Who are you? What do you do? Where are you from? Since we have a few newer swappers...

M

michael-in-phoenix

Well-known member
...I was wondering if it might be time to re-introduce ourselves?

I am a mid-forties Husband and Dad of two terrific boys, ages 12 & 10. My wife and I will celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary tomorrow. I married waaaay out of my league.

I am a business owner, and as my main business I buy and sell closeouts, overstocks and surplus merchandise and food. I have been doing this since 1994, and I dabble in real estate. My first love is my God, and His Son Jesus Christ.

My wife and my boys and the rest of my family come next, and that's where cooking comes in. I love to cook for family and friends, and feel that it is a very important factor in developing a strong family identity.

I've been posting on the old swap (epi) and this board since March of 1996. I love this place. It is everything we dreamed of at Epicurious, and then some. Mimi is my hero.

Peace,

Michael

 
Michael,

I can't believe that the boys are that old already.....it is as the children get older that I realise how time is slipping by! Still so many recipes out there to try, Lol!
hugs j

 
My story is old hat but I still pinch myself at the route our lives have taken.....

I (we) were all born in Africa. I, in the deepest darkest part, the rest in the South.
We traveled extensively through Africa over the years.
I married a most wonderful, gentle man who has not a clue in the kitchen...well, he can make a decent scrambled egg...and now is quite a fundi at BBQs (braaing) as long as the food has been prepared!
We have 3 sprogs who are all grown up now. We built a yacht and decide to go cruising. Unfortunately I never got my sea legs and so we ended up playing around the Caribbean..down and up as far as America's eastern seaboard. Lived on the yacht for 15 years!!!
We seem to have ended up ashore on one of those idyllic islands in the sun.
All 3 sprogs are still near us, two of them are involved in yachts (mega-yacht captains, sailing teachers, dive shops) and the 3rd is studying architecture at university...we have two grandie-sprogs now too who are 7 and 9 years old. (The older is already excellent in the kitchen.)
All three and their respective "better-halves", are fabulous cooks. So we have feasts when-ever we are together.(Which is often.)
I trained as a draughtsman, art teacher and chef...used to sell my paintings (mainly water-colours) and had a small landscaping business. Gardening is my passion.
My interest in food started when I was 3 years old and has never waned. I have been a chef for years on yachts and ashore but am now more involved with tourism.
I wish I could write, it just seems to flow once I start...but when I seriously try to put memories down on paper everthing becomes stilted.

 
Great idea Michael...

I am a 43 years old. Did I just type that??? Just had a birthday and hard to accept I turned another year older. I have 3 daughters. Their ages are 19, 17 and 10. I have been married for 22 years.

I live in IL, about an hour from St. Louis. My husband and I own a pharmacy.

I love to cook. I enjoy trying new recipes. I am at my happiest entertaining family and friends in our home.

Jill

 
Lol! Gretchen .....

and along those lines....no pension schemes and high insurances......medical is begining to worry me as old age is coming up. Life is fun and we've been blessed with the ability to take all opportunities...I sometimes wonder if staying in the safety of our former and very comfortable lifestyle ???? but then we would never have had/seen/done/been/experienced such amazing stuff and all our family are still doing it with us.

 
I first came to Gail's when I was cutting up and throwing out old Bon Appetit magazines. I was

looking for a recipe in a fold out in one of the magazines that called for turkey, blue cheese and peanut butter...I never did find it, whatever year that was...I spent a LONG time in the archives copying recipes and watching new postings before I posted for the first time.

My dad owned his own restaurant; I must have inherited his love of good flavors. I'm very thankful for my Christian heritage. Jesus is my Savior and God is an awesome God and Creator!

My husband and I will celebrate 38 years of marriage in a couple weeks. He will take an early retirement next year and continue enjoying playing chess.

My greatest job was at the police deparment. Now I'm a stock trader as well as a homemaker. I enjoy cross-stitch, knitting, quilting and taking pictures of my cats. I have a small herb garden and enjoy Pilate exercises.

I enjoy cooking but I absolutely love to make pies. When we have friends for dinner, curiously I always end up trying new recipes on them. I've been asked to be a personal chef to 2 familes but declined; it's enough to take care of just us 2.

 
I believe in giving credit where credit is due, and for those of us who really...

...are addicted to the 'community', you are certainly 'hero material'!

It would have been tragic to lose what we have here.

