Dinner Diary

As a child, whenever my mom cooked us something that we really enjoyed, my dad would jokingly say that she would probably never make it again.  He was usually right, and I think I may have inherited this habit.  

Drew and I cook about 2 or 3 times a week and I bake about once a week, yet we rarely revisit the things we have made.  Brace yourself, because all that is about to change.  During dinner the other day, in between mouthfuls, Drew said "You know, this is really good, but I'm not sure that I would ever think to make it again."  This is a common refrain, and I just nodded my head like I normally do.  But then he said, "You know, you should blog about everything we cook so we have a record and can return to our favorites."  

Well, I immediately vetoed that idea.  

But not for long.  

I think you can see where this is going.        

Today, I resolved to keep a dinner diary on my blog.  You, lucky reader, will be privy to everything we cook for dinner and brunch (we do this every Sunday), and everything I bake (don't be offended if I don't share).  I won't post every day- we always have leftovers, and you don't need to see those.  I'm not exactly sure what my vision is- I anticipate sharing pictures, reviewing recipes and cookbooks, providing meal ideas- but I do know exactly what my dinner diary will not do:

I will share helpful hints here and there, but I will not teach you how to cook.  I'm just not qualified to teach you how to julienne carrots or chiffonade basil.      

I will always cite my recipe sources, and if a recipe comes from the internet, I will provide the link.  If I make any adjustments, I'll let you know.  But I'm not going to repost a recipe, or worse, make some tweaks and pass it off as my own.  That is my biggest pet peeve, and even when people state that it is adapted from another source and cite that source, I still consider this some sort of plagiarism.  And in my line of work, that is a huge no-no.  

I do not plan to post any recipes, not even original ones.  I am not a recipe developer and I have no time to become one.  I'm just an avid home cook/baker who wants someone else to go to the trouble of figuring how much baking soda to add to a cake or how long to simmer marinara sauce.  I love trying out new recipes, but I don't have the patience to develop my own.  

I'm not sure if I have a mission beyond recording what we cook and bake, but I guess a secondary goal of the dinner diary is to show that vegetarian food is easy, accessible, and most of all, really tasty.  As you may know, Drew is a vegetarian and while I'm not, we always cook vegetarian and keep a vegetarian home.  Sometimes we make meals that are intended to be vegetarian and other times we adapt non-vegetarian recipes.  You will see that a vegetarian diet does not relegate one to nothing but deprivation and salads.  We eat a variety of foods, and I like to think we eat really well.  Stay tuned.