The Tentative Beginning

I've already kept my feet firmly in my mouth in order to get pictures for this blog because I'd first intended to write about the Punjabi Deli and Grocery -- which I will, soon. I also know that a million other people have written about it, I'm pretty late on the bandwagon, but that's another matter.

I realized how important photos are to food columns. The food process is, of course, is cerebral and sensual, so to ignore one makes the whole thing more bland in the telling. We all want to see sumptuous, textured pictures that radiate flavored steam onto our computer monitors.

There is a plethora of food bloggers who like to do this to us readers, to post almost masturbatory pictures of food, recipes which are deceptively simple but are all about impossible ingredients -- special types of flour, baking powder, fruit from THIS or THAT season -- and because we are suckers for the pictures, we buy those things. If I had a camera I could show you how disastrous some of those attempts were. This is why I'm most interested in following and keeping my eye out for THE magical recipe I can eat over and over again, that won't have me scooping volcanic goo from the bottom of a pan.

This is not to say that I'm a bad cook. I'm not. I love cooking and I've taken the time to master the things I feel I can reproduce on a day to day basis. These include things like tomato rice, grilled vegetable sandwiches, black bean, tomato, corn and bitter gourd soups.

I even have the paneer butter masala recipe that I've inherited from my aunt who is one of the best cooks I've ever had the privilege to meet. It's a pity that she doesn't like cooking because she feels it is a necessary skill, and not something she'd "rather not be known for". But it's hard to begrudge a gift if it involves aloo parathas that dissolve in a matter of seconds and leave a cloud of cilantro to explode afterwards, or the "fiber optics curry" -- cabbage, cabbage and more cabbage -- explicitly designed to counteract the constant constipation I suffered during my last trip to India.

The thing is, whether or not I can cook well or not, I like food. I don't have a camera so this inhibits my ability to take pictures, but I will try where I can. This computer has a camera, which I keep forgetting.

So the motto of this blog will be the following: it'll have food I like. There will be stories, because where does the experience of food go without a good story? And there will be pictures, but not as often as I like, because I find that it's generally difficult to get pictures without having a camera.

Can this work?