Michael

 
Okay, I'll bite. I discovered this group in 1996...

and was pretty active for about a year. At the time I was newly married and needed to learn how to cook for DH. After my second child was born I pretty much abandoned the forum and any attempts to learn to be a really good cook. I just didn't feel like I had the time to cook, and never did (still don't) have the knack of being able to whip up something delicious in 30 minutes or less. To top this off, DH likes very simple meals, and doesn't appreciate it when I attempt something different with exotic flavors -- very discouraging. When my son was two I started working full-time as a web designer and about the only thing I could make well in the kitchen was cookies, but I was really good at those.

Now my 3 boys are getting older (the youngest is 4), and I work part time, so I have a little bit of time to cook something more than Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and frozen pizzas (I am exaggerating here, but only slightly). I rediscovered this group only very shortly (perhaps a week or two) before the original website made the big change that sent everyone in an uproar. After several weeks as a bystander of that train wreck, I made inquiries of some of the regulars and receved a favorable response, so I started this place with the cooperation of the owners of this website, Open Chute, who are web design clients of the company I work for.

I'm still not much of a cook but this board has inspired me to make more of an effort and our dinners have vastly improved since I renewed my involvement with this amazing group of talented people. The T&T Hall of Fame has become my favorite cookbook.

Let's see, what else...

I was born and raised in the USA - mostly in Las Vegas and Southern California, but I live in Quebec, Canada now. After 12 years I'm still happily married to DH in spite of his lack of appreciation for my culinary efforts, but without his enthusiastic response I will probably forever be a foodie "wannabe" and not a true foodie worthy of the name. A case could be made here that I'm just a bad cook and it's not DH's problem but mine! But my cooking tastes really good to me. ;o)

I'm also an avid reader of fantasy, historical fiction and alternate history literature, and of Jane Austen. I work out every day at Curves, and drive my kids to soccer, hockey, baseball, golf, and whatever else they're into at the time. (Mostly it's hockey, and I consider myself a "Hockey Mom"). I'm learning to play golf and had my first lesson last week.

 
I was more of a lurker at the old gails...

found the group in the late 90s.

I am late 30s with a husband and four y.o. daughter. Lived in mostly in and around DC from 1979 until last September. Moved to Maine, which was great except that the economy was such that my husband (an engineer) couldn't find work. Now we're outside Philly. (We moved 5 weeks ago). Two moves in one year, and I've promised my daughter she will be in this house until college - for both our sakes!

I am in architecture - historic preservation. Although I worked for the state in Maine, I have spent most of my career so far working for architecture firms doing institutional restoration projects - house museums, government buildings, etc. I'm getting ready to head back to work again pt in Philly once pre-k starts for my daughter.

I love cooking - it's my passion. My mom was an awful cook and when I got married 15 years ago, I was amazed to find that you could make tasty food at home. Haven't stopped trying since! And finding groups like this one makes it even more fun.

Thanks, Mimi, for the forum.

 
I migrated after the old Epi format changed...and from the U.S....and then from Israel...>>

and now I'm in Prague, in the Czech Republic, which is home, for my husband. We were married here, two years ago. I'm originally from Orange County, California, and an English major. I married a mathematician who grew up under Communism. Somehow, it works beautifully!

Israel had so much fresh produce and fascinating markets. I cooked a lot, and learned a lot--especially from you all! smileys/smile.gif Now that we're sharing an apartment, for the moment, I rarely get to cook, and miss it dearly.

The shift in cuisines has also been an upheaval: going from daily fresh pita, tomato-and-cuke salad, and eggplant to a bread-and-sauce-happy Central European diet is bewildering. (And where the heck are they hiding all the spices, here???)

Prague has some great hidden finds, though, in terms of restaurants and markets, so I'm hoping to scout some of them and stake out at least some part of the kitchen...

Meanwhile, I'll just live vicariously through all your summer menus and gaze longingly at my spice rack. Grill on! smileys/smile.gif

 
I was more of a lurker too and when I can take a break for work I pop in to visit >>>

I discovered Gail's around 1995 and have many treasured recipes and good friends from this forum in all of its iterations, and so many of you feel like family ! Mimi, thanks for reuniting us into a friendly forum. Have you all noticed that the petty arguing has gone away?! it's so lovely!

bit about me - I'm a California native and have been in San Francisco since I was 15 - have a cute studio apt. and a very fat cat. My boyfriend lives across the GG bridge so we have our city place and our suburb place together and entertain a lot which is great fun and our friends love our cooking! it's so nice to have a partner who loves food and to cook as much as I do, although our waistlines are suffering as a result! On one of our early dates he made me veal saltimboca and I knew it was love, our 5 year anniversary is next month.

