Salmon Tartare with Crème Fraiche, Salmon Roe and Black Salt

10-12 oz salmon fillet, belly if at all possible (fat content, yo)
drizzle of extra virgin olive oil (lemon oil if you have it)
1tbsp finely sliced chives
2-3tbsp minced shallots, brunoise them if you’re feeling perky
2 turns of a white pepper grinder
juice of half a lemon, maybe two (halves…)
zest of one lemon
1/4 cup of crème fraiche
pinch or two of black Hawaiian volcano salt (ditch for caviar if you’ve got the means)
small jar of salmon row
 
The key to this snack is actually using a proper chef’s knife to slice and dice the salmon – if you try to use a Cuisinart to save you and your wrists the effort, you would cheat your self out of the velvety nugget-like texture of the salmon and probably end up with something resembling more of a pate than tartare. Don’t wuss out.

Mix the first seven ingredients gently, so as not to smear the salmon. Also be careful not to overdo the lemon juice as this will tend to cure the salmon completely and make it rubbery. Not that cured salmon isn’t good, it’s just not what we’re going for here. All we want to accomplish with the lemon juice is to provide an aromatic background and to “cut the fat” in the fish.

Place immediately on your chosen serving utensil, preferably a conge spoon (which is essentially the spoon they usually give you for wonton soup - a nice over-sized table spoon would do the job as well) and proceed to garnish with the crème fraiche, the salmon roe, and a pinch of the black salt (this is our only substitute for caviar at this point…). Say, “hot damn is that sexy” and pass around to your guests. If you really want to step this up, go to page 6 of your friend’s copy of The French Laundry Cookbook and take a whack at those savoury mini tuile coronets. Dead sexy. Daaaaaa……Thomas is the man.

Cured Salmon “Lasagna” with Avocado Mousse

    The idea of this recipe is adapted from the pages of “East of the Danube” – it remains one of the more difficult cookbooks out there, in so far as the actual execution of the recipes require multiple processes over multiple days of preparation. We’re going to cheat a little here but still achieve the same textural wow-factor. Which, to me, is what it's often all about
   
    In this preparation, the thinly sliced cured salmon (referred to technically as “escalopes”) provides the faux pasta in betwixt which sits a simple avocado mousse, on top of which sits a mustard-dill cream. The original recipe calls for a basil gelee to be laid down as the base for this "pasta-esque" dish, however, it's cut out here for the sake of simplicity - that said, one might also leave out the dill cream without missing out on anything to die for; the party is in the marriage of the salmon and the avocado. The original recipe also calls for a ravioli to be crafted out of the salmon escalopes, however, culling slices large enough to pull this off is not possible for this class. Thus, we’ll steal/assume artistic license and morph this puppy into an open-faced lasagna…

Cured Salmon
For all intents and purposes, no one is expecting you to make cured salmon at home! Let’s be honest. If you really want to, email me for the recipe. Basically, you could do this with a pre-sliced smoked salmon package from the store or simply slice your own pieces from a raw fillet of salmon, as broad and as thin as your knife skills allow, and give them a quick curing/seasoning at the very outset of this whole enterprise. By the time you’re finished organizing the ingredients for the mousses/mixtures, they’ll be ready for you to slather and devour. The quick cure simply requires  a bit of high quality salt, some lemon zest, 2 parts lemon juice and 1 part olive oil. Lay them out and let them sit with the marinade; just make sure they don’t sit too long or you could end up with “stiffs”. Ugh.

The Dill Cream:
2.5 tbsp of Dijon mustard
2 tbsp chopped fresh dill
2 tbsp of sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1tsp extra virgin olive oil
2/3 cup heavy cream
fine sea salt to taste, fresh ground black pepper

Combine the lemon juice, dill, mustard, and sugar in a bowl whisking until the sugar is dissolved. Continue whisking and slowly add the olive oil until a smooth emulsification forms. Whisk up the heavy cream separately until you achieve stiff peaks and set aside 1/4 cup of the whipped product. Fold the remaining whipped cream into the mustard emulsion, season with salt and pepper and set aside. Do a little dance.

