The first time I cooked for him was a dinner at my apartment. As part of the meal, I wanted to make him an apple pie, which is his favorite dessert.

I didn’t have a lot of time to cook the entire dinner so I bought a frozen pie crust from the grocery store, and I consulted a recipe I had found on the Internet.

I had never made a pie before, but I baked cakes and cookies frequently so I was confident that I would succeed.

Ah, hubris.

When the came out of the oven, it was literally a hot mess. It was both undercooked and burnt. The middle of the pie was pale, while the edges were charred. I think the pie felt bad for itself because it appeared to be weeping. Apple filling streamed from random cracks. Not in an ooey-gooey-that-looks-good manner, but in a runny nose kind of way.

I looked at it dismayed and told my man, ”You don’t have to eat it.”

He wouldn’t let me throw the pie in the garbage. Instead, he cut a generous slice, put a forkful in his mouth and swallowed (with more than a little difficulty).

“Well,” he said after a long drink of water. ”Parts of it are delicious.”

I think that’s the moment I realized that I should probably marry him.

I did marry him, and I managed to make some decent–even tasty–pies for my husband, but my confidence had been thoroughly shaken. I made low-risk pies that required no or minimal baking with ready-made pie crust.

I was thoroughly intimidated by the idea of making a pie entirely from scratch. However, I still wanted to do it. When I heard a few months ago that the Cornish College of the Arts was offering a one-day pie making workshop called, “The (He)Art of the Pie” I resolved to sign up.

Something kept me from actually registering. One day I was chatting with a friend on Twitter, and I mentioned that I was considering taking a pie class with a woman named Kate McDermott.

After she saw McDermott’s name, my friend insisted that I take the class. Then another person who follows me on Twitter saw our conversation and also recommended McDermott.

I had heard of McDermott and had a vague idea that she was something of a pie guru, but I didn’t really know anything about her. I decided that she was someone I needed to meet. And I signed up for her class.

The class was six hours long and started at the University District Farmers Market so we could get pointers on shopping for pie ingredients. I joined my classmates at the appointed meeting place, and there was Kate McDermott.

She looked like someone’s favorite aunt. McDermott was an older woman with a friendly face framed by glasses and chin-length brown hair. It was a warm summer day, and she wore a tank top, a long, patterned peasant skirt and a floppy sun hat.

McDermott took the class on a short turn through the farmers market, where it appeared that everyone knew her. She had a pie plate with her and showed us a foolproof way to measure the amount of fruit you need for your pie. Just keep putting fruit in the plate until it’s full!

Her easy and common sense approach to making pie calmed me. I was very nervous about making the pie crust. I’ve never been able to roll out a decent crust. My crusts tend to crack and look more like Australia than a circle.

As my classmates and I rolled out our dough, McDermott walked around saying soothing things like:

“Your dough wants to please you.”

“Don’t show your dough your fear.”

and

“There’s nothing you can’t fix in your dough. Just pass the danger.”

My bottom crust was pretty decent, but I’m glad that McDermott showed us how to patch holes in our dough, because I had to do a lot of that for my top crust. But it was okay.

As McDermott says, “It’s just pie.”

I learned many things in class. Keep your flour for pie making in the freezer. Use leaf lard for super flakey crust. Put more than one fruit or flavor in your pie to keep it from tasting too monochromatic.

The most important realization came a few days later.

I was remembering a conversation I had with McDermott during one of our breaks. She said in addition to being a pie maker, she is a practitioner of kindness.

I think this is what makes her so good at making pies. And this is why I had always failed.

I could never relax and enjoy the process. I constantly worried about disappointing others. I didn’t trust my instincts.

What I learned from Kate McDermott is that good things are created when you are kind to others–and even better things come when you are kind to yourself.

We uncertainly started to make our way down a dimly lit hallway when another couple came up behind us.

Uncertain that we were headed the right way, my husband asked them, “Do you know where you’re going?”

The woman laughed. “No,” she said. “We were just following you!”

It turns out we had a common destination, the Walrus and the Carpenter, and it was just around the corner.

I have been wanting to visit the Walrus and the Carpenter since it opened last year. However, the oyster bar is not close to where I live or work, and it doesn’t take reservations, which can mean wait times as long as 2 hours. I would have to be very motivated to make the trip. (I’m becoming a cranky old lady who does not like to wait in line.)

I found my motivation when I heard that Bon Appetit had named the Walrus and the Carpenter one of the 10 best new restaurants in America. I realized that the already immensely popular place was about to become a mob scene.

So I suggested that to my husband that we have dinner at the Walrus and the Carpenter to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. My husband could probably eat his body weight in oysters so it was an easy sell.

What people may not realize is that in addition to oysters, the Walrus and the Carpenter serves up a host of other fine dishes. Looking at my notes for this blog post, I see that my husband and I ordered 14 oysters and 8 other dishes plus bread and butter. The menu was that enticing. (A bit gluttonous, but hey, we were celebrating! And they were small plates.)