My mom is a wonderful cook and she made many adventurous things, in comparison to many people in our neighborhood growing up, and my sister and I inherited her interests. You should have seen the birthday cakes she made us, wow. My first major boyfriend was a cook and between my mom and my sis buying me knives and him giving me Magnalite and copper cookware, and his encouraging me to make most everything in Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol I & II, my love for cuisine really took root. Plus my family's scientific background was great training in how to follow a recipe! Every cook should be required to do a lot of lab work!

My biggest challenge is to think creatively and try things outside of a recipe - a bit outside of my comfort zone but there is lots of inspiration here.

Since I'm planning on a job change this year I've been thinking about how to encorporate my love for food and wine into a paying job, without it turning into a four letter word aka "work"! LOL For fun I like to read, knit (new! I'm now making hats!), petit point, swim, hike and camp, and anything crafty. I must get a computer for home so I can better utilize our T&T section, too many things to try. I load recipes onto my PALM pilot, good thing it has a lot of memory! It's my little secret weapon when I'm visiting friends and they ask me to cook something, they have no idea I don't have all of these wonderful ideas stored in my head!
thanks to all of you...

 
OK, me too......

I started posting on Gail's towards the end of 1995, it's just amazing to still be posting with some of the same people for all these years, wow!

I always loved to cook. maybe it was self-defense against what my mom called cooking. it's a wonder we all survived her meals '-)) I always loved trying all kinds of new things and cooking for friends, still do. I consider cooking for others as a gift of love and my friends just love being loved.

I'm a New Yorker and moved to the Oregon coast in spring of 93 thinking I needed a change for awhile. through a friend, I was to house-sit for an undetermined amount of time as Don would be out of the country for months at a time. in less than a year we were in love and married a year later. obviously, I'm a great house sitter! '-)) rather than continue extended
consulting work out of country we started the first local internet service in the area.

we moved to our new home in the early spring of 2000. the kitchen is really big and finally getting to be the kitchen of my dreams. I stopped posting for about a year when my son (who had been adopted) was able to find me. it
was marathon of phone calls and visits catching up on all the years we missed together. his adoptive parents are the just the best Mom & Dad any child could ever have had and we adore each other. it usually doesn't happen like that when a birth mother is in the picture. now he has two moms to contend with and Kat has two MIL's, poor darlings smileys/smile.gif

when I started posting again at Gail's it was getting pretty ugly and my visits became further and further apart. a ga-zillion thanks to Mimi and Finer Kitchens for giving us back all that seemed lost forever. I'm happy to be cooking and posting again with so many old and new friends.

http://www.newportnet.com/

 
I found Gail's when I formatted my MSN homepage and added EPI .

So, it's been a year or 2 that I've had the pleasure of your company. I was born in Canada to German immigrant parents. We moved to the states, Indiana, when I was 2 1/2 and I have lived in Alaska now for about 15 years. It truly has been an adventure, living in Nome and in Barrow and now in "metropolitan" Anchorage with a fishing cabin on the Kenai River for when we hanker for "the bush"(although, a cabin with a washer and dryer does not really qualify for "bush" status smileys/smile.gif. Grew up with meat and potatoes and soft cooked veggies meals because that's what Dad liked. Occasionally noodles or dumplings or rice were added for a change, but never anything Asian or Mexican or, well you get my drift. Very much like what Erin in Prague is finding. And, Mom's kitchen was her kitchen, so we 3 girls did very little in the way of cooking in the home. Mom did lots of canning and baking and what she cooked was done very well, just not very spicy or exciting. I think that's why I love to experiment with different foods now. My DH has been ill this year and cannot eat or drink, he takes his nutrition through a feeding tube, but we hope that in a few months his swallowing will improve. Sooooo, I have not been making meals at home for most of this year, just a bit of cooking here and there for myself. I "cook" vicariously through your posts and enjoy the menus that get posted. But, I do have a passion for baking and giving it away to friends and co-workers, who really appreciate it. It satisfies my need to make something in the kitchen and to try some of the great recipes I find on here from all you great foodies.

 
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