I love to create foods of all varieties and am largely self-taught, though my mother played a big role in my interest in cooking. She is always the go to person when anyone needs a great recipe.  Her holiday dinners were always the best (isn’t everyone’s mother the best cook in the world?). She taught me cooking basics at a very early age. I could make scrambled eggs and grilled cheese when I was in kindergarten. Though she was an amazing cook, she was not an everyday cook. She was, well is, a career woman. Meals in our home were usually a free for all. Though we definitely had our share of frozen dinners, this lifestyle also allowed me to develop basic cooking skills naturally as I grew up. Throughout my early twenties my interest in cooking developed beyond necessity and I have acquired a real interest in food as a subject. The process of creating food is a sort of science and an art which I have found to be most satisfying to learn.

I tend to gravitate towards a sort of nitty-gritty approach to food preparation.  You can call it “from scratch” cooking if you like, though I’m not sure if that is really the point for me. Basically, if I can do it, I prefer to do it. I do not mind putting a lot of time and hard work into making food, and will choose to do so if I can get a better (or the same) result than if I had used a short cut. For example, making a tuna sandwich? Easy! Get a can of tuna, a jar of mayo, a loaf of bread, some onions and celery, a bit of pepper, and voila! Right? Sure! There is nothing wrong with that! But there is also nothing interesting or special about that. For me something as simple as a tuna sandwich can require planning up to a full day ahead of time. Why use canned tuna when you can get a more tender and flavourful tuna salad by searing a fresh tuna steak, and flake it up yourself? Why use a jar of Hellman’s or Kraft mayo filled with preservatives and secret ingredients when you can make your own mayonnaise with fresh eggs and the oil and seasonings of your choice? Why buy a loaf of what can loosely be called “bread” when you can watch a ball of dough that you have created with your own hands grow and develop into a thing of beauty that will fill your entire house with an intoxicating aroma that makes your home feel like home? Of course other details are important to keep in mind as well. Be sure to us fresh ground pepper for full flavor! So, as I ask, why not do these things? The reason is typically time availability and/or patience. A lot of people, sadly yet understandably, do not have time to put this kind of love into their food, and others do not care to. For many, food preparation is a chore which must be done as quickly as possible. This blog is not for these people. I will rarely (I won’t say “never”, though this might turn out to be the more appropriate word) post time saving recipes. This is simply not my style.

I intend to use this blog as my personal online cookbook so that I can organize my recipes and techniques for myself while, at the same time, share them with anyone who cares to know how to do the things that I do. So, what can you, dear reader, expect to find here? I will try to provide highly detailed recipes that are easy to follow with pictures (and maybe videos, someday) to show each step of the process in most recipes. As I said everything here will be done my way, which means that, at times I will be doing things in the accepted conventional way, because that is the method that I find works best for me, and other times my methods will be novel and maybe even *gasp* “wrong”! The horror! Everything that I post will be tried and true. I will not post a recipe that I am unsure of. While I am, as I explained, a bit of a purist when it comes to food preparation, I will often try to include suggestions of short cuts that can be used, though do not mistake this for a promise for fast recipes. Again, those aren’t my thing. Sometimes I may even use a short cut in a recipe and I may mention a more detailed or more “from scratch” method that can be used.  How “from scratch” will my recipes be? Well I have yet to mill my own wheat, let alone grow it. Someday, perhaps, someday… but until then, basically as elemental as I can be in my cooking while being realistic, I will be.  I have no formal training. I am a geek when it comes to cooking, hence the name of my blog. I experiment, research, and acquire knowledge from those will the skills that I desire to learn. As well as share what I have learned I would adore advice, tips, variations of methods and recipes etc. from people who visit my blog. While I want to share what I have learned, I also want to continue to learn, so please comment and don’t be afraid to share your ideas! I am very open to critiques and welcome them warmly! Just doesn’t be an asshole. Seriously, there is just no reason. Make cookies, not war!