The Culinary Tales

In September of 2009, I moved from my small NC city to take a teaching job in Washington D.C.

This turned out to be a bad idea. Well, not the moving. Just the teaching job in D.C.

Shortly thereafter, I found myself unemployed and living with family, dead broke in a city where I know very few people. I needed something to do with myself to prevent me from simply sitting around the house watching Law & Order in between doing job applications, so I decided that "something" would be baking.

I've done a bit of baking before, mostly under the tutelage of my mother. My mother is a master baker who's been in the kitchen for forty-some years. The top of her cheesecake never splits, her bread always rises, her biscuits are always light and fluffy, and she has never overcooked a meringue or burned a cookie.

I am not my mother.

I regularly commit fantastic kinds of kitchen-fail, usually while making a spectacular mess. Sometimes I'll make something that turns out beautiful and perfect...but it usually took a couple of tries before I got there. So, expect tales of "and this is how I completely screwed up this here before I got it right..." and such.

It's also important to note that when moving up to D.C., I moved in with my uncle, aunt, and three cousins. My aunt and uncle don't cook for fun much at all, which means we're rather lacking in equipment (you'll be introduced to That 70's Mixer shortly) and I am the authority on how to cook things. The cousins are age 17, 13, and 6, and alternate between being incredibly harsh food critics and picky eaters to gushing endlessly about anything I make. Really, there's no telling with these guys.

So...this is the chronicle of my cooking adventures, plus the occasional tale of my zany family and my terrified attempts to navigate the D.C. Metro Area. TAH-DAH!!