Administrivia

Finally!

I have updated the blog theme, and the version of WordPress, as part of a project to formalize and actually post regularly on a collection of blogs on different topics. Regularly may be relative, since I am in a cooking rut and have less to say than I could, but there should always be something out there to link to and talk about. For instance, I see I used to watch and post about Hell’s Kitchen. I haven’t watched that at all for at least two seasons, and failed to watch the whole thing before that. On the other hand, I have been devouring Chopped episodes on Netflix. Heck, I could even talk about History Channel’s Alone, since food was crucial to the survival scenario, and was quite intriguing at times. Of course, the first season is over, but retrospective? There will be at least one more season, too. There is also allergy news. And food cost news. See? I just have to remember! Since part of the problem was my dismay with how the place looked, the update should help.

Hang On Tight…

I am about to attempt to import content from The Married Guy Cook to here.  If it works, I’ll tweak from there, deleting some of the posts and continuing to set the new site up.  If it fails, I’ll remove it all and restore from backup to get to where I was before this post.

Update:
Looks like success! I’ve deleted some posts that were meaningless or self-referential to the old blog. All that remains after any more of that is to finish making sure internal links in posts point internally to FGC instead of MGC. Then any other tweaking that would have happened anyway, like category changes, blogroll, etc.

Introduction

[Edited]

Once upon a time, I posted about cooking on personal blogs, and then I started a food blog named The Married Guy Cook [posts prior to this one chronologically were imported from there].  It was inspired by and a spoof on the name of a short-lived food blog by Jeff Soyer, The Single Guy Cook.  That was especially appropriate, since my cooking ability came to the fore once I was married.

Now I am not.  Married.  [Not true, exactly. Deb wished to break up, but we have never divorced or lived apart – not that we could have afforded to, and remain an intact family for all practical purposes.] Which makes the name a bit odd.  And it’s built into the domain [which I regret having subsequent failed to renew, probably since I wasn’t using it and lacked funds to keep it in the collection], so still odd even if I rename the blog itself.  Which I did, but in the midst of a blogging drought and already dreaming of this new place.

Along the way, I thought about how much I knew now could have saved me and given me a better diet when I was single.  Along the way, I hit economic disaster that made my existing frugality useful and challenged it to be more so.  Along the way, I had a child with multiple allergies.  Allergies to fundamentals, eggs and milk, and more avoidably, peanuts, bananas and now tree nuts.  Worse, early on, thankfully temporary sensitivities to substances in most foods.

When I was young, I loved watching Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet.  I had to agree with my late grandfather’s remark that there was nothing frugal about much of what he cooked.  I hope to do better here, but the theme is general, not absolute.  Nor is it only about cooking.

To cut to the chase, this blog will be about frugality, something more in vogue than usual currently, and while that may relate mainly to food, that’s not about cooking as such.  Call it lifestyle as much as anything.  This blog will be about food and cooking, obviously, with an eye to frugality and making do, but not tied exclusively to it.  This blog will have a large coping with allergies component.  That could perhaps be its own blog, but I decided not to be too niche about it.  Finally, with three young, variably fussy kids to feed, expect to see an element of making them happy.  At the same time, I haven’t forgotten my decades as a single person who could have saved money and eaten better, so I plan to touch on that as well.

I welcome guest recipes and ideas.  Feel free to contact me in the comments or at an address to be named later, as I set the place up in finer detail.

Finally, I expect to import material from my old blog.  Probably directly, with the possibility of reposts from the past as well.  That may look disjointed, or be dated prior to this “first post,” so please bear with me.  And by all means, if you missed it the first time, peruse away.

Herbs and Spices

Just a short note about my writing conventions here. You will see me say “spices” generically to mean both herbs and spices, which are technically two different things. However, they are both flavoring or taste enhancing ingredients used in cooking or embellishing food, achieving the same result. So please bear with me when I shorthand them, much as I might say “his” to mean “his or hers” or “people’s” generically.