The perils of cooking

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This makes me smile every time.

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Some thoughts on dinner parties and geography

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Our recent move to Kansas City means I've discovered some wonderful new foods. It's been great, exploring the local restaurants and markets. It also means a few of the things I am accustomed to just aren't available or have become prohibitively expensive.  Moving to KC also means developing new relationships. One way to do this is by mining your connections; work is the most obvious, so last week Kevin and I hosted a dinner party for some of his work colleagues. When he first arrived at his new job he was teasingly told that the new guy needs to feed all of his new work buddies. We asked what they wanted and they suggested something from New England.  Now, although I lived in New England for over 20 years, I never really took to the local cuisine. I loved the fresh seafood that is so abundant, but most of the New England food I experienced was  either fresh, simple and seasonal (yay!) or bland, solid and designed to get you through a long, cold winter (eh). Ye...
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Ritual and preparation

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I don't know about you, but my life has been so busy lately that I've had little time to really think about the meals I've been cooking. Most are made simply and in haste. Okay, I have chicken breasts and a bottle of salsa. Great, that goes in the oven, chop up a salad and yup! dinner and leftovers for lunch. Whew! While this is tasty and generally healthy (I'm trying to not eat like an idiot) I miss the time and attention cooking can take. The step-by-step nature of it. The linear acts that lead to completion. It's a comforting kind of ritual that binds me to patience, to time, to doing one thing at a time. We connect to ritual time in many ways (prayer, meditation, doing the same thing every day as get ready for work). I find it through cooking. I had a chance to engage in this careful kind of cooking recently in honor of Passover. For those of you who may not know, the Passover Seder requires several ritual foods that are eaten in a specific order and that ha...
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Eating my way to home

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If you read my other blog then you already know I am relocating from Boston to Kansas City. It's a big move, one undertaken for all the right reasons but still scary. A move like this opens up all kinds of questions: Will I find friends? Will I find community? Will I find anything to eat? The first two questions will take more time to answer themselves (though I am quite hopeful) but the third, well, Kansas City is clearly a food town and I'm eating a space out for myself. If you follow me on foursquare then you know this already. If you don't, then please be patient. I don't want to recount every meal I've had in the last few days; I hope to revive this blog to include more of my eating adventures but, for now I want to think about what it means to be home, and to eat in a new home. When we decided to move to KC, one of my first questions was  Is there good food there, beyond BBQ? What I really meant was Will I be able to find comfort? Food carries such em...
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