tomatoes?

Why Tomatoes? Because I love talking about food and tomatoes are a great place to start. I could experiment with, read about and talk about tomatoes incessantly. Really. Tomatoes come in so many varieties, in a gorgeous palette of colors. Think sun dried, stewed, roasted and BBQ’d (cut Romas in half, lube in olive oil, salt, garlic & oregano; BBQ for 3-5 minutes); you could boil off the skins, blend them into salsa, showcase them in a salad, put a beefsteak on a burger, and make red sauce for pasta. Canning, sauteeing, juicing, stirring them into a quiche, topping off bruschetta: tomatoes can be reinvented so many ways and I love all the possibilities! To me it is art and science and happiness wrapped into each juicy globe.

I carry stacks of cookbooks and food magazines with me wherever I go, whether it is going to the beach, on the plane, or even for the 10 minutes I wait when picking up my kids from school. To be completely embarrassed and honest: I glance at recipes when waiting for red lights to turn green. And I started writing a cookbook, but my friends kept asking for recipes and ideas in advance. My to-be cookbook morphed into this blog thanks to the impatience of myself and all of my friends. Here it is: my food inspirations and experiences, newfangled recipes, party planning, menu mapping, latest foodie book responses, notes from my friends’ kitchens, some fun anecdotes.

Sure, I have a degree in this and a degree in that, but time and again my passion for food would take over and I would plan a party, simplify a salad recipe, strategize a visit to a new chic restaurant or figure out how to make the best mojito. It tickles me to the core to embrace the kitchen as my domain and to deliver all kinds of new, curious, ingenious and daring dishes to the table. The ooooh’s and aaaaah’s and ‘can I have this recipe?’ only further fuel my passion for food. I am hopelessly curious about food, trying to find new twists on old favorites, finding yet another winning recipe, discovering the next gift I can give from my kitchen, pushing myself to be a better, more knowledgeable cook, host and eater. Ultimately, this blog is my excuse to experiment with recipes and talk about food, try new restaurants and talk about food, travel and then—you guessed it—talk about food.

Another reason for talkoftomatoes: because many of my friends are bored in their [kitchen] domain. I love to get them excited about food, to give them ideas and options to have at their disposal. Many people I know find cooking, preparing and planning food to be no more than mundane wrapped in boredom skewered with dissatisfaction. Food is a part of our daily lives, a big chunk of the repetition and routine. But it can be so much more: a daily opportunity for pleasure, a journey through your palate, living in the moment, pleasure in the details, scientific experimentation, creative impulses, a time to commune and share with others, a gift. I hope talkoftomatoes fills you with new ideas for your own kitchen, and adds whimsy and pleasure to your life one bite at a time. I hope you enjoy my musings and chatter about food—my talk of tomatoes.

Who am I to blog about food? I haven’t been to culinary school, nor am I Martha Stewart, Jamie Oliver or Thomas Keller; I do love to pour over cookbooks and foodie magazines, feast my eyes and feed my imagination at food shops and farmer markets, plan bold and balanced menus and try all kinds of new recipes. I maintain a curious palate, like to learn from famous and neighborly chefs alike, and try to nurture the chef in me.

As a young child, I made alphabet letter pancakes, was enamored with making coffee can stoves at adventure camp and regularly played restaurant by stirring plastic bobbles in a bucket with a wooden spoon. For fun, I cut recipes from my mom’s Good Housekeeping and Sunset magazines and created my own cookbooks with lots of pasting and stapling. Mostly, I enjoyed food. In high school and college I worked in restaurants; I even showed up for cooking classes inside a mall. My college magazines were Gourmet and Bon Apetit. I have since subscribed to Cooking Light, Cook’s Illustrated, Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray, Food & Wine, you get the idea… Piles of cookbooks adorn my bedside table.

I cooked on a college budget, then a graduate budget, then for my husband and finally for my kids. I discovered that I loved to cook for others, hosting regular dinners and parties and special events. I began to notice that my friends were often bored with ‘what’s for dinner,’ and hoped my enthusiasm for cooking and menu planning would be contagious. I liked helping them come up with good ideas for dinner, and they liked the input (hence, my would-be cookbook morphed into this blog). For me, it was less about the daily grind than it was about the daily possibilities. I learned that the kitchen can be both a place of drudgery and boredom and/or of passion and enjoyment. In my ideal world, your visits to talkoftomatoes will arm you with fresh ideas, change your boredom to passion, cause you to throw more parties, inspire you to embrace your kitchen domain and indulge the lifelong journey of your palate.