Avocado Mousse
2 ripe avocados
juice of 2 fresh limes
pinch of cayenne pepper
2 tbsp small diced shallots
2 tbsp small diced red bell pepper

Scoop the avocado flesh out of it’s skin and push through a fine meshed sieve (or just smash with a fork/spoon if you’re too lazy). Add to it the lime juice and cayenne pepper first, achieving a consistent mixture, then proceed to add the shallots and red pepper. Fold in the remaining whipped cream. Smile.

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Now - lay it out: one slice of cured salmon escalope, a spoonful of avocado mousse, one slice of salmon, and an expertly crafted quenelle of dill cream to top it off. Review your newly acquired vocabulary and dig in.

Forks are highly over-rated.

    Well, I guess that it's been a week since getting back from Vegas. I originally thought that I would come back to the weblog without much adieu, but in this case, what happened in Vegas DID NOT stay in Vegas; it came back with me and continued to bite me in the ass for the following 5-6-7 days. The kosmos was working it's vengeance on me and my little grab for the good times of ethereal cashola - yet I ask, what else could a stag be for?

(By the way Rommel, I asked all the bartenders down in LV about "the third leg of kermit" and they all thought that I was trying to pull THEIR third leg instead. I have also searched the on-line bartending databases and have come up with no dice on the famed kermit martini thus far. Again, I ask, in which bar in Vancouver had you imbibed this fine concoction?)

    'Tis been a long while since my last week long hangover, only difference this time is that I was actually able to feel it in all 3 bodies - gross, subtle and causal. F--k. I was as contracted and compacted as could be. Discombobulated might be the word I'm looking for here. Luckily I did not have to return immediately to work as my employes were still escaping the Canadian winter blues in the Carribean. Nice. I did have a project to work on however during their absence and it will become the subject of the next handful of entries here: Eric's first cooking class!

    I taught my first cooking class last night to a sold out "crowd" of 24 foodie-peeps. It was one of the hardest and most interesting tasks that I have ever performed. Seriously. Not since working my first night on the Saucier station (at Catch Restaurant) has something thrown such a pronounced curve-ball at me. Tossing me right out of my comfort zone, which in this cae was a good thing. Usually is.

Preparing and cooking up 5 dishes in 2.5 hours is one thing; doing it in front of a gathering of 30 people (including the serving aids, etc.) is another; but HAVING TO TALK THE ENTIRE TIME AND SOUND BOTH KNOWLEDGEABLE AND ENTERTAINING IS SOMETHING ELSE COMPLETELY. It challenged me in a unique and unforgettable manner which has given way to an odd sense of "relief/mountain-top sigh" that lasts even now as I sit to write this. It was possibly even more un-nerving than doing the cooking video for Integral Naked, perhaps in part due to the time constraints involved - one must also remember that video editing can make anyone appear to know what they're talking about.......thanks much, dear Ballard :-)

Anyway, I have chosen to share with you all the recipes that were concocted/demonstrated for this particular teaching debut. The class was entitled "Feasting on Salmon". (if anyone has information which contradicts or complements what I have entered into these recipe sheets, please shout it out loud! I am by no means the bearer of all culinary truth, as mucu as I would purport or like to be......) Here's an overview of the class and following it will be the first offering:

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Feasting On Salmon
Monday March 6th, 2006 / 6:30-9:00pm
Chef Eric Giesbrecht

Dishes to demonstrate:

- 1 salmon sashimi
- 2 cured salmon “lasagna” with avocado mousse
- 3 salmon tartare with crème fraiche, black Hawaiian volcano salt, salmon roe (on conge spoons or tuile cups)
- 4 salmon skewers (on lemongrass?) with orange-miso glaze
- 5 salmon mousse ravioli with homemade goat’s milk ricotta cheese, goat’s milk butter sauce
- 6 oven roasted salmon saltimbocca with eggplant relish
- 7 poached salmon with gewurtztraminer cream

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Salmon Sashimi

It doesn’t get any simpler than this – find yourself a sushi grade* salmon fillet (or tuna, etc.), pay the purveyor, bring it home, place on clean cutting board, invite your friends, and start slicing. Traditional accompaniments to raw fish in general would be some wasabi** paste, pickled ginger and soy sauce. Stop asking questions, grab a glass of chardonnay and tuck in.

