Fresh Cracked Pepper

I worked in restaurants for just shy of a decade. From lakeside diners to mountain lodges and urban bistros, I don’t know if there’s another phrase I’ve uttered more often than fresh cracked pepper? Three simple words, yet I was saying so much more: Will you let me enhance your meal? May I spoil you just once more?

So here is all the fresh cracked pepper I have to offer, in abundance.

I realized earlier this year that my motivation to keep up my original blog had waned. It seems that the only thing I had the motivation to write about frivolously and fancifully was, of course, food. I started that weblog, Room for Rambling when I was entering a very transitory period of my life. I started it to keep others in touch. It ended up keeping me anchored and giving me a place to experiment with ideas. It ended up becoming something that encouraged me to write when I had no place else to do it.

And so it came to be that I settled down a little. I found a person and a place (albeit temporary) to call home for awhile. I believe loving people and places well takes you straight to the heart of good food, and my journal had to move over to make space for bowls and spoons. Inspired by family, friends, and thousands of scrumptious recipes simmering away on other food blogs, I decided that my adventures in the kitchen needed a more permanent home as well.

And so Fresh Cracked Pepper was born. I wanted a place to keep track of my discoveries, failures and victories. So often I’ve deemed a recipe a “make again” and then promptly forgotten it. So often I’ve made a mental note of what I’d do differently next time, one that never gets transcribed. So often I’ve wanted to share tastes that have changed my life with friends and family and just never got around to it. The solution? Fresh Cracked Pepper.

I later added the subhead eating my way to health, peace, and place to point to the soul of the website. As a committed runner, triathlete and wilderness junkie, food has to go the distance for me. At it’s most basic, it brings health by providing provides essential nutrients, illness-fighting vitamins, and energy-supplying sustenance. I added the word peace to speak to the politics of food: issues of access, the environment, animal treatment, and cultural preservation. Place is a way to capture all the things I believe food can and should be: bearer of memory, connection to one’s past, vehicle of community and respect for land, locale, and season.

Fresh Cracked Pepper is also a resource. On the side bar I’ve set up some additional pages, including logs of our coffee roasting, wine, beer, scotch, and chocolate tastings. There you’ll also find links to all my recipes, products I like, and books I recommend.

I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy trying, tasting, and photographing my works-in-progress. If the site is too small for you to comfortably view, press Ctrl + on your keyboard. Thanks!

-jen

picture courtesy of David Hagerman Photography