When I hear chefs tell of the first dish they made, be it fried eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches or mud pie, I find their memories hard to believe. These cooks must've observed and helped (a carrot peeled here, a lemon squeezed there) before grabbing the reigns of the cooktop. I cannot imagine how they distinguished these family efforts from a dish that was truly theirs. Was corn on the cob my first offering? I had, afterall, torn the leaves and silk from the ears and broken the stalk with my own hands. But did my father's act of dropping the ears into boiling water negate my ownership of the meal? As I participated in kitchen efforts nearly since birth, I don't recall my first foray into the kitchen, but I do remember subsequent trips, and the often disastrous culinary creations that resulted.

With a single mother working nights while putting herself through college I was free to roam through cabinets and cookbooks from an early age. Initial attempts were simple: make a better milk by combining 2% with apple juice!; how about fried deli turkey, crispy and greasy - poor man's bacon! As I grew more confident (whether this confidence was warranted or not) I undertook more complex projects. I found myself obsessed with baking and confections, cookies, cakes, a brief affair with meringues. While fried meringue was a personal creative triumph (albeit one better in theory than practice) family folklore remembers volcano cake most vividly.

After making a few chocolate box cakes I was ready to venture into cakes from scratch. I gathered all the ingredients, measuring them as best an eight year old could and dumped them in a bowl. Stir stir stir, everything looked about right, popped it in the oven and waited for my sweet treat. When the egg timer ran out I dashed to the oven, ready to remove my creation. I opened the oven door, felt that familiar rush of hot air hit my face, and gazed at the cake I had sired. What faced me was not at all the picture of perfection I had spotted in the Joy of Cooking.

As a matter of fact, very little cake remained in the pans. The batter seemed to have leapt from the tins, dashing towards the oven floor, but rather than reach the destination something froze the batter in its place. Hanging from the oven racks were stalactites of cake, as dark as caves and nearly as hard. There, in suspended animation, was my first cake made from scratch. I marked one up to experience and left the mess for my mom to work out.

To this day I can't imagine what went wrong with volcano cake. It has been suggested that baking soda was substituted for flour, but I can't believe I found the two cups of soda needed to replace all purpose flour in our typically bare pantry. How such a simple recipe could become so alive and active is a wonder I don't expect to understand, but a curiosity that fuels my desire to understand (and devour) food to this day.

In the coming weeks I hope to develop my understanding of flavors and textures through my writing here. While you probably didn't expect to find a food journal at mtcool, I hope this new departure won't discourage any remaining readers. I anticipate these studies in taste will come to incorporate the stories you expect to see here, as what is food if not personal and prone to invoking memories?

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