*Depending on whom you ask, there is some discrepancy in the potential explanations of what exactly constitutes “sushi-grade” product. To purists, sushi-grade describes fish product which has met specific requirements of freshness, fat content, and firmness. In contrast to this, it also is understood to mean fish product that has met the aforementioned requirements AND has been frozen for a minimum of seven days at a temperature of about –25C . Use your intuition and make you own decision. (ed. just so you know, I have seen pictures of someone who had worms replicating under the confines of his scalp - he apparently ate sashimi 2-3 times per day. That particular fish was most likely NOT frozen beforehand.)

**Unfortunately, I have recently discovered that most of the wasabi paste that is consumed in North America is a faux mixture of ground horseradish, mustard, corn starch, and food colouring. (sigh…) While I have yet to secure a line of true-blue wasabi myself, I have come across a website (thanks do dear Ottmar) which claims to supply the real deal. Check out www.realwasabi.com to begin the journey. If you want to authenticate the experience even more, consider pickling your own ginger as you would any other vegetable, only make sure you get it sliced thin enough by employing a Japanese mandoline. As for the soy sauce, spend as much money as you’re comfortable with and go organic, as the fermentation process involved in creating it can only amplify toxins and undesireables.

la, la, et la.

whaddup boys and girls?

i'm leaving for las vegas in half an hour so this is gonna be a quickie.

without further ado, the fluffy pancakes recipe:

4 eggs separated
1 cup cottage cheese
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt

- eggs should be free run - a happy chicken produces happy eggs
-the all purpose flour can be substituted with spelt flour, whole wheat, whatever your heart desires. somethingelse that is kind of fun is to replace some of the flour with cocoa powder, but certainly not all of it as we need some gluten from the flour in order to hold the cakes together.
- salt: i use sea salt pretty much exclusively. there are countless varieties of salt out there and maybe we could eventually explore this ingredient in more depth at a later time, however, just make sure you don't use iodized salts. they suck.

method:

1) whip egg whites until stiff but not dry
2) beat some air into the yolks; you'll know when they pale a bit
3) mix in cottage cheese, salt and flour
4) fold egg whites into the previous mixture, trying to retain their fluffy quality
5) cook 'em up!

they will puff up somewhat and then eventually appear to deflate - worry not, they'll still taste great. you can always toss in a little extra love in the form of a spice which will complement the sweet addition of canadian maple syrup. word. cinnamon will do well. you might also consider serving these as savoury accompaniments to a dish - in the place of potatoes or another starch. sky's the limit, so definitely screw around with this one once you get the hang of the process. your intuition is the gateless gate.

in case you wanted to know, if these cakes serve 6 ppl, you're going to get 108 calories, 10 grams of protein, 7 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of fat, 147 mg of choleterol, 272 mg of sodium.

have a great weekend - i'll try to write from the city of sin if i can manage to dislodge the vile of ayahuasca from my left hand or the bottle of wild turkey from my right.

while i'm there, i'll be researching "kermit's third leg" at the first martini bar i see. i'll get back to ya soon, rommel.

solar shouts!

~eng

    guten morgen.

    first off, these are called fluffy pancakes because they actually are , well, fluffy. physically speaking, upper-right quadrant - like a cloud or a down-filled pillow. whether or not they are fluffy in the "fluffy-as-it-replaces-the-word-integral-kind-of-fluffy" sense, is clearly up to you to decide. all i can say is that we began eating these little delights when my wife and i were researching ways to cut out needless simple carbohydrates from our diet, and serrendipitously came across this recipe in the instruction manual of our kitchen aid stand mixer! i was totally surprised that my wife had found anything of value in the pages of that booklet. it remains one of those precious moments of culinary humility which has altered the way i usually gloss over offerings of that nature. wisdom is everywhere.......

