguel's was the 'Chimichihuahua': basically, a smaller version of a chimichanga, served with sour cream and salsa, refried black beans, and some very delicious (and authentically not-too-spicy) spanish rice. A chimichanga is basically a deep-fried burrito - a flour tortilla filled with shredded or ground meat, beans, cheese, or rice. The Chimichihuahua only had shredded beef and cheese, but I loved it. It's not hard to love fried things; but sitting next to my father who rarely eats anything spicy and wolfing down this nice little package of spicy beef and cheese was a revelation. Granted, after that, Mexican and Chinese were the only kinds of foreign foods that I would eat for a long time; I have my fiance to truly thank for opening up my culinary world.

After coming to love food so much at such a young age, it seems strange to me that the love of cooking didn't arrive until relatively recently. I've always been able to put together a recipe with no problem, but I didn't start loving it until I was making a dish called Chicken Milano for dinner about a year ago. I'd made it before; it's actually the first meal that my fiance and I cooked together. But this time around, I found it easy, and I found myself really enjoying the cooking process, and I finally discovered that I was really good at it! Again, a revelation.

With this blog, I will be bringing in the recipes that I cook at home, the changes that I make to them, and of course, the results. I'll probably be giving myself a letter grade for every recipe, based on what I think, along with my fiance's opinion. That's the main premise; considering how much I tend to ramble, other topics will be covered, I'm sure. For anybody who ends up reading this, I welcome questions, comments, recipe recommendations and links, anecdotes of your own - whatever you feel like saying, really.

Now I've got to jet, or I'll be late for work.