Where shall we go from here?

I've been thinking about a clear direction for my blog.  I know I want to talk about all things food - mmm, food!  I know I want to talk about cooking and books and cookbooks.  I grew up in a home where cooking was not a high priority and where my darling mother was arguably the world's worst cook.  This meant that I had to learn to cook and present nutritious meals as a matter of survival.  So it's hardly surprising that I hold food and cooking in such high esteem and have done so since I was presented with my first cookbook at age 17.  What a wonder that book was (and still is) to me. Reading that book, it quickly dawned on me that food could be something to be savoured, it could be nurturing and it could both look and taste good.  I learned that you could present food as an art form and that it was fun to read about what other people did with food and try to emulate them.  My small world expanded as I learned to cook Moussaka from Greece, Coc au Vin from France and Prawns Szechuen from China.  My blog will therefore try to encompass all things food related i.e. books, my ever growing cook book collection, my tentative efforts in the canning/food preservation area, nutrition etc. At the very least, this will be a jumping off place - where we'll travel from there, who knows!
But there is so much more in the world to discuss, isn't there?  Or is there?  Have we reached a time where all things home and comforting are necessary to our existence?  I know it's that way for me.  I suppose my blog will evolve as I become more experienced and join more blogging communities myself, so if you have the time to come along for the ride, welcome!  And, if you just want to pop in and out, welcome too!  Even if you find me just once, pull up a chair and have a cuppa with me and know that I appreciate your visit.

I have already decided that I'll be sharing recipes, book reviews (from a user's perspective - I am not a professional reviewer), musings (aka ramblings), thoughts and the odd food related tid bit and, although from time to time, the ride might get a bit bumpy, I think it'll be fun.

I am still trying to successfully and quickly upload photos without my server crashing, so bear with me if the blog is a bit "bare" at the moment.  I promise to keep trying to nut this out.

My current food fad is "canning" and I've just ordered a stack of books on the subject from Amazon - I'm excitedly waiting for them to arrive.  Naturally, it's the wrong time of year to order anything (holiday season is still upon us), so it's taking a little longer than I would like to have them in my hot little hands.  I intend to review each one of them objectively and, of course, will share those reviews here, so if any of these books strike your fancy, look for the reviews soon!

These are the books I've ordered:

             

I can never stop at just one book and surfing my favourite book site (Amazon) is deadly for me.  I have so many books on my wish list that I think I'd need a new house to store them in (are you reading this kids?  DH? Birthday coming up!).  Still, I can, hand on heart, say that I use and enjoy every one of my books, even if it's just looking through them, drooling as I go.  Sure, I have favourites that I turn to time and time again for inspiration when I need it.  But just for the sheer "porn" factor, cookbooks are my thang!

If you read my last post, you know that jam making (and preserves etc.) is my current hot topic, so I hope these books bring along exciting new recipes to try.  I'm not interested in run of the mill recipes and love to try new and unusual combinations of foods.  The whole "canning" thing is a little scary but I love to take scary and make it mine...as long as I don't kill anyone, I'll be happy. 

Perhaps you might be thinking that canning is so passe and why would I bother?  Well, of course I care about what my family eats and I care about saving money but I also care deeply about supporting my local community.  Canning will let me take advantage of the small hold farmer up the road who has lots of lovely citrus or the van by the side of the road selling trays of mangoes fresh off the tree or the local Farmer's Market which is a veritable treasure trove of home grown produce (check out Noosa Farmer's Market).  Also, I feel that I'll be contributing to the environment if I use more local produce as I won't be paying for the klms that food travels to reach our markets.  This is particularly important to me as I live in a semi rural area and a lot of goodies are trucked in.  However, on the plus side, my home is in a sub tropical semi rural area, so we lack no amount of fruits, vegetables and dairy product fairly close to home.

I've bounced around a bit and you're probably getting bored by now, so I'm signing off - it's dinner time and the natives are getting restless.  As Homer Simpson said "Marge - it's 3.00 a.m.  Shouldn't you be cooking something?"  Y'all all come back agin, ya hear?