    speaking of humility, as i've read over some of these weblog entries, i recognize that i don't come across as having very much. my tone is somewhat sardonic and less than inviting to foodie initiates. this is more than a bit mis-leading for if you were to ever meet me or come to play with me in a kitchen environment, i would come across more like your younger brother and less like some prick chef. granted, i am not dis-missing anyones ability to read into my sarcasm - but for me to go on using the "humour-tools" of scorn and/or cynical mockery, we should perhaps get this straight.  food is all about love and care and attention. you get out what you put in (and sometimes a little more because food can become transcendent, truly) and that's why i push people's buttons about using sub-par ingredients or about having the palette of a horse's backside. i am beginning to anticipate that someone may drop by the blog and say, "but i love cheese from a tube/can! who the hell does this guy think he is?! what a jerk." the truth is, that would kill me inside, to a certain extent. i don't want to turn anyone off of Integral Cuisine, or think that my sarcasm or poking fun at people and their eating habits is a  complete representation of it. clearly, it's not.

(need i tell you that the pancake recipe is going to have to wait?)

    in ordert to shed some light on this, i need to tell you that one of my favourite cookbooks of the common era is "anthony bourdain's les halles cookbook". in it, he comes across as a fairly casual bloke, not uptight or at all pretentious, writing in a somewhat informal manner, cussing all along the way - generally, he speaks to the reader in a way that any celebrity chef is prone to speak to an unwitting and panty-soiled apprentice who has just finished their first friday night on a hot-station. besides the fact that the recipes are accurate representations of french classics and spot-on when it comes to execution, i have to tell you that the book is also funny as all-shit as he leads the reader through the bends, u-turns and alleys of what it is to actually work and exist (subsist) within the confines of the restaurant industry. if anyone has read the memoir "kitchen confidential", and if not then i suggest that you do - yeah, this is the same guy. he smokes and drinks heavily. he's a guilt-free, obnoxious carnivore who constantly pokes fun at vegans and vegetarians alike (not because he disaproves of the lifestyle but rather because he's never seen any vegetarian fare cooked or prepared properly, in a way that respects the ingredients - i happen to agree with him in some instances, and i AM vegetarian, but anyway...). he pulls no punches in describing what it often takes to put a plate of decent grub in front of a paying customer. he entertains to say the least and, to anyone who has been in the trenches and led the "life of a chef" for more than a year, is one of the few respected working professionals whose daily life now also includes book signings at border's. you dig? another fantastic read is "a cook's tour" - if you enjoy new food and have travelled much at all, check this out!

so even though he may use words that your grandmother or priest may disaprove of and say things that tend to put some on their heels, the guy is a stright shooter, is not afraid to admit that he's wrong, and has a heart the size of new york. he's a strong personality and i respect him tonnes. so, it's no wonder that i find myself writing with a similar pulse in the blood-flow of my words.

ok, so about that recipe.........i guess it's not really morning anymore either.

a separate entry perhaps? this plate is full.

~chef e

    i just whipped this little salad up from what was available in the fridge only moments ago - one of my favourite cooking "methods", by the way. i love for people to tell me that there's nothing in the fridge to eat; it engages my primal sense of competition and throws a flame under my pot of creativity. bring me to any icebox and i shall show you what is possible. that is, after all, how this whole cooking career thingy got started anyway: just me, some herbs of questionable origin, a bottle of ketchup, one of mustard, a half bag of pasta and a scant cup of rice and the basic stock of home staples and tools............ you wouldn't believe the level of acceptibility where my palate was concerned, at one point in time. my food snobbery has come a LONG way.

1 cup cooked wild rice (a nice brown rice might also suffice)
8-10 grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
2-3 tbsp of roughly chopped fresh oregano* (using dry herbs would be a tragedy)
3 large chunks of greek feta**, crumbled or diced, where 'er your muse leads
1 gentle glug of extra virgin olive oil (organic would be a beautiful thing)
pinch of fleur de sel
2 twists of freshly cracked black pepper

*replacement herb suggestions would be thyme, maybe basil - tarragon would be sublime. just ensure that they're fresh and on the twig! the reason i chose the oregano is because it has an earthy spice to it that blends brilliantly with the rice.

