About

About the Site

 

         I can’t tell you how many times I’ve mentioned a meal to a coworker or a friend and heard, “Oh, but you can cook.” While I’m not disputing the truth of that statement – I can, in fact, cook, and have been cooking for many years – I will quibble with the implication that I can cook, and you can’t. Cooking shouldn’t be the sole domain of a few people with shiny kitchens and lots of time or a culinary degree. With a few good recipes and some basic equipment and techniques, anyone should be able to prepare a simple meal, and prepare it well.
Good food shouldn’t be reserved for special occasions. We should be able to savour our meals, our daily fare.

     This site is designed to make that goal more attainable. To take away the intimidation and the mystique. (OK, some of the mystique. You won’t see any foams here, or ingredients with names like Sosa Gluconolactate. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I try to cook mostly with “real” food, though I’m not averse to some shortcuts, and I use occasional processed foods in a few long-cherished recipes. My goal is not to cook “healthy” food, but I believe that eating a variety of real, wholesome foods contributes to a healthy diet. I like to bake, and I am not going to pretend that a chocolate chip cookie is healthy in the traditional sense, but I’d take the health effects of a homemade chocolate chip cookie over an Oreo. Not that there’s anything wrong with Oreos.

     I do use some specialty ingredients, but I’m lucky enough to live in a large city with an extremely diverse population where ingredients are relatively easy to find. I’m also “lucky” enough (my husband would dispute that term) to be a crackerjack internet shopper. The “Resources” page features some of my favorite web suppliers.

About the tags: The tags are designed to make recipes easier to find. Please note that posts tagged “vegetarian” often contain meat in some form in my version, but are easily adaptable for vegetarians.

About Kate

     I grew up in a family of good cooks of no particular persuasion. We are not grand old Southern cooks, or gourmet chefs, or a family who makes recipes from the old country. We don’t even have an old country. We are just people who cook and eat good food. As a kid, I helped my mom cook, and I baked cookies, but I really came into my own as a cook when I grew up and got my own “kitchen.” I say that in quotes because I was in law school in New York and I lived in a 400 square foot studio apartment, and I had a stainless steel corner. Every time I turned on the oven, the whole kitchen apparatus would get hot. I couldn’t store chocolate chips in the cupboards because they would all melt. Despite the drawbacks of my workspace, New York City was a food heaven – I spent three years of law school exploring the city and all of its culinary offerings. Unfortunately, exploring culinary offerings doesn’t pay the bills (oddly enough, it often creates them), so I had to go to work.

      And here’s the thing about work – it takes up time. A lot of time. But I still loved to cook and eat good food so I learned to streamline my routine. I do cook more time intensive foods on weekends, but make no mistake about it – I’m not part of the leisure class.

     Several years ago I moved from New York to my hometown of Los Angeles with my husband and our small dog, and there we live to this day, although we’ve added a large dog and a small child to the mix. If you think having a job cuts into cooking time, try having a child. I’ve developed quite the one handed cooking technique – one hand makes dinner, the other balances a toddler on my hip. I now have a (slightly) larger kitchen, and cabinets made from wood.

I’ve been blogging on an extremely irregular basis about food since 2003 under the name amuse bouches.  If you’d like to access the old content, it’s available under the page entitled “Amuse Bouches archives”.

About the Audience

Husband:  Grew up on EZ cheese and macrobiotic diets, and as a result, will eat (almost) anything enthusiastically. Occasional sous chef. Frequent dish washer. Grammar checker.

Daughter:  The Nuni or sometimes just Nuni. Grew up (so far) on a varied and delicious diet. Will eat anything but never very much and never predictably. Seems to subsist primarily on a diet of clementines, hot dogs and buttered toast. Has a taste for coffee and spicy foods. Very helpfully unpacks groceries and stacks them on the floor, takes all of cake pans out of drawer, and heads right for the knives in the dishwasher. (Not the good knives, silly. The little plastic handled paring knives.)

Dogs: 2. Big dog is on loan for a year while my parents are living abroad. Little dog patiently waits for food to drop while I am cooking, with much success. Little dog is a junkyard dog, and will feast happily on lettuce, carrots, strawberry leaves, Cheerios, or chicken. Big dog jealously guards her dog food, which lives in the bathroom. Both dogs would sell their doggy souls for chicken.

Email me at:

savourfare at gmail dot com