The Unreal Meal

Hello, and welcome to The Unreal Meal!  I’m Annie, and I’ll be your hostess throughout your time here.  A bit about me and a bit about what TUM is all about:

While I’ve been cooking much of my life, I’m definitely an amateur chef (I’m not entirely sure I’m even qualified to use that term, mind you) with no real training.  I worked in the kitchen of my dorm for a year in college, then again as a prep/line cook in a small family-owned restaurant in Akron, OH for about three years.  Of all the things I’ve done since then, it remains one of my favorite jobs.  Now I cook nightly for myself, my boyfriend, and our two roommates, and on occasion for various friends (when I can convince them to make the trek to Brooklyn).  I constantly toy with the idea of culinary school, but it’s so cost prohibitive that I haven’t really worked out an effective way of making that happen.  Yet.

I have a fierce passion for food, and I spend most of my free time reading any and everything I can set my eyes upon.  For a home cook, I know a lot and can accomplish a lot in my own kitchen, but of course you never stop learning (a great part of the reason I want to go to culinary school).  Learning is part of why I’m embarking on this project, as I truly feel that immersing yourself in something is a great way to know more about it.

As for my philosophies about food, I think that people take it for granted far too often.  That can mean that we ignore where it comes from, that we don’t care about what we eat, or that we simply can’t be bothered to take an interest even in eating, much less cooking.  I’ve heard people go so far as to lament the fact that they need to eat, that life would be so much more efficient if they could somehow devise a way to obtain sustenance without having to stop for a meal.  That’s something that I’ll never understand, but everyone has different interests, so I’ll try not to judge (too much).

For me, I truly believe that food is something to be enjoyed and respected, that it can play many roles in our lives.  It evokes memories, sustains us, it can be seductive, whimsical, or even transcendent, and it doesn’t have to be a ridiculous creation of haute cuisine to be any of those things (not that I don’t love that, too — everything has its place).

Most of all, though, I think that food is special, and there is something amazingly powerful and creative about being able to start with things that are mere ingredients and combine them in a way that produces delicious results.  The best part is, it’s possible to do that at any time with anything you eat, from simple scrambled eggs to a formal seven course dinner.  That’s my aim here, to prove that every meal can truly be unreal.