This blog is loosely organized around a hobby of mine, preserving and canning food. It is, however, not limited to this topic.

I started canning (on my own, I had been helping my mother from the day I can remember) in the summer of 2003, and it was a casual and incidental start. But once started, I could not stop. I have always been intense about my interests, but I never really had a "hobby" until the canner came in the mail. I find it deeply satisfying to take beautiful food, give it a longer life and transform it in the process. I guess it is my way of struggling with the ephemeral, and probably it is no coincidence that I come to this at a period in my life when mommy trap meets midlife crisis.

Preserving food is taking cooking one step further. It is more raw and more refined at the same time. People have been doing this for ages, of course, and mostly born out of necessity, struggling with an overabundant harvest, a tight budget, and limited access to fresh food during the winter. I live in Manhattan where you can get any type of food, any time of the year, but I see nothing odd in putting up my own. For once, it tastes so much better than anything store-bought and is still cheaper than comparable organic gourmet stuff. In addition, I can be confident, what the ingredients are, and what went into making it.

But my passion for preserving food is not the only reason I started this blog. I used to enjoy writing and I thought I could do it reasonably well. But somewhere between changing diapers and trying to maintain a semblance of a professional life, I lost the knack. So first and foremost, the point of this blog is to get me writing again. I hope that doing this in a semi-public forum will give me incentive to keep at it and prevent me from too much self-indulgence.

I am keeping this blog under a webname although I do not intend to post anything I wouldn't be comfortable putting my name under it. I am a very private person and want this to be a place where I can be free of others' preconceptions of myself. However, I am not paranoid, and if anyone thinks they know me or are curious, feel free to send me an e-mail.