My former wife was burdened by my love of food and frequent thinking and talking about food, which some may consider a compulsion, it was her that encouraged me to start a food blog or contribute to one.
But I resisted until one day I went ahead and did it, thinking it could have saved my marriage. It didn’t.
I am what is legitimately now called an “accomplished home chef” and my first career was as a baker, working in bakeries and restaurants. I was trained by a Master German Baker beginning when I was 15 and worked for Fritz Jansen until I was 19, when I moved to Aspen, CO and worked at Little Cliff’s Bakery. I worked in restaurants as a bread, pastry and dessert baker and was around some accomplished pro chefs when I lived and worked in Aspen. My last restaurant job was when I moved to Boulder to start college as a 24-year-old freshman and I got a job as a baker at a “Good Earth” restaurant, or some such name. But the early AM hours were killing me, in combination with morning school and night studying. Something had to give so I left the food business for afternoon retail work to get me through the rest of college.
Does this add up for me to be a natural blogger? Not so fast.
After a little research I found many food blogs, even awards for bloggers from Saveur, among others. Probably a marketing tactic (called reader engagement, like most social media; the word engagement used to be used nearly exclusively to describe a commitment to wed, but I am so old school).
Then I remembered my first book idea (still incomplete!) after my first trip to Spain, tentatively called ‘Good Eats.’ I was on a train from Barcelona to Valencia where I was to catch a ferry to Mallorca (which I did, but just a day later than planned) when our train broke down. Coincidentally and beneficially, the train came to rest next to a village. We were about 40 miles south of Valencia. The conductor told us passengers that we would be a few hours here so we might as well get off the train and visit the village.
The village was an old Spanish village and I don’t recall its name. You had to walk up a cobblestone road to get to the village. It was hot. It was hot on the train even when it was moving and the only relief from the heat was to pull all of the windows down in the train. Once the train stopped you wanted to flee, it was so hot. It was also hot walking up that road to the village in the afternoon sun. I think I felt like Hemingway walking toward the arena for an afternoon bull fight.
Not far inside the village I spotted a doorway to a square, stone building, with long rows of beads as a door. This is a genuine village, I thought, with a beaded door so that air could come in the building but flies would be discouraged. Isn’t it curious how it actually works? I mean a fly can slip between a row of vertically hung beads, given the size of flies and the gaps between the strung beads. But they don’t. Above the door a word said “Bar” and that was enough for me. A cold beer sounded heavenly.
Once inside I ordered the beer and drank it rather quickly. When the waitress came over to ask if I would have another, she also asked if I wanted food. I asked what they had. She said ham sandwiches. Eating a ham sandwich with a second cold beer inside a cool stone building on a hot September afternoon 40 miles from Valencia with no place else to go was exactly what transpired next.
What happened after that was transformative. When asked by others, as I sometimes am, “how did I become so interested, involved and active in cooking, eating and talking about food?” Normally attribute it to my mother, a modest cook with a big heart. But she made great Italian food and I was a half-Italian (and half-Irish) boy. I cooked with my mom. The red gravy (meat sauce), hand-made raviolis and hand-made sausages were our favorite family meals and I mastered Italian while still a teenager.
I realize now, however, that it wasn’t my mom or her cooking that made me love food and cooking. It was that afternoon in Spain when the dark-haired Spanish woman with perfectly tanned and toned legs brought me a second beer and a ham sandwich. The sandwich was small. The bread was the size of a large dinner roll. There was no spread or condiments on the bread. The only ingredient inside the bread were a few slices of ham and a thick slice of tomato. That was it. And one bite did it, sort of like when you meet someone and it is love at first sight, or “you had me at hello” as the saying goes, which to me is one of the best lines ever expressed in English and no, I don’t think it is a cliché.
That ham sandwich in Spain, I would later learn, was made from the infamous “Iberico” pigs that free-range and feast on acorns. Consequently, the pork is all-world by virtue of the black Iberian pigs’ environment and not surprisingly, what they eat or are fed. The sandwich transformed me from being interested in good food to becoming passionate about it. For years I have been saying “life is too short to eat mediocre food” and I mean it. It started in September, 1989, 40 miles south of Valencia.
When the 1990 recession hit I lost my income because I was in a sales commission industry and one day the industry was fine and the next day it was dead. I started freelance writing, pouring beer at a brew pub and doing neighborhood handyman work and chores to get by. I contacted an editor at Bon Appetite and pleaded my case to be one of their contributing writers. I sent proof that I had a degree in journalism (I still have it!). I sent some of clips, including one that published in the Boulder Daily Camera when I interned with a features editor on the daily newspaper while earning my degree at CU. That clip’s headline was called “Taming the Game” and I had done a story on how local chefs were serving venison, elk, goose and other game on their menus and how they took the gaminess out of the meat. Now I think, why would you want to take the genuine flavor out of the meat? But that’s another matter.
I received a very polite rejection slip from the Bon Appetite editor. But I persisted and sent more clips and another letter. The phone rang one day and it was the editor, who could not have been sweeter in telling me why she couldn’t hire me to contribute to her magazine. She spoke in the same tone as a would-be lover, explaining why she couldn’t give you her love.
“You seem very capable, Gary, and certainly enthusiastic. And your clips are solid. But we just can’t publish a person that is unknown to the food business. It’s just too much of a risk for us,” said the editor in her sweet tone.
She could have been saying, if I was pining for her, “Ah that’s awfully nice that you feel this way about me and you are a sweet man. And while I like you a great deal and hope we can remain friends, I’m sorry but I just don’t have the same feelings that you have.”
Rejected, and understanding why, I gave up that pursuit and got a journalism job at a business weekly. Immersed in my new career, I forgot about food writing, even though I remained serious about cooking. About that time I took a trip with friends to Santa Fe for a cooking class. I brought home a new passion for New Mexican food. For several years in the 1990s I barbecued a turkey for Thanksgiving, which I stuffed with lemons, limes and onions and rubbed the bird with a delightful spice package with the flavors of New Mexico. Served with creamy polenta and sautéed poblano peppers, it is a splendid meal.
Which brings me to now. So I am going to start a blog but it won’t just be about some cool dish me or a friend made. It will be some of that but mostly, I am going to talk about other people’s food – Pro and Amateur alike. I’m going to take food pictures. I am going to interview cooks and chefs, and take their pictures. I will write food stories. Some my own, and some other people’s food stories. For example, I will likely write about how we came to love Snake River beef from Idaho and in particular, its New York strip steaks. Look at these!
I may write about the history of food, or how the expression for corn came to be, “knee high by the 4th of July.” There is plenty of other food-related lore. I don’t know that I will get political about food but everything is open game, no pun intended.
You probably get the drift by now. Food stories. With all the foodies out there today, I think there is a ready-made audience.
Grilled Bourbon Chicken with Strawberry Rhubarb pie for dessert, anyone?
Blisteredonions.com
Boldly Flavored Food Stories
Because Life is Too Short to Eat Mediocre Food