But, I'm doing it anyway.
I should start out by saying - I am not a chef. And this should not be taken to mean I don't know how to cook. I do know how to cook, and enjoy it quite a bit. However, time restrictions and job requirements being what they are, I don't do it so often. The truth of the matter is that I love to cook when I am alone, or when entertaining a number of people - there is no middle ground. There rarely is.
I. Love. Restaurants. I love menus and waiters, cooks, bartenders and busboys and what I love the most may be the moment of suspense upon opening a new menu for the first time. Whether it be a seasonal, constantly changing selection or a just new restaurant altogether, for me there is a fleeting moment of infinite possibility that lives in the time it takes to unfold a page.
When I attempt to drudge the annals of my memory for a first recollection of a food thing I fell in love with, or restaurant or relative that inspired me to cook, I am left discouragingly flat. I grew up with food as a centerpiece for every family event, as so many people I know have - there is no ta-da moment. No, ever since I can remember I have just loved to eat. Everything.
I do, though, remember the first time I realized how much I loved restaurants. On special occasions - and they were so special because they were never occasions at all, just occasional...my father would take me and my brother to eat breakfast at the Hotel Dupont in Wilmington. Why we went there I really couldn't tell you, it seems strange to me now that we would eat breakfast in a hotel without staying there, but we did. It was as beautiful a space as I could fathom existing - in the traditional Grand Ballroom fashion of ornate hotels. And I'm certain it is beautiful to this day, if not antiquated, but to a nine year old it was like stepping into a palace. And it was not the brocade or the flatware or the uniformed waiters that impressed me the most...no, it was the jelly jars. Every serving of toast came complete with a selection of single-serving glass jams and jellies. I remember there was a sticker over the sealed lid of each one. I just could not get over how I could be so special as to receive not one, but four beautifully colored fruit spreads for my toast.
And so, why I write. And I will not force upon you (many) more autobiographical tales, but felt it necessary to begin at the beginning. What impressed me the most, my nine year old self, myself to this day. Here will be The Nom Nom Nom chronicles. Otherwise known as The Sound of Happy Eating.
Cheers.
