Oink oink!

Hello there in blogland!

After losing my entire collection of 3"x5" recipe cards half a dozen times and nearing capacity on my foodnetwork.com "Saved Recipes" page, I figured it was time to start a food blog, if only to have a quasi-permanent repository to help me remember what I cook and consume.

I'm not a chef and the closest I've come to working in the food service industry was as a "Concessions Attendant" at a mom'n'pop movie theatre while I was in high school. My "recipes," therefore, are going to be pretty informal, prose descriptions with a few notes to jog my memory when I try to recreate a dish at a later date. As I do occasionally pretend I've got presentation-chops, I'll post pictures of the food when I can, but I usually inhale the food before I remember to snap a camera-phone photo.

While tonight's dinner (truffle essence used 5 ways) was the one that inspired me to finally start the blog, I feel like I'm already behind schedule and I'll have to record some notes on a few of last week's meals before I can start with a clean slate/plate...and speaking of cleaning plates: that's a task usually performed by K, my dining (and business and life) partner.

Most of the restaurants I write about will be in the New York-area, though I'll probably kick these "reviews" off with a summary of some of the great places I patronized on a recent trip to Paris.

Finally, I'm sure I'll inevitably post on the various chefs and programs on the Food Network. I watch about 3 hours of the channel daily, finding few things more comforting than a living room siesta accompanied by the hum of one of my favorite chef's slicing-and-dicing.

Okay. Time to sort through the apocalyptic nightmare that is my (frustratingly shallow) kitchen sink after a busy evening of cooking...