Prologue

Yes, I fully realise how pompous it is to being a new blog with "Prologue" as the first post's title.

But I think it's appropriate.

A couple of things happened in my life recently, almost one on top of the other. About a week and a half ago I had a birthday. And one of the wonderful things I received was Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries. I've been longing for it since discovering it on a table at a local Chapters. It's premise is simple: a year in the life of his kitchen. He writes about going to the market, pottering in the garden, cleaning out his fridge and pantry...it's a wonderful read. It's about real food, for real people. It's unfettered cooking. Yes, he hosts dinner parties and writes about what he serves and how he cooked it, but on the whole it's about it's about (what I think of) as one of life's pleasurable necessities: our daily feed.

The other event was Edna's death. She was a truly wonderful woman, and although we only had two dinners together, with one more planned, I will miss her deeply. I've been introspective, flipping through Schmecks, reading her words. Her foods are real meals and snacks that people throw together: not the adorned, faux gourmet stuff that feeds food porn, but the foods that enrich and sustain us. In short, it's real food.

That's not to say that what I write in Confessions of a Cardamom Addict is not real food. It is. And most of it is tasty. But it doesn't wholly represent how I eat nor, more importantly, how I come to eat what I do. It's a space I've developed to improve my cooking and my writing and to learn more about food--it's production and preparation. It's not a journal of my own little scullery.

That's what this space is for. My own rendition of Kitchen Diaries.

Before I go on, I must assert my disbelief in recording every morsel of food that goes into my mouth as a step towards personal betterment. If that works for you, that's great, but I find that sort of thing tedious. You won't find that here (or at least, I hope you won't). You probably won't find the passable photography that adorns my other site, nor an overabundance of long-winded posts, nor posts "just to have something up there."

If I post recipes, don't look for precise measurements--add enough of this or that, put in enough of this until it tastes right, cook it until done....you know, the way real people cook. In short, what I hope you will find, is simply this: my kitchen's diary. Posts about what feeds me--and what I feed others, how I find it or how I cannot find it. You'll also see links to Cardamom Addict--don't worry, that space will continue to exist and will be the main focus of my foodblogging.

I'll be back in a bit to begin the diary.

jasmine