So I am still learning this blogging thing

Well i just got done writing a nice review of a 8 course meal I had on Friday, but accidentally erased the post and lost it.  So I will try and follow up on that in the future.

Of note on Saturday I made homemade pasta.  For my birthday my wife gave me the attachments to the kitchen aide mixer to make your own pasta.  Comes with a few easy recipes to make for some basic pasta.

I have now made both the basic egg noodle and the light wheat noodle.  Both were super easy and turned out great.

Some things I did learn.  Be careful of going to thin on the pasta.  On my first batch I went to the smallest setting on the pasta roller, figuring I really like an angel hair type pasta.  Made it put it in the pot and because it was so thin it overcooked in about a minute.  It became gluey and basically a liquid.  For the remainder of the batch I went to a thicker setting(4 or 5 if you do have this) and it turned out great.

On the light wheat pasta, I got most of it made, but in the end the last bit started to dry out just too much and I couldn't get it to work.  Was a small amount, so what I made still turned out great. 

Of course it is still easier to go to the store and buy noodles, but this is much more fun and makes it feel like you accomplished something.  My wife makes her own large batch of marinara, so it was nice to have a meal of spaghetti that was not store bought sauce and store bought noodles.  All I had to do was heat of the marinara, brown some ground turkey and make the noodles. 

Anyway, hopefully I will get back to writing the review of the night out at Biga on the Banks.  Also made a phyllo wrapped stuffed chicken from a Greek cookbook I have.  Tastes great and I tend to get good reviews, so look for that info coming soon.

The Beginning

I suppose the title can be taken in one of two ways.  It is the beginning of my blog and this post will relay my personal story of a beginner foodie.  I suppose one would have to understand what a foodie is, though there are many different ideas of what it could mean.  One definition would be: A person who has an ardent or refined interest in food; a gourmet(Boston Globe).

I consider myself an amateur foodie.  I think my interest in food is ardent, but not sure how refined it is yet.  But I am working on it.  I enjoy trying new restaurants, trying new recipes and learning whatever I can about food.  My hope for my blog is to find others like me and share thoughts on restaurants, various recipes and even discussions on my other addiction reality TV shows(focusing on the food related ones: yes my favorite show is the Top Chef series).

In the beginning I was raised in your good all-American household.  We ate dinners at the dinner table together, we ate your staples of Macaroni and Cheese, spaghetti, etc.  My Mom was a great cook and I loved everything we ate.  Not too sure how adventurous we were as eaters, but what we ate was good.  We went out to eat but typically to your chain type restaurants.  I enjoyed them(and i still do, sorry foodies).  I went off to college, made some spaghetti here or there, lived on the basics like the majority of college students.  Towards the end of my college years I began to experiment more and more with recipes.  Trying things that sounded good.  I think my first dish that I made a staple of my cooking was stuffed Manicotti.   It is probably the dish that won over my future wife.

As I married and settled down I found someone who also enjoyed trying new recipes, trying new restaurants or sitting in front of the TV with me and watching some cooking show.  But to be honest until we moved to San Antonio I don't think we really took that big leap to being on the road to foodie status(future topic).

I tend to enjoy cooking new recipes rather than old ones.  I suppose I get bored by the ones I have already made. So i do try to be a little adventurous.  Recently I made a phylo shell with prosciutto, Parmesan cheese and cantaloupe caviar.  Yes I used some molecular gastronomy and made cantaloupe juice into a caviar.  Hopefully in a future post I will have pictures and talk about how that went.

So before I ramble on too much I want to thank you for taking time to read this blog and I hope you can relate and enjoy.

Be on the lookout for the next post.  My wife and I and another couple are going to Biga on the Banks here in San Antonio for an 8 course tasting menu while sitting at the chef's table.  Hopefully I can remember what we ate as the courses will be paired with a glass of wine.  Owner and Chef Bruce Auden is nominated for James Beard Southwest Chef.  James Beard nomination is about as big as you can get in American chefdom.