like the internets really needed another food blog…
I made two life-changing decisions this week. Not earthshattery life-changing, like having a kid or losing an eye or inheriting millions of dollars. No, I’m such a boring loser slave to my routine that even small variations in my day-to-day activities tend to seem like big changes, at least until they become part of said routine.
Life-Changer Number One — well, you’re looking at it. A few months ago, it occurred to me (while hungrily perusing my millionth food blog of the day) that — hey, I think I want a food blog of my very own! So I did what every good n00b does — I hopped on Blogger and set up too-much-garlic.blogspot.com. I didn’t do much more there than host a small recipe archive that no one but myself, my friends, and my family ever really looked at. Which was fine, great, wonderful, whatever — except that a recipe archive wasn’t exactly what I wanted.
I wanted more control than Blogger offered me. I wanted an easily relatable domain name, free from dashes and dot-blogspots. I wanted to be able to fiddle with the layout. I wanted Flickr plug-ins. And I wanted to actually blog, to talk about the entire process of being inspired to make a dish, shopping for it, preparing it, serving it, and yes, even eating it.
Oh, sure, I could have done most of those things right where I was. But I’ve always been the type of person that likes things neat and clean and organized and universal. When things aren’t neat and clean and organized and universal, I tend to throw my hands up in the air and abandon all hope of ever making them so. You may recognize a physical manifestation (ha!) of this weird personality trait if you ever visit my kitchen.
Thus, toomuchgarlic.com was born. Just you wait — it will be so neat and clean and organized and universal that I would never think of abandoning it the way that I abandoned Operation Spotless Kitchen all those years ago.
Life-Changer Number Two: I finally gave in, after months of drooling over Flickr’s Mr. Bento Porn (100% work safe) and bought myself — yes, you guessed it — a Mr. Bento. I was tired of spending $10+ bucks a day on lunches that I didn’t even particularly want, and all that eating out made it pretty hard to keep off the 35+ lbs I’ve lost since last summer, not to mention the ten more I’d still like to get rid of. Owning a Mr. Bento seemed like the perfect solution. Let’s face it — there’s no shortage of food at my house, and most of it is infinitely healthier than anything I could buy near the office. And if I’ve got a snazzy and perfectly designed lunchbox to cart around said excess food, then I’m basically out of excuses, right?
Besides, I’m fascinated with the idea of a meal that consists of very small portions of a variety of different foods. That just seems Right to me, well-balanced and more nutritious than eating a huge portion of just one thing (which is unfortunately what tends to happen at dinnertime around my house).
I’m also madly in love with one of the goals of a true bento, which is to improve the taste and overall experience of a meal by making it as visually pleasing as possible. That just seems so intiutive to me — we’ve all marveled over a perfectly arranged plate of food before — and bento takes that concept to the extreme.
I’ll probably never get as creative as most of the bento makers out there, but the two (fairly unoriginal) bentos I’ve made so far — pictures and details to follow in an upcoming post — were entirely too much fun to make and eat, and I’m looking forward to improving my mad bento skillz in the near future.
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