An introduction

So it's taken me quite some time to put this blog to use, but now I feel it'll be even better than I imagined. I initially planned to use this just for my baking, but since moving to Seattle, I've found myself bursting with culinary creativity of all sorts! With so many fresh ingredients available, great things have begun to happen in the kitchen...

It's as if me moving unleashed a flurry of creativity. I've always been more committed to baking, but over the years as I've begun to cook more and more for myself and others I've begun to move towards adopting the hat of cook in addition to baker.  Growing up my mom did the cooking during the week, while weekends were all my dad.  My mom cooked well enough but it was never something she enjoyed and it showed in her food. My parents were adamant about having a sit down family dinner each night. It's nothing I regret, I think it helped me later as far as communicating with others and my maturity. Another issue with my mom's cooking was that she didn't cook with strong spices of any sort; no garlic, peppers, onion, very little spice, since she couldn't tolerate those things herself.  As I got older and started receiving cooking magazines I began to realize some of the flavors I was missing in my day to day life.  Once I got to college I began adding some of these "forbidden" flavors to my food.  I stuck to pretty familiar dishes though and it wasn't until I moved out of the dorms and grew a garden that I really started to explore new flavors and coming up with my own recipes.  I hosted a few dinner parties; one memorable one the murder mystery dinner party I threw for my 20th birthday.  This past November was the first Thanksgiving dinner that I made.  It was a culinary success, in fact I think I may have overdone myself a bit. The turkey was phenomenal, both glazed yams and garlic mashed potatoes, pear stuffing, golden corn with mint, green beans, and two kinds of dinner rolls.  Then dessert was a selection of pumpkin, apple or pecan pie, and pumpkin bread.  There was also the Christmas dessert selection I whipped together for Christmas 2008, when 2 days before Christmas my mom realized she hadn't asked anyone to bring dessert for our 25 person Christmas dinner.  I got busy and whipped up various cookies, cakes, pies, breads...needless to say it was another success. Now that I'm in Seattle I've been a lot more adventurous in the kitchen.  Just the other night I got in a mood to cook and ended up staying up til 5:30am making mac n' cheese tarts, which turned out absolutely delicious!