Relax. It’s just a Food Blog…
About Me
I’m no one. Just some Gen X burnout who cooks and writes on the internet. There’s a million of me, and still only one. Nothing matters more than the One. Any given “One.” I’m not special, but I am unique. Just like you.
I’m a lot of different things integrated into one big steaming pile of me: cook, writer, anarchist, natural philosopher, rational hedonist, social heretic, freelance malcontent, grandiose bloviator.
Despite being classically trained in the culinary dark arts (Le Cordon Bleu), I spent most of my life in engineering and manufacturing. I walked away from that a couple years back when I realized my self-respect was worth more than my borrowed ambition.
These days I’m semi-retired. Yes, I still have a day job, but that’s all it is — a way to pay the bills and keep cooking. That’s what matters. The rest of my life is mine to dispose of as I see fit.
About My Food
My food is about exploration. I like to see what it can do, how far it can go, and what it says when I stop trying to control it. What I look for when I’m developing something new is sensation and satisfaction.
When I’m preparing a classical recipe, I focus on technique above all. Once you’ve learned to wing it, there’s a strange discipline in reining that in and following instructions. I didn’t learn that until later in life.
As far as style goes, I’m classically trained in French technique, but I lean heavily on Northern European and Southern American flavor profiles. My work can best be described as Hobbit food — if Hobbits were a thing in the American South.
About Food and Cooking
Existence demands energy. Every living thing consumes to survive and, in time, becomes food for something else. That’s not cruelty. That’s the deal.
Food is life made edible. The denser the energy, the better it tastes — a truth written into our biology or maybe into the mind of God. Either way, the message is the same: life feeds life.
To eat is to continue. To cook is to care. We were designed to do the minimum to survive, yet we stand over fire and make things beautiful. Cooking isn’t required. It’s defiance. It’s love turned inward. It says, I am worth the effort.
Cooking for others goes beyond that. It isn’t free, and it isn’t martyrdom. Food costs money, time, and the finite hours of a life that can’t be replaced. But a gift of food is a gift of self — not a sacrifice, but a deliberate exchange of energy between lives.
Every meal says, Here is a portion of my existence, spent, to extend yours. Because I love you as I love myself.
Cooking is how I make peace with the contract. I turn life into life again. That’s the best any of us can do.
So why subscribe?
Well, it’s free, so there’s that. I mean, you can pay if you want, but you’ll get most everything as a free subscriber. I prefer the value for value models so if you do choose a paid subscription, I will assume you find value here and want to see that which dwells beyond the pay wall…
If you do decide to pay, well then you’ll get the full recipes and spiffs the free subscribers won’t.
You get to see what’s behind the paywall.
I’ll interact with you.
You get to leave comments.
You can ask questions.
You can bitch. People love that.
You can make requests.
You’ll get bloopers when I start shooting the next season of Skillet and Flask.
Archives! Archives! Archives!
Epstein didn’t kill himself.
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