Food for thought

Welcome to my blog. Why write about food you may ask? Well, here's just a few of the reasons.

I have vivid memories of being a child and walking through my Italian grandparents’ gardens and feeling so at home among the rows of tomatoes and wine grapes. To this day, I can’t stand to eat a fig, but just the mention of the preserve makes me tear up thinking about my grandfather burying his fig tree under layers of leaves and plastic to help it survive the winters.

It was always a treat to skip school and stay home to help preserve and can peaches, tomatoes and strawberry jam with my grandmother. And the cookies…oh the cookies. Maybe that’s why I became a journalist, from years of helping make and frost hundreds of Italian cookies in preparation for the holiday season, all lain out on the local newspaper, The Palladium-Times. Food was a very important part of my upbringing, and the centerpiece to all family gatherings.

One of my first jobs was in a kitchen, ‘slinging haddock’ at Cahill’s Fish Market, located on the Oswego River. From there, you can connect the restaurants like dots in my job history, from Italian food, to Mediterranean, to sushi and even burgers and pizza. For years, I was a salad chick and proud of it.

Food is a huge part of my life. I think about it constantly, and wring my hands over not doing enough to eat naturally, organically, or in a way that leaves the smallest footprint on our precious Mother Earth. There’s nothing more comforting than spending hours slaving in the kitchen to create a meal with friends and family. It’s the only kind of science I’ve ever been able to dig my teeth into!

I liken writing a story to making a cake. You have many ingredients, that when combined and baked together, make a delicious treat. When you bite into the cake, it can be easy to forget about the individual ingredients and labor of love that went into creating it. Just like when you read a story…if it’s well written, you become so absorbed reading it that you forget about all the creativity, research and interviews that went into making the story.

In short, Diaries of a Foodie is just that…many ingredients combined and baked together to create stories about food. I want to create a place where we can all talk about food, whether that is great recipes and restaurants, interesting articles about food topics and trends, or experiences we've had over food. I hope this blog will inspire you to respond and share your own food for thought. Happy reading!