I suppose that if one is going to have a food blog, instead of just annoying one’s friends by constantly talking about planning to have a food blog, then one must start somewhere.  Today I start, with a simple overview of who I am, why I feel compelled to write a food blog, and what to expect on these pages in the days and weeks to come.

Who am I?

My name is Adrianne, and I am an avid home cook, although that wasn’t always destined to be the case.  I was raised in North Carolina, and my earliest education about food and cooking was a study in contrasts.  My maternal grandparents, with whom I spent a great deal of time, lived in an urban area, but they nonetheless managed to live close to the earth.  They always grew their own vegetables, consuming what they could during the growing season and canning or preserving the rest for winter.  On the opposite end of the spectrum was my mother, who was part of the first generation to which so-called “convenience food” was widely available and marketed.  She seldom cooked anything that didn’t come from a box or can, and if it hadn’t been for my grandparents I probably wouldn’t have known that food derived from the earth.  Nobody from either school of cooking ever really taught me to cook, but I spent many hours observing my grandmother while I kept her company in the kitchen.

My journey as a cook began in earnest nearly sixteen years ago, when I moved to the lovely urban village within Washington, DC called Capitol Hill.  At that point, I had three things that I had never had simultaneously before — a decent kitchen of my own; good cookbooks, most notably Mark Bittman’s original “How to Cook Everything,” which I had recently received as a gift; and easy access to a proper market.  Eastern Market not only is a wonderful source of high-quality whole foods, but also serves as the very heart of the Capitol Hill community.  Since moving to the Hill, I’ve been acquiring culinary knowledge as steadily as a series of stressful jobs would permit, primarily by studying first and then doing, and then studying and doing some more.    

Why am I doing this blog?

About a year ago, I quit a fancy legal job that, while a perfectly fine job in the abstract, was not a great fit for me in particular.  In the wake of that, I felt no compulsion to go back to work right away — maybe not ever — which left me with plenty of free time to ponder my next career move.  I quickly decided that, for once, I was going to figure out what I really wanted to do, even if it wasn’t particularly lucrative, instead of taking the easy path of falling back into the well-paying legal profession by default.  

When I was honest with myself, I discovered that, aside from petting my dogs (which really is the best thing there is to do in life),  what I most love to do is cook.   Over the years, my fascination with cooking has evolved to include raising as many herbs, and the occasional vegetable or two, as my postage-stamp-size yard will support.  Then came an obsession with locating the very highest quality ingredients reasonably available.  As a result of that endeavor, I now strongly believe that consuming local, seasonal, and sustainably and humanely raised ingredients whenever possible is the single best thing we can do not only for our personal health and well-being, but also for the health and well-being of planet Earth, our common mother and home.  I’ve also become a big fan of composting as a means to dispose of food waste and other organic waste (see point above about preserving the planet).   

In light of my current passion for all things food, I decided that what I really wanted to do with the next little bit of my life was to write a blog that would cover all the food-related topics mentioned above.  Immediately after I made that plan, the naysayer who sometimes sits on my shoulder tapped me and whispered, “You have no formal training in cooking, agriculture, or environmental science.  What makes you think you are qualified to opine on any of this?  That’s for other people, not for you.”  But a truer, more positive voice, which fortunately was louder and clearer, said, “You are just as qualified as anyone else to share your experiences.  In the end, all any of us has is our own experience, whether it’s formally acquired or not.  Yours is just as valuable as anyone else’s; if you want to share it, then by all means go ahead!”  

So, here I am.  I hope that maybe some small portion of the food-blog-reading world will see fit to read, think about, comment on, and contribute to what I post, even if (especially if?) they don’t always agree with me.  

What will this blog be all about?

You already know the general answer to that question if you’ve managed to read this far, but here’s a little more detail about what I have in mind.

• Recipes and technique.   Certainly a big portion of the blog will be devoted to sharing recipes — both my own and those of others, with credit always being given where credit is due — as well as information about cooking technique.  Not ever having been trained formally about the purported “right way” to do anything in the kitchen, one of the things that struck me almost from the beginning was that, for any given dish, there was almost always more than one way to go about it that would produce a delicious result.   I first appreciated that when reading “Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home,” by Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, in which they each explained their preferred method for cooking the same dishes, and in which Julia Child talked about how her preferred methods for particular dishes had evolved over time.  I therefore envision that the recipe and technique conversations will be geared toward questioning conventional wisdom, experimenting, and keeping an open mind.

• Ingredients and their origins.  Part of what I want to do in this space is explore what constitutes a high-quality, sustainably grown ingredient, how to procure it, and how to understand more about how it is grown.  Look for interviews with people from farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSA) programs, organic farms, and specialty shops, as well as discussions about what “sustainability” means in the first place and why it’s so important. 

• We don’t always eat at home, so I plan to explore high-quality options for dining out, including how to find out more about the origins of the ingredients restaurants use (short answer = ask ’em; more later about how one might choose to go about doing that).  Interviews with the chefs and staff of some of my long-time favorite restaurants, along with restaurant reviews, therefore can be expected.

Well, that is it for now.  Thank you, dear reader, for bearing with me this far.  I hope you will come again soon and be part of the journey that is to be Capitol Hill Cooks.