Preparing myself...

Hello and welcome. Over the years I've gained a reputation as a perpetual Girl Scout - the girl who always has everything "just in case" - and who is prepared for almost anything (keyword: almost). I was a Girl Scout as a child (but not a very good one as the only badges I got were the ones related to clothes and fashion) but maybe among the sewing and jewelry-making and so-called camping trips their motto of "be prepared" sunk in and rested somewhere permanent within my psyche. Or maybe the tendency is a result of hearing my dad plead time and again to "have a plan" and the fact that I'm my father's daughter.

But my penchant for preparedness goes beyond the adjective of being prepared, to also include the verb to prepare, as in cooking. I started cooking in college and especially in recent years it has become a passion and a release. At my core I'm a problem-solver who loves a good challenge, which I think has a lot to do with why I love to cook. Something about the immediate gratification that comes from de-boning a chicken or pulling off a perfect souffle. I love using and sharing family recipes, and recreating great restaurant dishes and I like to make things from scratch as much as possible (again, the challenge). But I also love discovering new shortcuts or ways to improve the dish or the process.

So my intention in writing this is to share my ways and means of preparation. I have a feeling that this will be mostly a culinary journey, as I attempt to consolidate all those family recipes along with the my own new classics. But I also want to share tips, anecdotes, shops, sites, and other favorite things that I've learned and discovered either through my own trial and error, or from someone else's.

Additionally, I'm in one of those phases of my life where I feel very "in-between" (in between jobs, in-between marriage and babies...) and I know from past experience that the things I do and the decisions I make are, consciously or not, preparing me for what's to come. Perhaps with the inevitable self-discovery that tends to come with writing, I will prepare myself even better.