My outlet

I need an outlet. I need a recording of thoughts and processes. I need to write. This blog is intended to fulfill all these things and hopefully more. I forget how important writing is, especially for artists, and I need a place where I can write about the things that inspire me. I don't care much for blogs about people's daily lives with no real purpose. A blog is like a business, it needs a mission statement and a target audience.

Mission Statement:

To write about my own personal food culture and cooking. To record my experiences and experiments for present and future analysis. To share with others what I know and am learning. To inspire myself and others to see the importance of food in our lives. To vent about things that piss me off. To express my excitement about things that nobody around me wants to hear (for example, finding the best deal on duck fat or how to make french fries even crispier). My wife is afraid that I will alienate my family and friends with my convictions and passion and I believe she may be right. With a blog, the reader is choosing to read your opinion and therefore can't really be upset about it. At the dinner table with my family, ranting about GMO's or concentrated animal feeding operations might get a little annoying if not worse.


My Target audience

Anyone who chooses to explore the world of food through reading and cares about what they put into their mouths and where it comes from. Anyone who loves to cook, wishes they could cook better, cares about the details and most importantly loves to eat. I am all of these things so I assume I will be my biggest fan. Why don't I just write in a notepad? The main reason is because I truly want other people to hear my thoughts, for many reasons. I also believe writing is different when the author knows other people will be reading it. Personal journals are great but I feel I can create both a personal journal and possibly contribute something to other people at the same time.

My Anti-Target audience

Most businesses don't probably think about who they DON'T want as their target market but I'm going to. What better way to define what you are all about than by explaining who you don't want as a reader. Plus, I think it's important to exclude people from a group, that's what makes a group a group. Nobody wants to belong to the group called "Everybody".
Anyone who eats fast food at least once a day should not read my blog, unless they are exploring the option of not doing so. "Foodies", who know the details of every ingredient on the planet but don't really cook that much. These are the people who know 15 different varieties of mushrooms but never cook with any of them. These people are excluded from this group because they usually just want to argue about the stupid details not because it matters but because they want you to know how much knowledge they have.


I am here to spur exploration and discussion. I hope to inspire everyone to see their kitchen as a playground and the supermarket as a toy store. The really great thing about cooking is that it leads to eating and eating must happen every day. You get the opportunity to try again when you fail and it really doesn't have to cost that much. I am lucky that my passion is something so easily reached and so vast and important. I feel sorry for people who have an equal passion for dinosaurs or space exploration or the civil war. There really is only so much you can do with those things but I get to cook and eat 3 times a day, and when I'm not doing that I can read about it.

I worked for a chef who once told me "Doing something right does not take longer". This may seem like a very common sense statement but an inexperienced line cook in a hurry will most assuredly start taking shortcuts. The real solution should not be found in shortcuts, but in your mind. When you learn to slow your mind down, your hands can work much faster. When you slow your mind down, your cooking area is more organized and clean, and your processes become much more efficient. Nobody ever told me that, at school or any other job. This chef not only said that, but he lived it. If something wasn't perfect he would throw it away and start over, and it was amazing how consistent this was. This type of integrity didn't get him backed up or behind either, what "Buries" a cook in the trenches is losing focus. You can't use sub-standard shortcuts and maintain the proper focus.

How does this apply to the home cook? I want to challenge the thought that cooking from scratch takes longer, it doesn't. It takes more focus and more planning and more organization. It takes more knowledge and skill and it requires more passion.