Genesis and Rebirth

See...here's the thing...my dad was a chef for a good portion of my childhood. He switched careers when I was about 9, but he still retained his cooking superiority. My point is that I grew up eating pretty well. Definitely better than the other kids in my neighborhood. I didn't understand it at first. I thought the stuff I ate was the same stuff everyone ate. It wasn't until I had been invited to several of my friend's houses for dinner or sleepovers, and chewed my way through numerous rubbery steaks and flavorless, overcooked scrambled eggs that I began to realize that I was in a special situation. Unfortunately, I kind of got stuck there. Being young and therefore, stupid, it never occurred to me to ask why. Why did some things taste better than others? Why did the same thing taste differently when made by different people? These are easy answers now, but I'm still a bit mad at myself for not bothering to consider these things then.

It all changed one day, while on a family vacation. We went to Fripp Island, South Carolina with some relatives for a week in the summer. I guess I must have been 14 or so. We were out to dinner one night, and I suppose I just got fed up with hamburgers. So when it was my turn to order I selected a grilled salmon fillet. I looked up at my parents for some kind of reaction. Seeing no objection in their body language, I sat back and awaited my fate.

My seafood experience up to this point had been to say the least, rather limited. Tuna casserole, fried cod, and popcorn shrimp mostly. I didn't have the slightest idea what to expect. I remember it coming out; charred, pink, and glistening. I took a bite. Fireworks. It was unlike anything I had ever tasted. It combined all the wondrous grilled characteristics of a steak, but with the delicate flavors of a fish. The flavor was ethereal. Suddenly I started thinking about all the other things I must be missing. I was reborn to a whole new world of opportunity.

Unfortunately I got sidetracked. High school happened, along with everything that goes with it. Sports, hormones, a new interest in the fairer sex, and studies put me back into a rut of culinary mediocrity. Then the time consuming, income free lifestyle of college.

So here I am, 27, comfortably in a career and with enough disposable income to explore a bit. I've been back on the gourmet horse for a little over a year now, and have decided to start writing about it. So, come with me, as I record a journey from novice foodie to full blown connoisseur.