So we are touching up the paint in our home—fixing the dings, cracks and smears from fast and full living—and I needed to take inventory on what paint I had on hand, and what paint I needed to buy. And guess what I found? I found I have a problem. My paint colors are not normal. Either they hired a foodie to name paint, or I am like a bug to a light when it comes to food.

In this case, it appears that I think of paint as another venue for all things food. Here are the paint cans I found labeled, affixed to my pantry shelves: Bay Leaf, Pale Avocado, Caramel Latte, Split Pea, Dark Celery (seriously, I am thinking: coincidence?), Peanut Shell and Jack o’ Lantern. Sounds more like something I would put on my plate rather than my walls, but hey: what can I say? Food warms my soul, whether it is in the sauté pan, on the grill or apparently, surrounding my every move, day and night, head to toe like a food fight gone out of control and now forever a part of every wall of my home.

I know, that is what I was thinking: no tomatoes? Next wall I paint better be Tomato Blossom, Heirloom Orange, or Roma Tomato. Or how about the color of the flesh of an enormous beefsteak tomato? And to be sure, I already have lots of ‘dirt’ on my walls: cremini mushroom brown, whole wheat brown, chocolate mole brown—hues bragging of their ability to cultivate, nurture and sustain. A pun to make my father proud: I find brown to be very grounding, indeed.

But back to the Pale Avocado: this color proudly adorns my kitchen walls. When not part of a wall, I love using real avocados for this very green guacamole. My lovely friend Kristen, from Portland, spliced this recipe together and I frantically wrote the recipe down. Now I make it all the time:

Guacamole
1/2 juice lemon
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
big pinch kosher salt
small green pepper (jalapeno, annaheim, etc.)
3 avocados
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Mash/blend together. I used my muddler and it worked beautifully. Kids—big and small—can also just mush it together with their fingers. Try not to flick any on the walls, or if you do and your walls are green, like mine, perhaps it will just blend…

I am all about finding little helpful tricks in the kitchen, if only to make me feel ’smart.’ Tricks sometimes save you time, but there are those that don’t. With a lot of kitchen ideas and doo-dads out there, it is essential to wade through all the ‘good things’ to find what works for you and what doesn’t. I am increasingly fond of ice cube trays. Not necessarily if they are blue or red or silicone or heart-shaped. So what is the attraction? Ice cube trays:

1. Save me time: I make pesto from scratch and freeze them in ice cube size portions. Later I can pop pesto into soups, risottos or on top of focaccia for a quick, easy appetizer. If I have lemons and limes that might go bad, I take the liberty of squeezing out all that yummy citrus juice and freezing it—in trays—for later.

2. Make drinks look good: On Top Chef’s first season, one of the candidates served up a drink with one, huge square ice cube (instead of a pile of little ones). It looked very savvy and makes the drinker feel special. Change up the size and style of your ice cubes to add interest. Also, feel free to freeze cranberries or citrus wedges inside ice cubes to include some artistic effects in your cocktails.

3. Are great for centerpiece-making: This centerpiece would be a punch bowl. Use a bundt pan as a circle or ‘wreath’ of ice. Fill with rosemary sprigs and cranberries for Christmas, cherries for Valentines or any other colorful items that fit a given party-theme. In fact items don’t HAVE to be edible to freeze in a ring and serve up in a bowl of punch: for Halloween try a bunch of wiggly worms, plastic spiders and flies. A birthday punch bowl could be filled with all sorts of plastic toys and goodies. But let’s talk Valentines Day: heart shaped candy, a necklace, or some sort of message in a bottle.

Let me clarify: I feel smart in the kitchen when I am saving myself time, as with the citrus or pesto cubes. I feel smart in the kitchen when I appear savvy, artistic and clever as with decorating drinks and punch bowls. I don’t feel so smart when my attempts backfire like the time I tried to freeze red hot candies in ice cubes to create a bloodletting, red hot flavored drink for Halloween. The candies all sunk to the bottom of the ice cube trays and the red dye came off. And it tasted, well, nasty. That wasn’t so smart, but alas the pathway to success is often many rounds of failure: and recognizing that is smart indeed.

Here are more interesting ice cube trays:

• Lego ice cube trays
• A variety of molds
• Light up ice cubes
• History of ice cube trays

I really think food speaks volumes both about us and our lives, and the people in our lives.When a friend is sick: you bring food. When you are sick: you eat homemade chicken soup. When you are really sick: you are sad you cannot eat food. When you are sad: you eat comfort food. When you are comfortable: you make new food. When you are new: you eat familiar food. When you are familiar: you try weird food.

