portlandpiper
Member for:1 year 36 weeks
Bio:
I am a programmer that enjoys baking, cooking, dancing, eating, playing the bagpipes, teaching (baking, cooking, dancing, and bagpipes (most people have the eating stuff figured out)), tromping around the outdoors, going on long drives while avoiding major highways, reading, movies, music, oh the heck with it - I do what my wife tells me to do and I better like it, or else. :-)
I have been baking and cooking since 1969. I got undivided grandma attention in the kitchen while she lived with our family and that started me on my food path. She introduced me to rich mid-western casseroles and rich German dishes. I got introduced to chiles, salsas, and family style Mexican food from the Mexican family that owned the farm next to ours in Napa, CA. When we moved to Pleasant Hill, CA; the neighbour across the street introduced me to Phillipino dishes.
Not long after that I went to my first real Chinese food restaurant in the Oakland, CA Chinatown and found out that I really do like vegetables and that there are a lot of flavours out there that I had not tried before. This started me into a foray of bad ethnic cookbooks. Eventually I got wise, but it took a while.
A few years later Dave and I ran across each other (I think it was highschool computer lab) and we found that we both had a liking for good food. (And also cheap Taco Bell tacos.)
Along the way we worked up a really good chili recipe and talked about competing, but never got around to it. I was already square dancing and his little brother got us both into folk dancing. Which got me into Berkeley, where I discovered Cambodian, Brazilian, Ethiopian, and other cuisines.
After moving to Oregon I got into bagpipes and sourdough baking, and really started working on fine tuning my baking and cooking skills.
If you want one of my recipes to be done up as a recipe-in-pictures, just drop me an email and let me know.
Stop by and visit my band web-site:
http://www.RiverCityPipeBand.com/
Or the NE Portland St. Paddy's Day parade web-site:
http://www.St-Paddys-Day.com/