Allow Me To Introduce Myself

Welcome to my blog. My name is Andrew and over the years I’ve discovered that I like to cook. This came as a surprise to me as Home Ec was not one of my favorite classes in elementary school, and I had never thought about food as anything other than something to eat when I’m hungry. Cooking only became something worth knowing about when I moved out of my parent’s house, and I realized that I couldn’t order take-out or run back home for a meal every time my stomach growled. While I don’t possess the culinary skills of a Michelin Star chef, I’m proud to say that I can do more than open a can of soup, and whip up a grilled cheese sandwich as I did in my mid-twenties. Today I can impress my wife and my friends with the meals I can cook, and I hope to pass on my love of cooking to our young son when he gets older. Not bad for someone who thought following a simple recipe just wasn’t worth the effort.

In between visits to the Ottawa Food and Wine Convention and watching my favorite celebrity chefs on TV, I keep hearing the term “foodie” thrown about. Thinking it was just another buzzword, I was surprised to learn that the word has been around since the early 80s, and was coined by Paul Levy and Ann Barr, who used it in the title of their book The Official Foodie Handbook.1 A foodie is someone who loves to learn about food for consumption, study, preparation, and news. They are interested in food fads, food distribution, cooking classes, culinary tourism, restaurant management, knowing about the behind the scenes aspects of the food industry, and learning about the science behind food; they like going to wineries and breweries for wine and beer sampling, and they follow restaurant openings and closings. This description fits me, as I enjoy flipping through cookbooks, and I love watching shows like “Iron Chef” and “Top Chef”, and I’m not sophisticated enough to call myself a gourmet. I’ve been wanting to write a blog for some time now, and I hope I can pass on some of the insights about cooking, restaurants, and food I’ve learned over the years to others. I plan to post something whenever I have a spare moment, so if you liked what you’ve read so far, check back now and then to see what I have to say. Until then, bon appétit!

 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodie