About Me

I love food and I love to cook for my family and friends. I think it is fair to say I am a little food obsessed. I am always planning the next meal! 

I’ve always enjoyed eating, and as a kid I always enjoyed watching cooking shows on PBS like Justin Wilson’s Louisiana Cookin’ and Nathalie Dupree’s New Southern Cooking, but my desire to learn to cook really started when I moved away from home to attend graduate school in Connecticut. Not only was this the first time in my life I wasn’t living in the state of Georgia, it was the first time I was away from my family, and their kitchens, for any length of time. Every home I had ever been in, especially my mother’s, my grandmother’s, and my step-mother’s, had the best, most comforting food. I missed home and I missed food from home.

I remember one of the first times I went to a restaurant for breakfast in CT and looked at the menu I had no idea what to order. I did not understand home fries. I did not understand what to order instead of grits. I would later find out that pimento cheese was not a universal food, and red velvet cake had yet to creep across the Mason-Dixon line. And the biggest shocker was that people in the North do NOT know how to make potato salad. I realized if I wanted to eat the food I wanted I’d have to learn how to make it.

So, I started cooking. I made a lot of awful food. Sara (my wife) loves to regale anyone who will listen about “Grass Roots Chicken”. I had no idea what herbs and spices to use except salt and pepper. I didn’t know the difference between garlic salt and garlic powder and I thought parsley was just a decoration. Having always taken comfort in watching cooking shows, I dived into Food Network. If I had known that Ina Garten’s husband was a Dean at Yale while I was there I would have stalked him until I met her, or was served with a restraining order…Watching so many shows led to lots of learning, experimenting, and gaining weight. Over the years I’ve incorporated techniques I’ve learned, put thought into what flavors work together, and how to achieve the taste I want from the ultimately simple foods I prepare.

I guess it is OK to say that over the many years I’ve lived away from home I’ve become a decent home cook. The idea to put in writing some of the food I cook was prompted by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Although I love to cook, I’m also a “busy” New Yorker, which means I love to eat out. When the 2020 NY Pause went into effect, we took the opportunity to cook every meal at home. It started as a precaution to avoid getting sick, then turned into a way to reduce expenses, and has now become a daily task we really look forward to and enjoy! I cannot believe how much fun it has been, how tasty it has been, and how happy it makes me to provide such good food for Sara and Teddy (our son), and Georgia (the dog) by way of Teddy…