Introduction

Introduction

For the past several years I have resided in gastronomically-challenged south central Pennsylvania, where many of the lifelong local residents don’t know an artichoke from an avocado. Although I have spent most of my life in and around major metropolitan areas, I never truly appreciated the wealth of food riches those cosmopolitan locales offered, until recently.

Currently stranded in this culinary void, I find myself actively seeking food adventures to appease my appetite for epicurean excitement. Surprisingly, I often find them here. And when I don’t, I create adventures in my own kitchen or hit the road to seek them elsewhere.

Although I’m no stranger to the Internet (I’ve been online since the very beginning), it wasn’t until six months ago that the word “blog” entered my consciousness. I had been noticing that my Google searches often returned sites that were one very long scrollable page, with my requested relevant content buried deeply within it. I found myself quite annoyed as I paged down and paged down trying to find the words that made the search engine think this page was something of interest to me. These sites always had the word “blog” somewhere in their URL or title. I became so frustrated by this that I would no longer click on any sites Google returned if it looked like one of these funny blog things.

One day at work I finally asked someone, “what is this blog stuff I keep seeing”? He explained it stood for “web log” and was a way people could publish their thoughts, ideas, and experiences to share with others. I wondered why anyone would want to read the thoughts, ideas, and experiences of total strangers, especially after seeing the inane nonsense on some of them.

Not too much later I was doing some online research for an upcoming trip to Paris, specifically searching for must-try foods, special restaurants, and whatever other epicurean treasures Paris would offer me. I happened upon several food blogs and found myself fascinated. The authors were as obsessed with food, cooking, and eating as I was. They were articulate and enthusiastic and I couldn’t stop reading! I immediately became a fan and regular reader of several of them.

I was awed and inspired by these new age culinary commentators and felt compelled to express my food fanaticism in the same way. But how could I? These eloquent chroniclers of food adventures lived in exciting culinary cities like New York, Paris and Seattle. I currently live in a gastronomically unsophisticated area of central Pennsylvania. What could I write about? What experiences could I possibly share?

Living here the past few years I’ve learned I have to work harder to find my food adventures but I also discovered that I can find them here, or anywhere for that matter. I only have to open my eyes, my mind, and my mouth. The more I thought about it, the more I realized, yes, I had plenty of blogworthy food experiences, stories, and recipes. I made a list of potential topics and began to write. The next thing I knew I had a dozen posts.

So here I am, with a blog. I have discovered that I enjoy this very much and that I am practically driven to do it. I wonder if anyone will be driven to read it.

Tags: Food, Cooking, Kitchen