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OK, here's my story. For starters, here are some of the things that color my food world:
1. I am an aspiring food writer. I've actually sold a few pieces at this point, so that likely makes me actual rather than aspiring, but in my opinion I still have a ways to go. I'm not quitting my "day job" just yet. My "day job" is working in financial research and editing for a large information services conglomerate. Since I've been working there for a few years now and I even have a staff reporting to me it qualifies as a career rather than a day job, but my intent is to move into food writing in a full-time capacity sometime in the near future. Since many of my posts will be made from said day job, I won't name my employer, but I will tell you that I work in the culinary wasteland of downtown Manhattan (right next to Ground Zero, as a matter of fact. And I'm grateful to report that no, I was not there on 9/11, though unfortunately I know many people that were).
If you want to read some of my work, here's a link to a piece I did for The Daily Gullet on "Cubicle Cuisine."
2. I keep a kosher kitchen. I am married to a wonderful guy who grew up in a kosher household. And although I did not grow up keeping kosher, like many others on this board when I married I opted to keep a kosher household. It's a labor of love, and sometimes a royal pain in the neck. Mr. alacarte (as slkinsey has dubbed him
) keeps kosher always, everywhere. It's a lifestyle choice. However...when I am away from home and away from Mr. alacarte, I cheat on the kosher diet with abandon. Shrimp scampi. Cheeseburgers. You name it. Mmm, mmm, trayfe. When I'm cooking at home, I'm usually cooking with kosher meat, or more often than not I'm cooking vegetarian (dairy or pareve, no meat).
3. One of my geekiest food-geek traits is my long-time interest in food history. I'm even on the board of The Culinary Historians of New York. This started as a general interest in women's history, which evolved into a deeper and geekier interest in how women were tied to the kitchen and how they cooked. Then I started collecting vintage cookbooks and learned how to cook, and all was lost.
I'm especially interested in cooking at the turn of the century (um, the last one, so that means the wonderful opulent dishes of the early 1900s) as well as wartime cooking, which is as far away from wonderful and opulent as you can get. I wrote an article about WWI cooking for the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink (which is due for release in fall 2004). I also wrote about the history of Twinkies for the encyclopedia.
Sometimes I try to cook historical recipes, with varying levels of success. My last experiment was ice box cake.
edited to add links.
Edited by alacarte, 14 March 2004 - 10:07 AM.
