Outlet

I need to write more.

It's the kind of thing I forget to do almost always, or get really drunk and swear I'm going to do RIGHT NOW with all these GREAT IDEAS! Like taking a yoga class, or learning German, or organizing the garage. But faced with an inevitability - like high blood pressure, or a relocation to Frankfurt, or an impending visit from the Hoarders crew - I know I truly have to commit to a change. I've just been accepted into an intensive MFA program in creative nonfiction, so unless I want to flush $20,000 a year down the drain, I'd better get typing.

When trying to decide what exactly I was going to formulate this daily practice-run blog around, I knew it had to be something that a. I loved and b. was a topic with enough angles and takes to generate daily(ish) material for a good couple years. In my world, that qualifies as:

1. Work
I have a job. I know very well that, in this economic clusterfuck, that is a great blessing. I remain cognizant of this fact. However, writing about it would feed into a vicious circle of frustration, suffocation and self-destruction that I don't feel like spiraling down. So let's leave it in the background.

2. My relationship
I am married to this guy.

There we are! We've been together almost 5 years, married for almost 1.5 years. We enjoy snuggling on the couch and watching Dexter, shopping for garden furniture and doing Costco shopping on the weekends. We make each other laugh, listen to each other bitch, and work together to achieve mutual goals. Although we have a great relationship, we lack the precarious drama and unpredictability that would make unusually captivating.
Happy but boring. Oh well.

3. The cats

Oooh. This a tempting one. The possibilities for cat wedding pics, fan fiction and LOL captions stretch out before me in a self-indulgent sea. It looks like a good idea, until I hit PUBLISH and the 120 people on my Facebook page all of a sudden know that I have a cat blog. I feel the classification of "friends" may fall substantially after this.

This leaves:

4. FOOD.






Food I eat. Food I make. Food I see. Food I buy. Food I crave. Food I grow. Food I can. Food I can't.

Food is my fashion, food is my canvas, food is my heart and history and voice when every other form of expression fails. I love being around it, reading about it, and of course, writing about it. I know a food blog isn't exactly a new concept. It's about as fresh as lutefisk, and as overused as chipotle. But *I* haven't ever had a food blog (a food column, yes! but that's a plug for another day). So until I do, it hasn't all been done.

Here I will collect the musings that waft from my kitchen, my eden. Like anything made with love, it only lives when you share.

Fair warning: there still will probably be copious inclusion of cats.