Visualize Whirled Peas

I was about to settle in this morning and whip up a batch of Heather's New Year's Eve Gumbo, when I opened the fridge and found this image staring me in the face.

Looks like a perfectly normal refrigerator, right?

Except for the fact that this icebox contains Polish Pork and Kraut, Puerto Rican Coquitos (pitcher), Black Eyed Pea and Turnip Green Soup (native to Africa and Asia, respectively), Puerto Rican Guisada y Arroz con Gandules, a bottle of Spanish sparkling wine and curry sauce just waiting for some action.

The only difference between my bottom-freezer Amana and the United Nations is that the contents of my fridge don't need an army of translators and a truckload of resolutions to peacefully coexist.

(Don't ask about the freezer - it looks like Europe before the Marshall Plan).

So there I stood contemplating the multicultural beauty of it all when I realized that, sadly, this would not make a great post for Country Girl/City Girl. Because about 40% of you all are men, and let's face it - you don't care how dinner gets to the table, do you?

This would, however, make a great post for a food blog... whiiiich I've been kicking around for the past couple of months. (The working name of which was Days of Wine and Roast-es...pretty bad, I know. You'd never guess that I write for a living.)

Over the past 20 years I have taken up a dozen different pass times: Cross-stitch, needlepoint, quilting, knitting, various athletic endeavours, cooking and gardening.

Of that admittedly matronly collection of activities only cooking and growing things to cook has been with me since the beginning, and continues to be a passion. I cook, read about cooking and famous chefs, study recipes, hunt down gadgets, travel great distances to uncover and haul back wonderful ingredients, I watch OTHER people cook on TV, read foodie blogs...you name it. If it has to do with cooking and eating, I'm all in.

And if there is one thing Country Girl and I can agree on, besides our poison of choice, it's good food.

So, without further ado, we give you: No Place for Picky Eaters.

A blog that, at least on my end, will not be kept up with daily - at least not right off the bat. And hopefully it will not take too much time away from this site. But we'll see where it goes, and where this goes and try to give everybody what they want.

Because we're anal that way.