To Start

Before I decided to start this blog, I asked myself whether cyberspace needed another outlet of foodie self-expression. The internet is already saturated with personal musings about food, pictures of dishes taken on the sly in restaurants, and foodie threads that go on for pages.

I was thinking about this while I was at work, as I often lapse into daydreaming about food related things while sitting in my grey cubicle. After a while, my mind then wandered to my lunch earlier that day. I ate at my desk again, staring at my computer screen while mechanically shoving salad into my mouth. I suddenly realized, to my dismay, that I couldn’t remember exactly what I ate. The squidgy green stuff in the salad could have been a piece of avocado or pieces of pesto pasta. My lunch – what I ate and how I ate it – was utterly forgettable.

Even worse, looking back, I probably didn’t care. I had a tight deadline that afternoon and I simply had to plow through my lunch so I could return to having two functioning hands to type. Then, my thoughts started to spiral outwards to focus on my life in general. How did it come to be that since I started working, the “food as fuel” approach was quietly and steadily becoming more of a norm rather than an exception? For a person who loves to eat, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to consider this fairly devastating.

I needed to actively change this path and blogging seemed like a good way to do it. Through writing about reviving the joy I get out of cooking and eating, I hope I can add a little more balance in my life and connect with people who feel the same way. For many of us, our waking hours are filled with commuting, work, deadlines, and stress and we often forget how to use our senses. Food is one of the most elemental and simple pleasures that we have at hand, and yet it’s often de-prioritized given everything else we’re juggling. Of course, in reality most of us aren’t able to enjoy a gourmet bender during every meal or snack we eat. But, by adding a just a little more epicurean bravado in our lives when we can, we can hopefully enjoy it a little more.