Emily Eats Everything

Welcome to my new digs, friends. Thanks for all your great blog name suggestions this week - there were some great ones, but you know how I can't resist food. Now that I won't have any new Japanese adventures to share, I've decided to use this space to write about food and cooking, and how it creates and effects my life.

See, we've been in this crazy situation for about three weeks now, taking advantage of our friends Irish and Steve's generosity and living in their guest room. We've found the house we want and our household goods should arrive next week, so we hope to be in our own place soon, but in the meantime we've been enjoying their company and trying not to be too irritating.

One of the major perks has been talking to Irish about school. My girl got out of the Navy last year, and she started culinary school last week. I'm getting the benefit of her experience, learning about classic mirepoix, the Holy Trinity, the Asian Holy Trinity, and brown vs. white stocks - and that's after only two days. I've been job hunting and house hunting and trying to stay sane in the meantime, but cooking and talking about food is where I recharge my mental batteries.

But I don't want to cook professionally, don't get me wrong. I have no desire to work the hours of a chef, in the heat of a kitchen, or to deal with the massive egos involved in the restaurant business. I just want to cook and eat delicious, wholesome and mostly healthy food and make sure the kitchen stays the heart of my house.Here's my second weekly haul from the Poulsbo Farmer's Market - that's Washington Honeycrisp apples, leeks, cherry tomatoes, delicious rainbow chard, a red onion, beets, baby potatoes, and eight delicious pluots, a plum-apricot hybrid.

What's a recovering vegetarian? More about that later, but let's just say that after fifteen years of no red meat, I have discovered a deep love of all the salted cured meats. (Remember pepperoni?) At the same time, I've moved to the land of the locavores, the organic farms, and the raw foodies, some of whom work with Josh.

So that's my plan for this blog, dear readers, and I hope you'll keep reading. We'll talk about Smitten Kitchen, I'm sure, and raw food and whole grains and, oh yes, bacon. Because now that Emily Eats Everything, anything can happen.