Some people eat to live, I live to eat.  I am an extremly picky eater.  My palate was trained in HK, the heaven of food and shopping.  I can’t stand anything from a can, or between two pieces of plastic. If the fish isn’t killed after I order it, I don’t want it.  I will gladly book a reservation then make the travel plans to get there for a vacation. As soon as I get that table at El Bulli, I’ll book the flights to Barcelona.

Aside from seeking out the sought after restaurants that require a second job to pay the tab, and the secret hole in the wall places that might give you diaherra after, I love cooking, replicating what I’ve tasted in restaurants and tweaking it to my own preferences. I hardly follow a recipe.  I can’t balance a general ledger but I can guess the ingredient list from eating the dish and recreate it to my own liking most of the time.   As for measurements, you can’t really go wrong with cooking unlike baking.  Cooking is an adult playground with a license to burn. It combines all our senses equally, tasting, feeling, smelling, seeing, hearing (snap crackle pop!)

My first copied recipe is the lobster bisque after I had it at the Fairmont Hotel in SF. It was intimidating to dissect a live lobster at first but I’ve gotten so good at it, my friends look at me with shock and a little fear when I do it. This recipe led to the discovery of creme fraiche. Why we bother with sour cream anymore is beyond me.

What goes with food? Wine (Alcohol in general but I’m not sure if I want to admit that on paper..) I was introduced to collecting with a bottle of Rombauer 1996 Diamond Selection cabernet sauvignon and a monster is born. So this is what good wine tastes like! No tartness that twists my face into a wrinkled shirt when I swallow. I can go on and on about wine and why I love it. The short version is the complexity, easily found in a Napa cabernet sauvignon. The layers of possibilities are endless. It is never the same, a different vintage, a different bottle, a different glass. The first sip of the first glass weaves a story of emotional sensation to the last sip of the last glass until a story is complete. The memories they evoke from the physical touch, so powerful it renders you powerless. A world where the physical and emotional state collide and dance in a duet. Each good bottle of wine, it’s like reliving the first time you fall in love. My wine friend brought me to one his favorite wine shops when I first started trading liquid assets for real liquid assets. It’s quite the boys club in wine collecting (whatever, move over!) We were comparing finds in the vast space of wines lined from ceiling to floor at 55 degrees temperature freezing our asses off and discussing price over quality with chattering teeth. One of the wine salesperson overheard me commenting that the ‘95 Napa cab vintage is better rated than ‘93 so who cares if the ‘93 is older. He shook his head in dismay and exclaimed to his colleague,”Just what we need, a woman that knows more about wine than us.” I’m still not sure if I should take that as an insult or compliment.

So here is my diary of my dining, cooking, wining experiences.

Wining and dining are best when shared, even if it’s only virtually.

Email me in here if you want to talk about food, suggestions, feedback, or have questions.