When you are rushed: you eat okay food. When you go to bed: you sneak food. When you are busy: you forget to eat food. When you invite friends over: you make good food. To show you care: you bake food. To help a neighbor: you loan food. To cheer a friend: you bring decadent food.

I was paging through my calendar today, noting each square and the piles of words, eraser marks, changed plans, kids’ school activities, business meetings, friend greets and doctor visits. We have tours scheduled, one on top of another, to decide the next scholastic pit stop for my boys. There are visits from relatives, soccer games, might-happen ski trips and the occasional field trip. Business travels, parent conference, friends’ birthdays and the sketchy remnants of physical activity (I swam last week, didn’t I?). You get the point—you have a calendar too.

But what about this idea: a calendar with only food. What I ate for dinner, or made for dinner. Who did I cook for? What traversed my table-top on a lavish dinner-out or a buzz-by dinner in? What did I shove down the throats of my children on our way out the door? Did I eat leftovers for lunch? Did I create a disguise for the leftovers? Was that meal humming with flavors and balance and ceiling high flavors? Would I ever bother make it again? Was that wine a boring compliment or a meal-maker? Who did I eat with? Was it perhaps you: eating while blogging/online/emailing. I am culprit. So when I look at my calendar it talks of food: the good, the bad, the quick and slow. The friend, the neighbor, the gift to the teacher. The planned for, spontaneous and practical food—or the familiar and not so familiar food. If new, it is rated and marked and, if worthy, its recipe stated.

Yesterday afternoon, a leisurely stay-home Sunday was impetus for me to make orange vanilla ice cream, mint simple syrup, heart shaped cookies, some health bars, sauteed corn, and roasted potatoes with fennel. What story does that tell?

I thought orange ice cream would go beautifully with chocolate brownies—we had just received a gift of brownies. Mint simple syrup serves two purposes: I am experimenting with flavored vodkas—the mint syrup happily joined lime vodka—and my son loves making homemade mint Italian sodas. (Other vodka forays include vanilla grapefruit and lemon thyme). The health bars are part of a product review; my children’s take on them? “squishy without much flavor.” Go figure. Happily: not my recipe. The potatoes, corn and fennel were happy sides to an evening meal. And the heart cookies, well, I made them to say to my family, on a leisurely Sunday afternoon: I heart you! So you can spread some love too:

Heart Cookies
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pink/red food coloring

Heat oven to 375. Mix/beat first 6 ingredients. Mix in flour and salt, then food coloring. Refrigerate dough if desired, for easier shaping. Otherwise, roll dough into log, shaping into heart and slicing in 1/2 inch slices. Bake heart cookies 9 minutes.

And that was just one afternoon! Most days aren’t that industrious, but then again any given week I might be gallivanting through a few new recipes, rushing around from A to B, or planning meals for a family in need. Go ahead, for a week paint your life by the food you eat. What story will the food tell? What busy schedule or sad moment or big event or friendly meal colored your week? What story is woven, and captured, by the food that crosses your table and your palate?

Today my food speaks: I heart cookies. I heart you!

When artists took apprenticeships in years past, they were required to copy, copy, copy the paintings, sculptures, techniques and styles of the great artists that preceded them. It was all about practice, about familiarizing your brain, your hand and your approach with proven gems—artwork from famed, revered artists.

Sometimes this would take years of painful step-by-step learning. Copying this artist and the next, studying brush strokes and mediums, learning about genres, cultures, influences and historical context. And until the upcoming artist truly had mastered and finally appreciated the presence and depth and sheer genius of what went before, they were rarely, if ever, encouraged to create their own art.

I did not go to culinary school, but I have been studying great ‘chef’ artists through the years by engaging cookbook after cookbook. My apprenticeship, so to speak, was to copy recipe after recipe of one cook and then another, and then another, until I began to have a sense of technique, science and art in the kitchen. I cooked my way through different traditions and styles, philosophies and fortes.

There are so many talented chefs out there, some recognized and some not. Though I have learned a lot, I have much more to learn. Even now, I rely heavily on cookbooks, on chefs that are close to my heart both with their kitchen philosophy and their culinary talent. I choose culinary greats to be a part of my kitchen, chefs that I can trust to be benchmarks, wizards and gurus that regularly prove their talent and maintain a welcome in my kitchen.

But not just any chef will do. Just as it is important for you to pick a doctor, therapist, friend and/or teacher that are well-suited to you, so it goes with picking chefs that most reflect your kitchen style, presence and preferences. Because I am not a professional chef, you may wonder how I go about selecting my ‘chef’ teachers.

