Everything's a salad! I swear!

I have always loved food. Good food. I was lucky and grew up with a dad who would hang out in the kitchen as a hobby. He had a full spice cabinet that smelled like secrets and faraway places. From an early age, I wanted to know what they did and why they did it. I would watch him move in front of the stove. He was a calm and measured man; every move he made was deliberate. He would let me watch and learn while making barbecue sauce, home fries, chili, swiss steak, or any of the many things he made for my mom and me. Once I had learned how to NOT burn myself with the stove, he allowed me to start experimenting. I made some awful things when I was 10, but a long time has passed and I have had many years to tweak and develop the food I make. I even live by a food philosophy...

My best friend and mega-awesome-super-lady, Jenny, shares my love of food. We have done a lot of eating together over the years, and we are good at it. One late evening, we were tucking into a meal at Trumps, the best all-night diner in central Iowa, when I had a revelation. We had just come from exercising and I was feeling guilty about eating this beautiful fried fish sitting in front of me, when I was overcome with inspiration-everything is a salad! If you can somehow trace your food back to plant form, it has to be a salad. Cheeseburger? Salad. Veggies aside, the bun comes from flour which comes from wheat which is a plant. The beef comes from a cow which ate corn or grass (I hope!) which are plants. Ketchup? Tomatoes. Plant. Salad. This rule can be applied to almost everything. I'm not sure if this is an original idea; so few ideas are. But when this idea floated into my mind, it was fresh and liberating and invigorating. Jenny thought so, too, and we have embraced the salad mindset since 2006.

A few words for the health-obsessed: This blog may not be for you. I love fresh ingredients. I love "healthy" foods, because lots of "healthy" food is tasty food! I believe health is important, and I acknowledge the power of portion size and exercise. But this blog is not about losing weight or cutting calories or addressing the obesity epidemic. This blog is about making, eating, and enjoying good food. A lot of people have given Paula Deen a heavy dose of crap lately for loving butter and being diabetic, but I don't ever remember her presenting herself as making anything but great home cooking. I hope to make some tasty food and tell my adventures here without telling anyone how they should eat it.

My dad has been gone for many years now. Sometimes I think I have forgotten what he smelled like or the sound of his voice. When I really miss him, I put my apron on and I look for him in the kitchen. I have noticed that my hands move like his at the chopping board, and I stick my tongue out when I am concentrating on a difficult dish like he always would. But these are just habits; a style I learned from watching him when I was a kid. No, I always find him when I open the spice cabinet. It's there that I smell the past and the possibility of future food, and I am cooking with him once again.

So, welcome! I promise to always try hard to give you tasty ideas and to publish my real mistakes so you don't have to make them. Let's make something SO good today we have to talk about it tomorrow. Aprons on, people!