About
You know in school when you have to write an “about me” paper as one of the first essays that you had to write in English class? Well I hated those, dreaded those because you had to come up with enough things about yourself to make yourself seem interesting. When it came to hobbies, mine always seemed be that I liked to read books, watch TV, and hang out with friends which seems very hard to write a whole one page essay around. Well, as I have grown older, I would still not like to write a whole one page essay “about me” but I seem to be writing that now.
However, one of my hobbies that I have discovered in the last few years and have become very passionate about is food and cooking. I grew up in a family of great cooks, my mom being one of them, and I never seemed to find any interest in her knowledge or talent of cooking. After graduating college, I started cooking my own meals more out of necessity than out of passion. What I found through this was a love of cooking and creating that I never knew existed. Now, I am constantly asking the great cooks of my family for the cherished favorite recipes that we all love.
I cook very differently than my mother and many others in my family though. I love nothing more than to spend a Saturday morning with a smoothie, my boyfriend, and my dog exploring one of many farmers’ markets here in the Central Florida area where I live. Looking at the vegetables on supply that week gets my gear turning in my mind on what meals I could possibly create in the coming week. While I do have some tried and true recipes in my repertoire, I have many meals that rarely come out the same. My philosophy is “once you know how certain flavors work together, you can make so many variations of the same meal.” It’s fantastic. Usually if I’m looking at a recipe, I never do it exactly as stated (except maybe if I’m baking). I use it as a starting point to launch myself into whatever I am going to make. Lucky for me too, I have a willing participate for my experimental dishes, if it doesn’t turn out quite right the first time, I can convince my boyfriend to try it one more time after I have tweaked it. He will try anything once, except maybe beans or olives (but I am still working on those).
After about a year or so of talking about creating a food blog as another outlet to my “food porn” obsession as my boyfriend puts it, I have finally got off my butt and am putting this plan into action. So here I have created Explore. Cook. Eat. because I want to show people how it can be easy to cook once you know the basics of flavors and some simple techniques. It doesn’t take a professional chef to create a dish that your friends and family will be raving about, and it doesn’t take tons of gourmet items or fancy tools to make something taste good. It just takes a little effort, some exploration, and an attitude to not give up if something doesn’t turn out right the first time.
So I will write to you about my triumphs in the kitchen and my failures too, so maybe you’ll take a chance on that new ingredient one day that you never have used before. And one day I hope my 7th grade English teacher reads this “about me” section and sees that I may finally have something to write about.
Peace, love, and applesauce,
-Diana