My favorite was the chicken liver mousse tartine with cherries in ale, fennel and pistachio. It defied my expections. I thought it would be heavy and rich, and instead, it had a bright, citrusy flavor.

We thoroughly enjoyed the oysters and every single dish we had, which I thought was truly incredible. (I did not expect to like the tete de cochon–pig head’s terrine–as much as I did.) Eight for eight plates is a very high level of success for a restaurant. And that, I think, is what makes the Walrus and the Carpenter among the best of the best.

We ordered two of every oyster the restaurant had on the menu that night

Chicken liver mousse and grilled sardines

Zucchini, tomato and feta salad

Tete de cochon

Steak tartare

An extremely busy but calm kitchen

I’m constantly impressed by Amelia’s artistry and versatility. She can make everything from a kick ass ninja cake to elegant French macaroons. I also love her creative spins on traditional Filipino desserts.

Go ahead, “like” her on Facebook and visit her booth at the Renton Farmer’s Market on Tuesdays. You won’t regret it!

My friend Adam lives in New Orleans, and he constantly posts on Facebook about the amazing food in that fine city–not only making me jealous, but insanely hungry.

Unfortunately, I have no plans to visit Louisiana anytime soon so I hatched a scheme to have some New Orleans food travel to me.

My friend Katherine was going to New Orleans on a business trip. She also happened to have plans to have dinner with Adam, who is our mutual friend.

I then made two simple requests. I asked Adam to buy me some fried chicken from the legendary Willie Mae’s Scotch House, and I asked Katherine if she would bring it back to Seattle for me.

Why fried chicken? It’s my husband’s absolute favorite food, and I wanted to give him an amazing surprise. I’m not going to lie–after seeing Willie Mae’s featured on countless food shows, I wanted to try the chicken too!

Adam bought the chicken on a Wednesday, he and Katherine had dinner Thursday, and then Katherine was scheduled to fly back to Seattle Friday morning.

There was just one problem.

Katherine’s flight was delayed–not by a matter of minutes, but by several hours. She had put the chicken inside her suitcase, which sat in the plane’s cargo hold. And the plane sat under the sweltering Louisiana sun.

Katherine sent me an apologetic text saying that the chicken was probably going to be spoiled. I wanted to see it for myself and asked her not to throw it out when she got home. Because she is a good friend, Katherine unpacked the chicken, smelled it, deemed it okay and threw it in her freezer.

It seemed impossible to coordinate our schedules so that I could get the chicken. Nine days after the New Orleans chicken had arrived in Seattle, I finally picked it up. At this point, I gave up on surprising my husband and told him the entire chicken saga.

We discussed at length whether or not we should eat the chicken. My husband was against it, and I was solidly in favor of it.

I said that if the chicken was going to give us food poisoning, it would probably do so instantaneously. So we should at least try it so that we knew how Willie Mae’s chicken tasted. It would be shame to not eat the chicken after it had travelled so far.

I was able to convince my husband so we took it out of the freezer bag, carefully examined it, gave it the sniff test and then reheated it in a 400 degree oven. I figured such a high temperature would kill anything nasty and keep the chicken crispy.

I took the chicken out of the oven, and I had very low expectations about how it would taste. I thought it would be terrible.

I was wrong.

Incredibly, the fried chicken was moist, flavorful and it still had plenty of crunch. Willie Mae’s fried chicken is definitely unlike any other fried chicken I’ve eaten. It was spicy but in a way I’m sure that is unique to New Orleans.

After my husband saw that I didn’t have any food poisoning symptoms and that I actually seemed to be enjoying the chicken, he ventured a bite and was pleasantly surprised as well.

If Willie Mae’s chicken tasted good after sitting in a suitcase for several hours, flying cross country and having been frozen, I can only imagine what it’s like when it’s fresh!

I knew I would never be a “serious” food blogger, especially after I attended the International Food Blogger Conference last year. I don’t write recipes, I don’t take beautiful food photos, and I definitely don’t blog on any kind of regular basis.

But that’s okay. This blog has always been a fun hobby for me. I enjoy writing about whatever I want—my latest collection of random food photos, “the official snack of hip hop,” or belated gratitude to my parents for cooking thousands of meals for my brother and me.

I haven’t posted to my blog in over seven months. That’s a long time—eons in the blogging world. It’s weird—I hadn’t stopped thinking about it. I continued to develop ideas for blog posts and took many photos, but I had lost my will to blog.

I work full time, am married, have a very active 3-year-old and go to grad school at night. I’ve always been a busy person, but the last seven months have been particularly grueling. For a while, I had to cut out all extracurricular activities—including this blog.

