Life Changing Experiences

Obviously it would not compare to meeting my wife in 1999 or the births of my three children, but in terms of food, trying pork carnitas for the first time was truly a life changing experience.

It was a warm July evening in New York. My wife and I were at her annual family reunion. There is always great food at these reunions, but when her uncle, who is a chef, brought out the pork carnitas tacos with a tangy cilantro salsa...well, it was love at first bite.

Since then, I have made...or have tried to make...carnitas to equal the flavor I tasted that day. While I haven't quite succeeded in equaling the chef's creation, my carnitas have been darn tasty. Encouraging. Having inspired a coworker to make carnitas, her's were just as good as mine and possibly even better. More encouraging.

Perhaps just as important an experience as tasting pork carnitas for the first time was watching Rick Bayless work his magic on Top Chef Masters. Rick is extremely charismatic and his show, Mexico: One Plate at a Time, is captivating. The cookbook, which shares the same title as the show, doesn't just provide recipes but also insight into the culture behind the delicious food. I can't wait to get to one of his restaurants to experience the food he has spent so many years studying. But for now, I have his cookbook, and I am ready to dive in head first.

Since the Julie & Julia Project, I'm sure there have been many copycat blogs. My blog will be similar in scope, albeit lacking the intensity of completing 500+ complex French recipes in 365 days. But I will try (emphasis on the word TRY) to complete all the recipes in this cookbook. It might not be within the next year, I might even skip a few weeks here and there, and occassionally I might even throw in a recipe of my own, but eventually I'll TRY to get to all of them. I'll stick with the basics at first, and as I progress...IF I progress...I'll try to tackle some of the more complex recipes.

I hope at some point at least a few people will read and follow this blog. But if that doesn't happen, it's ok, this is just an outlet for me and a way to track my progress, successes, and failures. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it.

-Dan