Yet another food blog

In the inspiring steps of Julie & Julia and a thousand and one TV chefs out there, I feel compelled to add yet another pollutant to the world of blogosphere.

I am not going to cook every single dish in a book. Mostly because I never like every single recipe in a cooking book. I do have many cooking books. In fact, there is an entire book shelf in my kitchen, filled with recipes. I never considered myself a cook -- I resent the idea of "having something on the table after a day of work" or "It's dinner time, let's eat". For me, food is more than just the fuel that powers my body. It must be delicious and there must be something good on TV to watch or some pleasant company to interact with before I even consider eating. I would never "just grab something" or eat in the kitchen. For me, it is an experience, a joy in and of itself. Besides, food tastes faaaar better when you're hungry :)

I must define my constraints:

• A couple of years ago I felt very overweight and I joined WeightWatchers. I was very successful and lost nearly 20 kilos to date. I went from size 14 to size 8 (New Zealand sizes). The non-gimmicky calories in/calories out science-based concepts of WW really connected with me. I used to have "Cheesecake days" to test the programme, and it still worked. So I am conscious of not eating too much, but I would never restrict myself to "healthy" recipes that in reality mean "rabbit food". After all, it's the portion sizes that really matter.
• I recently had a change in personal circumstances and no longer have as high an income at my disposal. And most of the income that I do have will need to be ring-fenced towards my mortgage. While I am aware and very anxious of it, I still do spend ungodly amounts of money on food. But it also means I am not going to cook 70 dishes in one week just to show to the world what I can do. I like doing this because I like blogging and I like the process of cooking, but at the end it's still my meal. I often cook things that serve 4-6 people and then subdivide it into portions in plastic containers and freeze them. I have a stand alone upright freezer that has drawers (as opposed to those ridiculous "dump everything into this skip bin" freezers that you can never find anything in). It took me a while to find it, and it's amazing -- food doesn't go off and I always have something to eat when I don't feel like cooking. Plus, lunches!
• My laziness comes and goes and I get bored easily. At the moment I enjoy the process of cooking itself. I find Chef Academy more fun to watch than, say, MasterChef or Iron Chef, because it's more about the process than the creation of recipes. I don't really come up with new things, I like following instructions and basking in the glory when I get it right.
• I like interaction with people. It's very likely that I might find this blogging business largely dissatisfying and forget to update it. Oops.

With all that preamble out of the way, Onwards!