**meaning feta which is made from either sheep's or goat's milk, or both. there are many arguments about which is correct but for now we'll simply allow that particular detail to fall to the side. try to avoid the substantially inferior cow milk variety which appears to have supplanted the original in north american society. shameful. if you've never tried sheep/goat's feta, indulge in this tasty treat today.

now, after having finished the salad, i realized that olives would have been another great addition; something like a nice firm kalamata, or perhaps a nicoise variety. failing that, a spoonful of capers would also do. if you're in the habit of buying canned olives, well, i'd prefer if you just stopped reading this blog RFN and do something more productive with your time, like licking envelopes for a living.

all in good fun,

~chef

    it's a little late for drinx i suppose, seeing as it's sunday morning n' all. that is, unless you're charles bukowski or an imitator thereof. i was, however, asked if i knew of any good martinis by one of the reader/contributors here and since i was actually out for dinner and martinis last night, i feel obliged to divulge the height of temptation that mixology reveals by the gestalt of the following bevvy. very simple execution requiring only modest ingredients, yet providing results on the "fluffy" side of the street. this one's for you Cool One. may i present to you, the Chambord Royale:

one part cranberry juice
one part pineapple juice
one part chambord liquer (a black raspberry liquer, steeped in history - a la 1600's)
one part premier quality vodka*

*i personally prefer "Ketel One"; a dutch spirit which is distilled in single batches in large copper kettles, not continuously like the inferior high volume brands - think smirnoff, absolute, etc - which gives the end product a very consistent , crisp and unique character. again, you're going to feel this in the wallet, but you'll also know excactly why. if you don't perceive the difference through your olfactory and gustatory senses, well, you're an inexcusable heathen or cretin or both. (remember, i am a shameless, guilt-free, consumate food snob - that's my job.)

other decent options would be something Polish like Belvedere, Chopin and perhaps Luksusowa. i lived for an extended period of time in Poland during the height of a personal run of debauchery and feverish dissipation, and quaffed an extraordinary amount of their native distilled potato product, so i'm a little biased. this leads me not to being an expert by any means, but simply an educated drunkard on the matter.

need i mention that the fruit juices should somewhat fresh!?(please, at least not from concentrate.)

shake the above ingredients over a large quantity of ice, until a foamy texture is achieved. pour and garnish with fresh cranberries. quaff. you'll see that the challenge of the process is not in the making of the drink, but in trying to NOT finish it in less than four sips.

happy hour is here,

~chef

alright kids, i give in.

i shall begin the duty of sharing with you some recipes of the foods that i consume and some for the foods that i do not consume (being the food that i make for my client at work, who happens to love lots of butter, cream, and meat. anything and evertyhing that has to do with unadulterated gastronomical pleasure.)

we're gonna start off simple and plain, mainly because that's how i've been starting my days off lately. the wife and i are on the "body for life/FIT" kick pioneered by the phillips bro's (and here) and thus, the day starts out with 500ml of spring water, right out of bed. on the whole water topic, if you're gonna buy bottled water, i personally find the "FIJI" brand (spring water from actual said island) to be the absolute best in quality, consistentcy, and clarity of taste. it's a little more expensive and a bit hard to find sometimes, but well-worth the effort. something funny must be happening on that island.................well duh! i mean DA!

i drink Fiji water almost exclusively and will be until we move in to our new house in a couple of months. when we do, we're having a reverse osmosis filtering system installed in the kitchen and will be going with that instead. cheaper of course in the long run, but essentially more sustainable. even though bottles are recyclable, we simply can't go on using up as much plastic as we have been as a planet.

SO. the morning blend and i ain't talkin 'bout kaffa.

