I figured you all, my readers, might like to know a bit about me, which is only fair. My name is Doug. I am the oldest of 7 siblings. I grew up on the planet earth, in North America, in the USA in the Northeast reigon known as New England, in the state of Connecticut, right on the cost of The Long Island Sound in the city of New Haven, (as I wrote that I could just picture google earth zooming in) even though my family has roots in both Alabama on my mother's side. And North Carolina on my father's. My earliest memories involve food. Sitting in the kitchen while my grandmother cooked, with me smelling, tasteing, eating everything from her biscuts to pig's feet, collard greens and chitterlings. And some of the few memories I have of my father are me standing in a chair with a wooden spoon stirring tomato sauce for chicken fricassee.

In high school, I thought my first career would be on stage in theater and it was my first love. And I threw myself into it without thinking for 3 and a half years. And I loved every minute of it. I did everything for classic greek drama, to Shakespeare all they way up to fairly recent stuff, like a play by Christopher Durang, as well as a couple of musicals. But my lightbulb moment came when I started cooking stuff to school to share, and found more and more that I enjoyed being in the kitchen.

So it happend in 2000 when I graduated high school I went to culinary school. And I didn't go to the typical places. I went to this little tiny private college in New York's Adirondack par. The name of that school was Paul Smiths College. www.paulsmiths.edu I fell in love with the picturesque view over the lake. But it was there that my love of food became a passion for good food. From there it's graduation with a bachelors degree in culinary arts and service management to a blur of working all over New England.

Let's fast forward to a couple years of ago. I quit my job as a kitchen manager and stepped into a job as a cashier/ salad prep guy at a small kiosk in a hospital. So I have gotten bored and decided to share my experiences and love of food with all of you. And hopefully inspire you to love food. And love cooking good food as much as I do.