a moment for existential reflection: who am i?

i won’t claim to know anything about philosophy, so i’ll stop with the big words there.

i think my obsession with chronicling everything i taste started in fifth grade, when i flirted with a “food journal,” meticulously documenting every handful of tortilla chips and bowl of cereal in an attempt to lose weight. (this may be a moment to reflect on the preponderance of eating disorders in western societies, but you know the arguments, so i won’t reiterate them here. instead, i’ll continue on my own journey of self-reflection and record-keeping).

the next landmark would be the summer after seventh grade, when i decided the veggie burgers sold at the snack shop at t street beach were good enough to justify giving up meat altogether. several informative pamphlets from p.e.t.a. later, the questions of when and where and how i would eat required more thought than just what seemed healthiest.

next comes high school, when driver’s licenses and summer jobs meant new-found freedom over where i could eat. a whole new world opened up and i began to discover “new” eating establishments (perpetual favorites: jc beans coffee shop and taco loco) and delight over the qualities that set them apart and made them special.

in college, i naturally thought my life was so fascinating that i started up a journal again, marking my adventures for posterity and being far more meticulous about updating my journal than about completing my homework.

after college, i moved to new york – first to the bronx, and now in williamsburg, brooklyn (hopefully for awhile). when we (my singular i having been pluralized by my husband) first moved here, i was unemployed. job hunting was singularly defeating, and i found comfort in the food network, which inspired my first timid experiments into cooking (aside from the occasional soups, pastas, baked goods and, of course, omelettes, i’d made in the past).

by thanksgiving, i was able to surprise us all with a fairly good repast, crowned by a delicious (so i heard) turkey (free-range, and organic, of course). i’ve continued cooking, trying to rely as much as possible on local (not as easy as it was in southern california), organic, sustainable ingredients as much as possible/convenient (i, like most of the rest of the world, suffer from laziness).

i also turned to foods as a way to acquaint myself with my new city, familiarizing myself with its gastronomical history (the big apple used to be known as the big onion) and the foods of its neighborhoods (still have to make it out to sunset park, which i hear is home to the only authentic mexican food in new york city). my explorations again motivated me to chronicling, which i undertake now, here, with this. i hope you enjoy.