Return of Kilt in the Kitchen

As I hope you’ve noticed, I’ve been on a bit of a sabbatical for a while. Every once in a while, real life can get in the way and there just aren’t enough hours in the day for everything that you’d like to do.  I experienced a little of that and put the blog down about a year ago, but I missed it…and I missed you.

There would be times through the year where I’d make something or read something or get up from a restaurant and the first thing I thought about was how I was going to write about it in Kilt in the Kitchen, but I had resolutely decided that there was no Kilt in the Kitchen anymore. So those great thoughts went unwritten. Gradually, though, I felt the attraction coming back and when I noticed people were reading old posts, I knew I had to bring it back again. So here we are.

It’s been an eventful year. My true love and I have traveled more throughout the U.S. that usual, between us visiting North Carolina, Houston, Boston/Cambridge, Cooperstown, and Maryland’s eastern shore. Lots of good food stories there, some of which I may wind up writing about.

We also visited Paris, as we do every year, and Prague. Prague was wonderful and I’ll be chatting about that in my next post. I also spent some time visiting my true love in her second home in Leeds. Actually, it was her second second home because I helped her move into a new flat (flat = apartment in British English). Fortunately, it was on the same floor in the same building so the work was minimal.

In other words, we spent a lot of time going from one place to another in the past year.

We also lost a family member this past year. I’ve mentioned our parrots, Samantha  and Alex in several posts (like here). Unfortunately, Samantha died last April after having lived 35 very full years.  For those times of the year when my true love and I are separated by the Atlantic Ocean, Sam was my constant companion in the kitchen and my Chief Tasting Officer. We miss her.

For those of you who are new or have forgotten, let me tell you a little bit about Kilt in the Kitchen. The “kilt” part is because I often wear kilts, sometimes in the kitchen, and the phrase sounds really cool. The “kitchen” part is a catch-all for anything about food that I find interesting. This isn’t really a cooking instruction site or a food history site or a travel site, although I write about all three of those things. I do write some recipes and sets of instructions but I’ll also write about kitchen equipment, food and culture, cookbooks, books about food production or history, and almost anything else I find intriguing. My perspective is that of a home cook who cooks healthy, nutritious food for one or two people.  There are lots of places to go for family meals and dinner parties, but it takes a special set of considerations to make a healthy, good-tasting, interesting meal for one person.

Two more things before I go. My next post will be about our travels to Prague but the one after that will be about the two pictures at the top of this post. La Coupole is a brasserie in the Montparnasse area of Paris that dates back to 1927. It feels as if nothing has changed since the art deco days of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and the Lost Generation. It is a 21st century image of what we imagine the Parisian 1920s to be and the food, wine, service, and ambience are all part of the picture.

Fenway Park is a baseball stadium built in 1912 and is the home of my beloved Boston Red Sox. Last spring, I traveled back to Boston for the first time in about ten years and bought a ticket to a Red Sox game, my first in more than 20 years. In a restaurant overlooking the first base side of the field, I had an excellent gyro, some of the best fries and a $10 beer. It’s a far cry from a hotdog and a coke for $1 but its part of the same ritual.

The other thing is that the last post I made before retiring the blog was a collection of things I missed in the U.S. when I returned from the U.K. and things I missed in the U.K. when I was in the U.S.  Surprisingly, this post received more comments than every other Kilt in the Kitchen post combined and every single comment was from somebody British who was upset because they thought I was slagging their fine country.

I was a bit shocked. I wasn’t saying one country was better than the other, I was just listing some things I did or didn’t like.  For the record, it was never my intention to insult anyone or any place. I also should say that I’ve been back to the U.K. twice since writing that piece, and not a lot has happened to make me change my mind.

I look forward to this. Say hello, tell your friends, and feel free to share your experiences about food in the comments.