The Who What When Where and Why of It All

Well hello there!

Welcome to my experiment in blogging. For the past year or so, I've been facebooking about, well, food. And drinks. I post pictures, I comment, I status update about the delights coming from my kitchen, or someone else's. I tantalize with recipes of healthy do-overs and inexpensive wines. Rather than continue my "facebook cookbooking," I figured it was about time to settle in and blog about it all.

I'm getting ahead of myself in this post.

First, the Who. I am Jill, a 31 year old, living in Southwest Michigan--about 80 miles outside of Chicago. I came to the "world of food" late in life, I guess--about 7 or 8 years ago. But really, my fascination with food and cooking really amped up when I met my husband in 2005. He is an adventurous eater, one of those "the spicier the better" kind of guys, and I needed to step it up. When I moved from Chicago to our home in Michigan, it meant we were cooking it if we wanted to eat it. We live outside the delivery zone for any pizza, and there really isn't any other take out.
The other part of the who is that I am a formerly chubby kid, a formerly chubby adult, who is constantly struggling with weight issues. I try to eat healthily while eating tastily, and I try to eat healthily with whole foods rather than weight loss gimicky foods. That last part is usually the toughest for me.

The point of this whole adventure/experiment/journey is to talk about food, and things in the food world on a broader scale. I'll post recipes of things I already use, new recipes, new ideas. I'll talk about wines and beers and what's good where and when. I'll also try new things with this blog--like finding a new, sometimes intimidating ingredient and figuring out a non-intimidating way to use it. Specifically, I'll be trying to focus (at times) on super local ingredients.

I'm also really interested in working on the ecological part of food. While I'm not a vegetarian/vegan/localvore, every day I become more and more interested in figuring out how to eat better. For both my body and the planet. And the animals, and the taste, and...on and on.

I live life trying to cook and eat healthy, on a budget, quickly, etc...sometimes those issues work together or against each other. I also happen to really like, no love, food. I like trying it, tasting it, watching it prepared. I like cooking it, figuring it out, and the amazing rush I get when I plate up my husband's dinner and he just loves it. I plan on discussing it all here, with you, with hopes that you'll all get the same feelings about food.

Oh, and by the way, I'm similarly obsessive about what I drink.

All aboard...

Jill