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Someone's in the kitchen with...who?

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I am a non-professional cook who is completely obsessed with food. I have been obsessed with cooking, too, since I realized, at a very young age, that whoever did the cooking got to decide what would (or would not) be for dinner.

I grew up in my mother's kitchen. Underfoot. Much of my passion for food comes from her careful concern about what she was feeding to her family. I have been actively cooking since I was about eight years old, starting with simple baking and progressing rapidly to family meals.

It took me way too long to figure out that "greasing pans" and other preparatory work was not a great privilege, but rather a chore that my mother was happy to delegate.

I am susceptible to food-jags, where upon the kitchen will suddenly be filled with a specific ingredient (such as pears) and they will appear with merciless frequency on the table in many formats. Sometimes a food-jag will be as broad as a regional cuisine, and sometimes it will be as specific as a particular spice or herb.

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Can I send you recipes to put up?

You can always send me recipes! At the moment, I'm putting up only recipes that are mine, either built from the ground up or tweaked so substantially that its own mother would kick it out of the paddock. I may in the future include recipes from other people, though (with credit given).

Who is the Marquise? Is it.... someone I know?

The Marquise knows who she is, and that's good enough for me. From time to time, people will be referenced in my essays under pseudonyms that will allow them to recognize themselves, and other people who are familiar with the situation described may figure it out. However, this is a publicly viewed site, and I'm not prepared to broadcast other people's identities on it. You can usually get everything you need to know from the context of the essay.

Um, what happened to updating once per week?

Life, work, and the pursuit of sleep. If you want more frequent updates, check out the  BLOG.

Why aren't you a chef?

The hours are terrible, and there are many daunting responsibilities involved in being a chef. I'd rather be a cook. I haven't become a professional cook because the hours are terrible and I'm nervous that if I had to cook on command, I wouldn't enjoy it as much.