1) 100 ml of whey protein isolate, or perhaps a vegetable variety if you swing that way
2) 1 cup of almond milk
3) 1 tsp of high quality wild flower liquid honey
4) heafty pinch of ground cardamon
5) double hefty pinch of ground cinnamon
6) 1.5 cups of blueberries

method: blend ingredients 1-5 first, the add the berries. a handheld wand blender will fine but a bar blender may get you a smoother product.

now, the original recipe calls for 1 cup of raspberries and 0.5 cup of bluberries. however, i am a bigger fan of the flavour and greater sweetness of the bluberry so i just eliminate the wrath of the rasp. which is also why i have added the cardamon and cinnamon to the mix - cardamon is a personal fave in the spice dept. (absolutely stunningly fantastic when added to a shot of espresso!) and the cinnamon is one of the most suitable addendums to blueberries in general - so much so that you might even have a hard time identifying/isolating the flavour of the cinnamon in the final product.

if you're using frozen berries instead of fresh, the final product will generate more viscosity and may require a spoon or 5 minutes to rest and thaw out a bit before consumption. as well, with frozen berries the honey is going to be a bit tricky to add because it will simply cease up around the blade of the blender due to the cold. you could probably bypass the honey altogether, but i simply enjoy the floral and aromatic aspects that it tends to contribute to the mix. i get honey from a friend of mine's father out on vancouver island - it's a big area for marajuana grow-ops so maybe the bees are feeding on the nectar of some questionable foliage and THAT"S why i like to add the honey.

go figure.

bluberry fields, forever.

~chef

what follows is a "letter" that i'd written to paul s. regarding his recent post to the 90 day ILP log. after reading over what i'd written, i knew that i had to stop sending people these long drawn out responses to their blogs and just write in one myself. if your dog doesn't need feeding at the moment, have a glance.

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paulos,

"No life could ever fit a "module", no existence could be reduced to "you must do this" and "you ought to try that". Inside I am feeling the old soul call of the rebel, rising up to break the new chains I've volunteered for it to submit to."

well, here's the thing - there is much to be learned from the freedom actually GAINED by placing/recognizing limitations upon/within oneself. i am a firm believer in the notion of "liberation through limitation". allow me to share with you a bit of life-story:

for a long time i struggled with the notion of being "only" a chef when in fact i was interested in a myriad of other things/pursuits, some of which i felt i was proficient at and not at all incapable of. i was unhappy with food preparation being my plot in the world - to cook food and come up with recipes for people to say "wow". that's it? fucking lame. what about my love of philosophy, higher thought, ecology, sustainability, sitting practice, aesthetics, writing, la la la?

after realizing that my relationship to food is the most problematic relation in my life, and has been for years, i came to see that by providing food to others, and simply being around it constantly, might be the best thing i could do to overcome its stranglehold on my will (this realization came upon me whilst reading "the eating gorilla comes in peace" by the inimitable Da). once i really came to grips that this would be my calling in life and had accepted it as being my "life's work", the notion of karmic employment came to the fore. i was being called to develop a healthy relationship to food and then to share the unfolding of these findings/realizations with others along the way. but these offerings were no longer bound to simply cooking people food in a restaurant. this paradigm, already in serious peril since first attending culinary school, had been blown out of the water. the scraps had begun to sink and i was left to construct a better vessel for my body-mind (in both ways!)

in recognizing this, i suddenly felt a liberation unlike any i had before. i was finding myself saying Yes to most everything in my mind and to that which was being thrown at me from outside. of course this realization wavered in undulating seas of habitual pattering, decades old - and yet, to contemplate that i had a definitive purpose, if i wanted to address and engage it, in the relative realm was strangely freeing as i was then able to allow my intuition and "creative problem solver" to run wild. but only because he was given a specific task to perform. he was given a set of parameters (or limitations) within which to operate and has since been pulling me into numerous healthy, intriguing and stimulating personal relationships, virtual and meat-spaced, as well as having created for me a seemingly endless list of "to-do's" to accomplish or at least to map out {enter AQAL}. he sometimes does such a good job that i would prefer to simply make the lists themselves than to address their need for immediate manifestation. but once i threw my intention out into the world, things began to come back to me in a more than serendipitous fashion. 

