About Me:
Milano July 2010
“To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.” Santayana
This is the inaugural day of my food and garden blog, called Kitchen Inspirational. It is the culmination of a long-term dream of mine to be a writer, well, in more formal terms, anyway, as I have been a writer for my own pleasure all of my life and did a substantive amount of writing in my former corporate life, many moons ago and, pre-kids. The title is meant to be a catch-all title for all of the day-dreaming I do about all things food, and, intersecting with food, my love of gardens-food, herb and flower and how they inspire me every day. So, sometimes I will digress into the worlds of flower gardening and other seasonal plants, foliage and fauna. These are the topics which swirl around in my head from sun up to bedtime and, sometimes, yes, beyond, even into my dreams.
In preparation for my current ventures in the food world, I attended Pastry and Baking school at ICE in New York City after my youngest child left for college. While I have been cooking and baking for most of my 57 years and grew up under the tutelage of some well-healed Italian American cooks and bakers, I felt I lacked some semblance of “street cred” and embarked off to a “real cooking school”. I finished my classroom training in June and my internship in December, 2011. I now have a diploma from ICE in Pastry and Baking Arts. That experience, in one short phrase, was a blast!
I have to confess a couple of things at the start. First, I am, for some unknown anthropological reason, one of those descendants of Italian-American heritage, who feel intense pleasure in the process of feeding others – sort of, you know, the image of the little old Italian lady standing over you and urging, “mangia, mangia”. I also arise every morning with a particular impulse to bake something. And, yes, I do mean every morning. Thus, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about food combinations and recipes, mostly inspired by the time of year and weather.
Finally, I confess, that my stepping out into the internet world and sharing my thoughts and feelings about my own personal obsessions is the result of a life-long discovery process, one fraught with starts and stops, but, one mostly guided by my life-long infatuation with words, food and gardening. I will share more of my self-discovery processes as we go along as well as memories of those who have inspired me along the way. Many thanks for joining me on my maiden voyage of internet-based writing and my continuing voyage through the trials and joys of this life.
My “About Me” page would not be complete without my heart-felt thanks to the person who, so kindly, volunteered to help me set up this site. Without him, I would be still running in place and trying to figure out how to get to square 1. So, thank you to Bill Wraith, a person without whose generosity of time, technical expertise and patience, I would be, absolutely nowhere. Thank you Bill. I will be eternally grateful and, if I actually thought I could bake better bread than you, I would be gifting you loaves of bread from now till kingdom-come.
March 26, 2012
Provincetown MA 6/14
East Hampton 5/16/15