Friday, July 20, 2007

Introduction

To get things started, let's be clear. This blog isn't about sex. Sex might come up - it always does - but the main focus of this blog is food, drink, conversation, and other happy fulfillments of the five senses.

Now that's out of the way, let me introduce myself. I'm a chef in Portland, Oregon. I spend five nights a week cooking dinner for a small clientele of generally happy customers at a postage-stamp sized restaurant in the suburbs. I spend almost all the rest of my time on those five days trying to think of ways to make those few people even happier, so that they'll tell their friends about their dinner and I'll have more people to make happy. On days six and seven I try not to think about the restaurant at all, and just try to make myself happy. Of course, this inevitably leads to cooking, which leads me back to the restaurant, but, Hey!, I have my job for a reason.

I wasn't always a chef. I spent my twenties in a misguided quest to practice law. Many years, applications, moves, tests, exams, briefs, and court appearances later I found myself about to turn thirty, practicing law in Los Angeles at a small firm where no one, including myself, noticed that I had no passion for my work. Well, almost no one. No one but my assistant, Dusty, but seeing as this blog isn't about sex, we won't be discussing him right now.

Women freak out about turning thirty. I'm not going to deny it. Clocks tick, skin deflates and begins to wrinkle, your ex boyfriends start dating women who are the age you were when they weren't your ex boyfriend. I definitely freaked out. I was in Los Angeles, the land of eternal youth. I wasn't thin. I wasn't prepared for surgical tampering. And I was surrounded by a city full of people who thought the point of going out to dinner was to be seen while not actually eating.

So I left. I quit my job, gave notice on my beautiful, spacious, centrally located apartment, stuffed everything into my car and left. I figured Portland was the only city left on the West Coast where one could afford to live while making no money. So I came here and I got a job in which I sliced a lot of onions. Then I got fired, because onion slicing, while good for the knife skills, doesn’t prepare you at all to cook dinner. Then I picked myself up and kept doing it – although, in the meantime I still got my license to practice law in Oregon, just in case, y’know?

Now I cook. And I love to cook. And I think cooking is easy, and sexy, and fun. Cooking seduces women. Cooking impresses your relatives. Cooking gives people one of the few excuses left these days to sit still and practice the art of conversation. Cooking and eating indulge one of the senses, taste, while titillating all of the others. Cooking, eating and drinking are sensual experiences that are easy to come by and, by sheer luck, need to happen every day. And I'm all about it. How food tastes, how it feels in your mouth, how it tempts you with smell, how it teases you with color, how you feel afterwards. I dig it, and I think there's no reason you shouldn't or can't love food as much as I do (or, at least, just a little bit), so why not share?

That's why I'm here. There will be stories. There will be recipes, but they won't have precise measurements, because precision makes me and you tense, and is completely irrelevant unless you're some nuevo Spanish chef who wants to make sea urchin foam. And you're not, are you? Most of all, there will just be a lot of food.

Welcome.