now i am able to see how it is that i can incorporate/enable most of the interests previously stated - in the service of my current karmic employment. of course this is not the only karma that i have to burn! as i alluded to above, there is of course my incredible ability to procrastinate - a sense of downright laziness so lazy that it has to be connected to some kind of perverted sense of innate doubt deep within. and i'm talking Doubt with a capital D. maybe double D's, if you catch my drift. something that simply takes over the whole of conscious awareness. debilitating some days. but that, my friend , is another story. karma police are on my ass for this one, breath so hot on my neck that it could cook an egg. almost hard boiled.

i am in the PROCESS of engaging all of my talents and interests in the service of this "food thang" and there is still much work to do - but, i have limited my self and thus liberated the Self and all her minions to work through me. or, at least this is the theory... there is much work to do, and with every day that goes by, i am more and more convinced that it shall not be accomplished within one lifetime - how ignorant to think that it could be! and yet, this may have something to do with my tendency to procrastinate: if it can't be started and finished, completed to a certain set of expectations, i am often guilty of not doing anything at all.

thoughts?

come to think of it, this may be my long lost inaugural blog entry, waiting to be born/posted.

yes, i'll do it.

[ed. - and here it is)

~chef

so....the blog, eh?

well, what started with good intentions back before xmas subsequently became delayed by a substantial amount of laziness, moreso a procrastination fed by self-doubt; the doubt that i was interesting enough to be considered. but in truth i find this more or less a false sense of humility tempered only by my desire to make my thoughts known to however big or small an audience this may turn out to be.

can i get more circular than this? watch me.

from another perspective, i know well that writing has served me in the past as a profound source of reflection, even if that reflection simply involves my seeing just how silly hypocritical i can be from the inside out. most of that writing took place in the form of correspondence written to friends and family during my time spent living overseas and, while the letters certainly were addressed to other individuals, i quickly found that i was actually reflecting and writing to myself.  expressing experience through words which "pointed towards" what the machinations of my interior sideshow revealed.

it was during these daily writing exercises that i witnessed some profound moments of insight: caught in the midst of sentence, pen in hand, trapped in some kind of luminious interior cinema. it became a way to objectify what had previously been subject (not that i was necessarily aware of this specifically from the outset). over and over again what had at one time been subject in one moment became the object of the subject of the next. over and over again. at the time though i was simply happy enough that the activity seemed to clear my mind of the chaos by ordering the echoes and mental tangents into some kind of cohesive narrative: a story about myself that i appeared happy enough with to believe. that is, until the story collapsed in a heap of shedded skin, when i first poked through the case of mistaken identity that is the basis of most of our lives. following that, i pretty much stayed away from writing altogether.

so, i have decided to begin again - to use this practice to allow the subject to become object once again. it is a bonus, i suppose, if any one chooses to actually read what shows up in this spotted column. IT IS FOR ME principally - let's be honest about that. BUT, that said, let's be particularly honest about the other side of the coin: that i'd be writing this in a paper bound journal for my eyes only if it were really just for me.  truth be told, i'd love to share with you people what i think, what i do, what impresses itself upon me, all somewhat in the realm of food and frolic. you dig? let's just hope that there's one more space for me there in your rss feeder.

i have been an avid reader of blogs for the past couple of years but have never contributed to the stream of word-flow; i always just seemed pleased enough to consume what others had expelled from their minds with the odd comment thrown in here and there. but the times they are a changin'. i figure that it high time to start putting myself "out there", take a chance, perhaps sound like a consumate goof now and then, share some of myself with those to whom i indirectly owe hour upon hour of great reading material. maybe throw in a recipe or two for all y'all.

DEAL?!

may i first pay tribute to those who have forged this path - if it weren't for you, i might have actually done this much earlier. hah! i've had too much stuff to read to really bother with writing anymore! :-) much love to you:

rommel the cool one, matthew mr.art, wrench the word smith, stoo the hyperbolist, paul the multiple manifest-er, vince the sitter, ottmar the music-man, dan the whole, chris the ND xian mystic. thanks for your efforts, i have thoroughly enjoyed them.

i swear, the next entry is going to have something to do with food.

mad love in a boiling pot of potatoes,

~chef