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Friday
April 20
2007

One afternoon, many moons ago, my job as the Creative Lead for a small dot-com brought me to the doorstep of delicious days. I had been scouring the web for some design inspiration and had stumbled upon the link on a site that collected examples of excellent design. I gave the page a quick once-over, took a screenshot for later reference, and then moved on to the next URL. There was one thing, however, that gave me pause -- so much so that I had to return to the site later on for a repeat visit.

Perfect grape tomatoes -- lusciously photographed -- bright red and still on the vine.

Now, as a woman who'd rather have tomatoes off her burger rather than on, I was surprised that it was this photo that had me coming back for more. There was something about it, something so delectable and appealing, that I had to take another look and dig a little deeper. What I found was a treasure trove of delicacies -- images and recipes that stirred the senses and inspired me for the first time to wonder, "Hmm, I wonder what that'd taste like."

Links off of her page sent me scrambling in all different directions -- from Boston to France to Japan, I globe trotted my way through the culinary world by reading the words of her fellow bloggers. I found myself trying to imagine the various recipes I came across, mentally piecing together individual memories of the various ingredients to form completely new and foreign experiences.

Eventually, playing mental culinary hopscotch wasn't enough and I decided I had to try some of the recipes on my own. I had tried once to survive a wintersession at college with only my culinary skills to feed me, and by the end of the month, I had mastered the art of making mashed, grey omelets but not much else. In this latest venture into the kitchen, I took up watching shows like Good Eats and America's Test Kitchen to help ease me into it. Things progressed slowly. Under the watchful eye of the Food Network, Julia Child, the food blogisphere, and even Martha Stewart, I found my confidence in the kitchen. It was never anything too elaborate or sophisticated, but it gave me a simple sense of satisfaction and accomplishment to be able to cook. The sizzle of garlic hitting hot oil and in the seconds that followed, the delicious smell that rose from the pan in warm wafts. Leveling off flour, smelling herbs in the produce aisle, tasting madelines straight from the pan for the first time -- these were the kinds of things that made me fall in love with the act of cooking.

So my original plan was to start a food blog.

It's a process several months in the making, but, the more I thought of it, the more I realized that there was more to life that I wanted to talk about -- more dialogues I wanted to take part in. After a few years hiatus, I've just recently re-took-up knitting, much to my sister Iko's glee. My fiancée is an avid gamer and I started playing World of Warcraft way before he did and yes, I'm actually excited that Grand Theft Auto IV is set in New York City.

So yeah, my original plan was to start a food blog. But instead, what you get is a strange mélange of things that, when taken all together, make the fabric of my life. There will be yarn and orla kiely handbags and the occasional Final Fantasy reference. There will be milk and eggs and sugar and a preposterous number of scarves. There will be color palettes and photographs. There will be Etsy and Design*Sponge and Kotaku. Oh, and of course madelines.

Remember that, folks. No matter where life will take my interests and this blog from here on out, there will always be madelines.

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