house that had four ovens. I like to joke that my mom, a graduate
of the Fashion Institute of Technology, used two of those ovens
to store her handbags and the other two to store her shoes. Suffice
it to say, my family didn’t cook.
When people ask me, then, how I came to be a food writer, I
have a simple answer: “I went to law school.”
It was in law school, after long, dull days discussing promissory
estoppel and res ipsa loquitur, that I found myself standing in my
kitchen, craving some sort of visceral release. That release came
when I chopped my first onion, threw it into a pot with ground
beef, cumin, chili powder, and a can of tomatoes, and made chili
from a Betty Crocker cookbook. My roommate at the time told
me that it looked like dog food, but that didn’t matter: I was
hooked on cooking.
Ten years later, I’m still hooked. And the lifeline I threw
myself in my third year of law school—a food blog that I started
called The Amateur Gourmet—is now my full-time profession, a
way to document my adventures as an enthusiastic eater and a
passionate home cook.
Since starting my blog (and despite my upbringing), I’ve
discovered that I have some talent in the kitchen. Friends clamor
for a seat at my table, where I serve them piles of super-garlicky
Caesar salad, steaming bowls of pasta, and hacked-apart pieces of
aggressively seasoned roast chicken. Homemade chocolate-chip
cookies are de rigueur in my house, and every so often, I try my
hand at an apple pie. (I’m better at cookies.)