It is quite simple: I peruse their cookbook, pick 10 recipes that sound good to me and I make them, one by one. I follow their lead, learning about their methodology, kitchen philosophy and favorite foods to engage in the kitchen. Truth be told, after about 10 recipes I have a pretty good sense of a chef via their cookbook. Would I make the recipes again? Did my family like the recipes? Were the recipes exotic or simple? What are their ideas around entertaining?

And then I use my own kitchen philosophy as a filter: Is it practical? Is it a good use of simple ingredients? Is it overly complicated or just about right for the end result? Can I count on this chef to deliver great recipes every time or is it more hit and miss? Are the recipes a good springboard for creating my own?

I welcome my chefs as trusted friends, teachers who gave me my start and still give me ongoing inspiration in my kitchen. Their techniques are now mine, my own recipes have traces of theirs, our kitchen philosophies are permanently commingled.

What cookbooks do you love? Ask yourself why you like each book; you will begin to unpack your own kitchen philosophy, and form your filter for future chef approvals. I may like a cookbook that you don’t prefer, or pass along a cookbook that the next person finds endearing. I may be looking to learn about specific methods (tangine?) or traditions (Indian, Spanish?); my bent toward learning new things propels me to keep reaching for new cookbooks, new chefs. But there are times in my life that I go back to the basics, stick to practical or don’t feel a creative urge. There are chefs to befriend you and I in all the varying chapters of our lives. The important thing is to find chefs that you can trust, bookie foodie friends that will lie atop counters and enjoy regular spatters from the nearby saucepan.

Yes, really: grilled (make it like you would a grilled cheese, but put on peanut butter and jelly instead). Think back to your childhood food experiences, and the people that lent their recipes and kitchen craft to your food story. Some good, some bad?

My own food saga includes an incident, when my father took us [kids] fishing. Barely arrived, we gleefully gobbled too much licorice and sipped countless cups of hot chocolate; hours later our indulgences shook hands with the flu. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t pretty. And to top it off, we were camping next to wildly successful [slurring, partying and passing out] fisherman, with only a single porta-potty inside a camper van, in the middle of nowhere. Today we tell the story and laugh hysterically, generously buffered by the gift of time passed.

On the happier side of food memories, I fondly remember the pink peppermints my grandma slid me, or the white rice she magically turned into a mountainous pudding, floating in a lake of butter and brown sugar. And I will never forget when—as a newlywed—I was learning how to cook, and put in over 20 cloves of garlic instead of the called for 2-3. It turned a small, humble batch of pesto into a green garlic paste and WOW it packed a punch: every pore I had smelled like garlic cloves every minute of every day for a week.

The PB&J is less of a story than a singular event that occurred when I was 5. Before then, grilled only meant cheese and peanut butter and jelly had never met the skillet. But on this particular day it did, and the standard sandwich was transformed. My curiosity toward food was awakened. Here is how I remember it: I spent a single day with a fill-in caretaker, an elderly friend of the family. When lunch rolled around, she announced the entree: Grilled PB&J. With curious eyes and absolute disbelief, I peered over the edge of the skillet. As if breaking all the rules I bit into this divergent sandwich: it was gooey, crisp, warm, cool and sweet all at the same time.

On that day, on some level, I discovered that when it comes to food you can change the rules. Just because I only had grilled cheese didn’t mean that was the same everywhere else. When it comes to food, each family has different stand-bys, secrets and snack drawers. I later noticed my friends’ lunches and how each one was different. I went on playdates and noted that snacks and dinners and desserts took a unique shape of their own, based on family customs. Today this intrigue shows up as I watch people pile food from their grocery carts to the cashier; each pile uniquely based on the individual, the family, and what is cultural or customary.

It probably owe thanks to the Grilled PB&J for my insatiable desire to reinvent the rules of the kitchen. Slicing apples the opposite way of ‘normal,’ taking the potatoes out of the oven and to the grill, searching for the next great lunchbox food for my kids, daring myself to attempt canning and/or to fry zucchini blossoms for the first time. It is that knowledge that just because I learned one way doesn’t mean there isn’t another. So I lean over the shoulders of my neighbors and ask the grocery line bystander what are you making with such an interesting array of ingredients?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the familiar favorites of my family. When I go to the store 90% of what I buy I have bought before. But I always try to add a few new things to the cart, or inject a new recipe from my magazine file. My favorite discoveries might be the shortcuts, like pesto in ice cube trays or making bread crumbs and then freezing them for future use. Food is a story I enjoy, a quintessential adventure where I can embrace all that is familiar and at the same time break all the rules.