Seeds!

For me, much of the joy of gardening is being able to grow food that isn't available at the grocery store, where the specific varieties of produce offered are more likely to be chosen for appearance, uniformity, shippability and resistance to mechanized handling than for their merits as food. 

I just received my copy of the 2010 Seed Saver's Exchange catalog and have been flipping through it like the proverbial kid in a candy store. Which of the 37 varieties of lettuce will my family enjoy in our salads next summer? Which tomato, out of the 72 on offer, will make the best ketchup? Should I try growing okra (five varieties)? Purple Viking potatoes?

SSE is a fantastic non-profit organization (or social-profit, as my friend Sarah says) dedicated to preserving our collective genetic food heritage by collecting, propagating and selling heirloom seeds. If you garden, consider checking them out: http: http://www.seedsavers.org/.

FlavorNerd? FlavorDweeb? FlavorDork!

As the following Venn diagram illustrates, there are distinct differences between geeks, dorks, dweebs and nerds. At first, this blog was very nearly called FlavorNerd. However, a detailed analysis revealed that we don't have quite the requisite amount of social ineptitude to qualify.

So, FlavorGeek it is!

(Many thanks to whoever out there originally came up with this much-copied diagram.)

The Inaugural Blog Post!

Right off the bat, I may as well state that I'm not sure how I got to the point where I'm sitting at my laptop, faced with writing my first ever blog entry. I'm still partially convinced that I'm not the kind of person who would even have a blog. But here I am.

Actually, I do have some idea how I suddenly became a blogger -- my wife suggested it. And, why not? Even greater than my love of cooking is my strong desire to share my ill-formed, unsolicited opinions. Isn't that what the internet is all about?