Why I don't like to review restaurants....and other ramblings about my childhood.

I love food.  I love to eat. I love restaurants.  Eating out and trying new places is my fav thing to do.  I have recommendations for days on where to go for a mellow evening, where to go when the fam is in town, where to go to impress someone, where to go to get the best pasta dish you have ever had, where to get caribbean food,  places that are open late, good for groups, brunch, happy hour........etc. You get the point. The reason why I don't really blog about restaurants is because I love food so much.
It's simply too hard for me to sit there when a beautiful dish arrives and not dig in.  I don't want to have to arrange it on the table so it gets the best light for a picture.   I don't want to have to take notes when I eat. And frankly, I don't want to be that person at the table doing all that shit.  I want to EAT!   I want to taste, savor, talk, drink....not have to think about what sentence I will write for the Papardelle with braised rabbit ragu. I feel like that takes you out of the moment, takes you out of the experience.  And the only moment I want to be in, is the one eating (hopefully) amazing food.  I guess that's why I was so adverse to "blogging" in the first place.  But I guess, your blog is what you make of it.  No one said I had to review places. I have and will occasionally "review" a spot, usually only if it's so amazing I want to tell everyone about it. But who cares about my opinion?  My 8 followers?
I guess my blog has become somewhat of a moment in my brain; what I like at the moment.  What I'm thinking about......what I'm doing, liking etc. It's a sort of documentation for me.
Obviously, I cook a lot.  I used to know nothing about cooking.  I don't remember ever really even wanting to know how until I moved to England for college.  We had a communal kitchen and I had to learn or else get fat eating the fish and chips/bangers and mash at the pub on campus.  My friend Richard worked at an Italian restaurant in Baltimore and he taught me the basics of pasta in our kitchen in Devon.  Pasta with pesto, pasta with white wine sauce, pasta with a red sauce, a pink sauce....layering the flavors with olive oil and garlic and shallots........ok so I STILL got fat ;) But at least I learned something.  I learned that I liked cooking.  I learned that I wanted to learn more.
I always thought as a child that I was a picky eater.  I remember being around 5 and going to other kids McDonald's birthday parties.  All the other kids loved McDonald's and were so excited to be eating that food.  I however, thought it was gross.  They loved the nuggets and I thought they were grissly and inedible.  The cheeseburgers that every kid loves, I thought tasted like cat food.  My mom would beg me to eat something and I would turn up my nose and just have a couple fries and an apple pie. I was picky about my fast food!  What kid doesn't like fast food? My fast food of choice was Wendy's.  It was pretty much the only fast food I found acceptable. The burgers were on a decent bun (not that puny, spongelike thing at mcd's) didn't have the thinness of a communion cracker  (again, like the patty at that other place) and actually tasted like meat.   I did however, LOVE a steak.  I take after my Dad, who is also a meat man. My grandfather indulged me at a young age and made sure I knew that filet was the most tender cut and therefore the best.   I was 9 years old ordering filet mignon and sipping my grandfather's wine.  I also loved stuffed mushrooms with crab.  Out to dinner with my family consisted of my sisters and cousins ordering chicken fingers off of the kids menu and I had an appetizer of stuffed mushrooms with a steak.  Or the scallops.  Or the chicken marsala.  I was about 10. A few years later, I remember asking my mom if we could leave a Mexican restaurant before we even ordered because the tortilla chips were from a bag, not made in the restaurant.  I realized at an early age, if a Mexican place couldn't get their tortilla chips right, then the rest of the meal was gonna suck. I mean, how hard was it to make your own tortilla chips?  The ones from a bag were just insulting.
My poor mother had to deal with me when making my school lunches.  I wouldn't eat peanut butter and jelly.  Or tunafish. I thought it was disgusting.  I had to have a roast beef and lettuce sandwich (no mayo, EVER, ick) , a cheesesteak (very specific bread, cheese and sauteed mushrooms) , or fried chicken from Royal Farms (but it had to have a very specific type of breading on the chicken).  I wasn't a banana and a PB n J sack lunch kinda girl.  I knew what I liked and I wanted it to actually taste good. My dad got so mad once when on a Sunday after a day at my grandparents my mom said we had to stop at the store on the way home.  The sole reason was for my roast beef for my school lunch.  When he realized this stop was just to accommodate me and my taste buds, he got mad and actually threw my precious deli cut, roast beast out the window of the moving car.  Why did I get a special lunch? Why couldn't I eat what my sisters ate?
Anyway......all of this leads me to now.  I realized recently that as I child, I wasn't necessarily picky, I just had an advanced palate for my age.  I liked the taste of "grown up" food.  I could tell the difference (somewhat) between good food and the crap Mickey D's was trying to pawn off as food to kids.  I didn't buy it.  I didn't think that just because I was a kid, I should eat chicken fingers and fries for every meal when out to dinner.  I didn't want the boring bowl of kid sized spaghetti with red sauce, I wanted the veal scallopini.  I didn't eat just to eat because I had to, even then I was eating for pleasure. It all makes sense now.  I feel like I should apologize to my parents or something, apologize to my boyfriend for wanting to go to a new restaurant 2-3 times a week, apologize to my friends when I take them on a wild goose chase downtown because I heard there was the best taco truck ever somewhere in Little Tokyo.

My parents and niece, Emme

My blog is mainly about the adventure of food and travel.  The adventure of trying to make something you've never made before and it tasting good. The adventure of traveling to a place you have never been. That feeling of having no idea what is around the corner. The adventure of showing other people how damn easy it is to make something that really tastes good.
There's something so fulfilling in that.  I love feeding people.  I love cooking.  I love travel. And....... I like blogging about it.