Here I go!

Food…..it nourishes us, satiates us, and brings us together.  So where to begin a food blog??? I don’t have a lot of familiarity with blogs (I am the faithful follower of one blog….) but I do have a lot of familiarity with food (as do most of us). With foodnetwork shows and celebrity chefs abounding these days, culinary exploits have become a raging trend, hobby, pastime, and obsession!!! (while providing nourishment when we need it, how great is that??!!) I know that for me, preparing a great meal for friends or family, or just myself is a source of great satisfaction, and I know I’m not alone. Dining out in great restaurants or at a friend’s house are also some of  my favourite sources of entertainment!! The great thing about a food blog (since I’ve given it a lot of thought already) is that there is SO MUCH to write about….food I have made, recipes I want to try, recipes I want to invent, food other people have made, dining out, terrible food, travel food stories, and memories of food, and I could go on and on….

So, where did the beginnings of a foodie begin? Well, I am lucky enough to have a mother who is a good cook, despite being English (no offense, some of the best food I have ever eaten has been made by English cooks, no one can make Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding any better) but they are not quite as well known for their cuisine as say, the French or the Italian, or the Asian, or Indian…well, you get my drift.  I’ll dish out more (haha, great pun, hmmm??) on my childhood food memories another time, but suffice it to say that my mother always SEASONED her food well, and this is so important, and for me this is especially so where meat is concerned, as well as salting the water for rice and pasta (otherwise you might as well eat glue, ugh). My mother used and still uses four basic seasonings on her meat: salt and pepper, garlic powder, and seasoned salt. (Now she uses less salt actually, but did you know…. Sea salt has half the sodium of regular table salt??? If you’re a saltoholic like me, it also tastes better, it’s not as harsh, and now you don’t have to use “No Salt” or whatever it is that has half the sodium of regular salt but tastes like sulfuric acid or something else chemical and disgusting since I have never actually tasted sulfuric acid….I’ll have a blog on salt one day!)

Okay, rambling on way more than I thought I would, so let me continue. (If you’re thinking “where was she?”, so am I). I have to say that while I liked helping my mother cook, my main interest was in baking and I baked A LOT!! It was a pretty exciting day when I was allowed to turn on the oven by myself and be responsible enough to do everything on my own. (I am fortunate to have a daughter who is as interested in baking and cooking…while the other is perfectly happy to have food made for her, so I’ll have to post some of our “lesson” adventures some time too).  Eventually, somewhere in teenage years, and especially in university years, that passion turned to cooking, where there is so much more freedom, and I developed an ability to just fling together some pretty amazing-tasting food, which took a while, but I'm still learning all the time. I think keeping things simple is pretty important, but I love complicated dishes too.


Anyway….(I’m scaring some of you off aren’t I?? Assuming there are any of you).... So my interest in cooking began in childhood, with a mother who made (mostly) good food, (some horror stories I’ll share with you later). I loved to mostly bake, and I had my very first dinner party when I was about sixteen.


My younger brother, Chris, is also a pretty decent cook, and my older brother Martin was once upon a time a chef-in-the-making until life got in the way. He has spent most of his working life in one sort of kitchen or another. He just got a job at what I, among many, consider the best restaurant in Midland, The Explorer's Cafe. I thought of naming this blog "The Good Home Cook", because back when he was apprenticing for his chef papers, Martin told me that I was "a good home cook". I assumed that I wasn't of HIS calibre, the restaurant chef, but passable, but I have since decided that this is a very great assessment of my skills, because really, I would not want to work as a restaurant chef. I would rather be eating at a restaurant than working in one, and one thing I can confidently say about myself, if nothing else, is that I AM a good cook, and home is where I want to be cooking. :)