I recently had a wonderful dinner at Zoë, which I have often described as my favorite restaurant in Seattle. However, while I was eating, I realized that the last time I had dined at Zoë was a few years ago.

I thought, “This place is awesome—why did I stop coming here?” And I could not come up with a good reason.

I had a similar realization about my blog. I really enjoy the creative outlet that my blog offers. So here I am blogging again.

When I started thinking about what has happened in the food world over the last several months, my mind kept returning to the deaths of two prominent members of the Seattle food scene—Scott Simpson and Kim Ricketts.

I had been a fan of Simpson’s since his days at Blue Onion Bistro, and I remember the intense disappointment I felt when Simpson abruptly closed his wildly inventive restaurant Fork in 2006, seemingly never to be heard from again.

Then he resurfaced in 2008 with a new restaurant—an over-the-top burger joint called Lunchbox Laboratory. The tiny restaurant was bought, and moved to a larger, swankier South Lake Union location. It seemed like things were finally on track for Simpson, who had struggled with manic depression.

Then Simpson took his life. He was 38.

Food writer Matthew Amster-Burton wrote this about his friend:

“Scott was not the kind of tortured artist who is hard to be around. He was warm, charismatic, and drew people to wherever he was cooking. If he had opened a diner where every dish was served in flames, or a milkshake speakeasy, or a lobster corn dog cart, people would have flocked to it…

Last night I was listening to Elliott Smith’s Figure 8. Whenever I listen to Elliott Smith, which is often, I sing along with gusto, and I think, ‘You know what? It’s bullshit that this guy is dead.’ That’s the word that comes to mind, every time. Elliott Smith, no longer writing songs? That’s bullshit. Scott Simpson, no longer flipping burgers and coming up with lunatic restaurant concepts? That’s bullshit.”

Kim Ricketts was a major force in Seattle’s food, restaurant and book industries, and her influence stretched far beyond the Puget Sound area. Author Dave Eggers wrote:

“The flag of the world of books is flying at half-mast right now, mourning the loss of Kim Ricketts. She was a pillar of the Seattle literary community, which means she was a pillar of the world literary community. She was tireless, she was funny, she loved books, and she loved celebrating everything associated with books.”

I didn’t know Kim Ricketts personally, but I certainly knew of her, and I had been to some of the lively literary events that she had organized, such as “Cooks and Books.” I followed her on Twitter, and we would occasionally chat online about food and restaurants.

The last time I saw her was at an event with Chef Grant Achatz who was promoting his book, “Life, on the Line,” a memoir about his life as a chef and his battle with cancer.

In a blog post by Ricketts’ friend Kathleen Flinn, I read that Ricketts had been annoyed with the audience’s focus on Achatz’s cancer, calling it “a total downer.” I believe that she was asserting (in her imitable way) that the most interesting thing about Achatz was not that he had cancer.

And though it was cancer that ultimately took Ricketts, it definitely will not be what people remember about her.

May Kim Ricketts and Scott Simpson rest in peace.

In the end, however, I took little pleasure in watching how thoroughly the chefs failed at this task.

It was as if none of the chefs had ever heard of the concept of dim sum or Asian cuisine. They seemed outraged when they couldn’t find someone who spoke English at the Chinese market. Many of them looked completely baffled when they entered the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant and saw the steamer baskets and woks. They couldn’t make their food fast enough, and for the most part, the dishes they did prepare were bland and boring.

Dale and Angelo, who specialize in Asian food (Dale works at Buddakan!), provided zero help or leadership in the kitchen.

Nobody cared about the crowd of hungry people waiting for food. They just cared about cooking for the judges and winning the challenge.

I understand that Top Chef is a competition, but there is no excuse for souless cooking and not feeding people. That is a shame for any cook at any level–and a disgrace for a group of professionals vying for the title of “Top Chef.”

My husband really likes cheese.
In one of our drawers, I found five cheese slicers (three of which were identical) and a hand crank cheese grater.

We are obsessed with measuring.
We had multiple sets of measuring cups starting at 1/4 cup all the way to 1 quart. There was a set that drove my husband crazy because the numbers had worn off them so he couldn’t tell which was which, but for some reason we kept them anyway–even though we had bought a replacement set.

When you upgrade a gadget, get rid of the old one.
I got a Microplane premium zester and grater a few months ago, which I love and constantly use. So why was the cheap knockoff version taking up space in my kitchen?

Presses and spatulas are not our thing.
I received a Vietnamese coffee press as a gift and held onto it for years even though I don’t drink coffee. I know many people swear by their garlic presses, but we never used the one we had. We also got rid of a wide spatula that was too big and unwieldy to be helpful and spatula tongs, which sound cool but really aren’t.

Laziness creates clutter.
If you can complete a food preparation task with a knife or your hands, there’s no need to buy gadgets like an egg separater, apple corer or cork puller (which I found brand new still in its package).