Pull up a chair…
I’m no chef, but I love to cook. You see four sweet potatoes, three garlic cloves, and a fennel bulb; I see not only an offbeat dinner in the immediate future (assuming I have enough vegetable broth and basmati rice on hand) but everything I need to go into a stress-crushing trance. There’s something about all that paring and chopping and sautéing that elevates a mundane task into something meditative and soothing.
As a home cook, I don’t have to worry about pleasing the palates of my paying guests in the way a professional chef would. Nope, I can sit back and soak up the praise of my friends, husband and son (who will bang his spoon on his high chair if he’s happy with the chow on offer), as they spoon up my chicken-curry soup or tuck into my lemonade cake. Even the disappointments I’ve concocted - the flaccid, grit-coated zucchini chips, the black-bean patties that called to mind a ramble through a cow-dotted pasture - are at worst reminders of everyone’s fallibility in the kitchen. At best, they are fodder for a blog entry.
‘Cause that’s the other thing I do a lot of: write. I write about food and entertaining for publications like Cooking Light and The Washington Post Express and Washingtonian. Because I used to go to Las Vegas and Seattle for geeky trade shows about computer networks, I write about other stuff, too: videoconferencing on the Web, protecting your online reputation from hackers, or the neat things that IP telephones do. I edit copy for some wonderful non-profits based in Washington, D.C., where I live. I write for my and other people’s alumni magazines. I am running amok as a newly minted member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. And I write personal essays that once in a while pop up in Google and get me in hot water with the relative about whom I revealed something rather personal. (You can see some examples of my work on the Clips page; just click on the tongs.)
All this variety makes the writing me happy and the cooking me ecstatic. I chose the name “WordKitchen” to satisfy both of those gals. Otherwise they’d be fighting all the time.
So welcome to www.wordkitchen.net. Unless I burn the house down trying to vanquish my piecrust phobia or get a bad case of writer’s block, something should always be, er, cookin’ here, either on my stovetop or my laptop. Do get in touch, please, especially if you have recipes I can steal, great sources to share, or can quote obscure lines from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” quite possibly the best movie ever made. I want to hear it all, and I’ll write back. Just as soon as I rinse the flour off my hands.
