Post the first, an introduction.

Welcome to Great Pond Eats!

As far as I know, all the really cool food blog names have been taken. So I've gone more literal. I live on Great Pond and this blog is about what I'm cooking and what then people in my life are eating.

My cooking is not limited to what I make at home and force on my family, but extends out into the world because I frequently bake for events and bake sales, and every five weeks I run the kitchen and cook for 60+ people at The 246 Community Kitchen in Wellfleet. we offer a free meal once a week for w hoody who wants to come and also have a small emergency food pantry. Our dinners are a mix of people who can use the meal and those who come for the fellowship. We are open from October through May and the first meal we served this year was lobster rolls and grilled vegetable sandwiches for the vegetarians. You can check out our menus here. My next meal for the kitchen is December 22, 2015, when the menu will be a holiday tapas party.

Cooking for 60+ people on a limited budget can be challenging, especially if you want to avoid customary soup kitchen food. I like to cook with a lot of fresh herbs and layered flavors, a bit of heat, and am easily influenced by the food of many cultures. Over the next few months I will be writing on the challenges and strategies of cooking large quantities of great food for very little money. It isn't always pasta or shepherd's pie. Sometimes it's stuff pork loin, or smoked ham with Reisling and apple sauce, or dry rub slow roasted pork shoulder. Eggplant and chickpea stew. Eggplant and portobello mushroom schnitzel with lemon caper sauce or roasted vegetable sandwiches with fresh mozzarella and basil roasted garlic mayonnaise on toasted  baguette. It's freshly baked pie cooking while the main course is being eaten, or tres leches cake with a thick layer  of freshly whipped cream. And, yes, it is often soup. Tunisian vegetable and bean soup or roasted butternut squash and apple soup with Thai curry. Or a soup made from whatever food donations walked through our door. Sometimes it's oven roasted tomatoes or French onion soup.

But this blog is mainly about what I cook for the community kitchen, it's about how I feed myself on a daily basis. And that relies on whatever is fresh and local. Visits to the farmers market all summer, where I have made friends with my farmers. Or what I grow in my gardens. It's what my friends give me from their shellfish grants or the extra fish they just caught. It's what's on sale at the supermarket that I can braise to a lovely thick flavorful stew. It's vegetables and pasta. Japanese noodles. Or spicy Thai curries.

So for an intro, it's just a bit too off the cuff. Let me say that I have been writing about for for a couple of decades and I have the journals to prove it. I begsn cooking as a small child because very body helped with meals. By the age of six, I could make my own breakfast, which could be eggs, or a ham sandwich or oatmeal, or, best of all. Grilled ham and cheese run under the broiler. I knew how to cook meat on an electric grill, cook white rice, and escargot, make a bechamel as the base for an Indian-inspired shrimp curry, cranberry sauce, box brownies, and many other things. Some of this I was allowed to cook on my own of with the help of my older brother (by two years.)

As I got older, my range broadened to quiche and stew, Thanksgiving dinner at 17, all kinds of seafood, Cninese, Japanese, sushi, and baking. And here we are many years later and I feel like I can cook type of food that crosses my path and come up with a tasty dish.  All of this I will write about here.  And now that I am done with the into, I will post it and start with one of my favorite comfort food rcipes, Steamed Clams.