I am a wanderlust. I love traveling. I have lived in different places. In 2004, I decided to start writing stories of my travel adventures. Those were sent via email. The response was amazing. I continue to share my travel stories via email and social media. I love sharing stories. My readers love it.
One of my closest friends, Dan Foster, and I had our own adventures as well. We would travel together. Sometime, we made discoveries in his town of Rochester, New York or in towns where I lived which was quite several. Dan and I bonded over my cooking. Dan was one of my first guinea pigs when I first moved to Rochester back in 1998. He came to my place almost on a weekly basis to try food I would make for him. Those early years in Rochester were what I call my experimental years as I taught myself more skills in the kitchen. Believe me, there were more bad dishes back then than now. Like the one time I made tortilla soup but accidentally put in cayenne pepper instead of chili powder. That sent us into tears (Think... "OH MY GOSH THIS IS SOOO HOT!!!) followed with peals of laughter over this silly mistake. After I left Rochester, I continued to cook. It became my favorite thing to do. It calms me. It's therapeutic. I love seeing people be awed by what I just fed them. It's the ultimate pleasure.
In 2007, Dan decided to see how I would do with a camera. He had just discovered the science of photography and loved cameras and lenses. On one of my frequent visits to Rochester, he lent me a digital SLR camera and said, "Show me what you can do with it." Uhm... I knew those simple compact cameras but I did not understand SLR cameras. I said okay... and I played. Indeed I did. I came up with some decent shots. Dan later decided that we were quite a pair. He loved the science of photography and I had discovered the art of photography. One day after I got home from work when I was living in San Diego, I found a package from Dan waiting for me. Inside it was a digital SLR camera with two different lenses and a book on exposure. Inside was a note from Dan saying that he thought I had potential and that I should take up photography. We talked for hours about photography. We went on field trips together just to photograph.
In 2008, while visiting him in Rochester and cooking for him as usual, he said that he wanted to photograph me cooking. I willingly went along with it. I was making some kind of summer salad with chicken, couscous, grapes, onions, etc while he followed me all over the kitchen with his camera. Those are some of the pictures he took that day.
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| I was telling Dan about how Kosher salt has different grain as compared to other salts. |
As we sat down to eat, Dan was commenting how he really loved reading my stories. And that I should maybe consider start writing about cooking and dining. It is, after all, one of things I love doing. True that. We started brainstorming about how I would do it. That brainstorming session took months as we came up with many different ideas. Then I decided I would do a blog. I was apprehensive about going public with my writing but was willing to take the plunge. Then next... the brainstorming session for blog names. One night while cooking in one of my favorite kitchens that I have affectionately called my chem lab. It was in a lovely apartment in San Diego that I called, "my yellow box." It was in that kitchen and home that my creative spirit became very much alive and present. I went aha... Gastronaomi! Gastronomy. It just fit! I excitedly texted Dan and told him I was going with "Gastronaomi". He loved it. And then I began. He was my first follower. If you look under the "Followers", you'll see "Dan".
I loved posting about my cooking and dining adventures. I was just starting out with this blog. Then life had surprises in store for me. Quite too many, if I may add. I stopped. I couldn't write anymore. I left that beautiful yellow box with the chem lab I had grown to love so much. I went on to live in Hawai'i. I started a new blog called, "A Stowaway Wahine's Aloha" which chronicled my experiences of living in Hawai'i for nine months. It was indeed a fascinating experience with many challenges and adventures that I continue to look back on. The best thing I got from Hawai'i was my dog, Chocolate. :-) Chocolate continues to be dragged all over the map as he follows me loyally to different places.
I left Hawai'i to return to San Diego. I was living in a condo in San Diego where I did not feel truly at home and I didn't feel attached to the kitchen. Then Dan got even more sick. I was flying back and forth whenever he was hospitalized. He passed away on June 11, 2012. Then I moved to DC to pursue my Ph.D. Then then then then... you know how life goes. Then I got diagnosed with cancer in January 2015.
It was the cancer that made me re-discover my love of writing. I wrote about my cancer journey (naomicancerjourney.blogspot.com) which I continue writing to this day. Because my cancer was front and center of my life at that time, it was all what I could write about. Now that my cancer is in remission and no longer the main focus of my life, I realized that I missed doing this food blog. I told a new friend also a foodie whose name ironically is Danny about my food blog. He took a look and said I should try it again. I said, "Maybe..."
Just last month, I found a new home allowing me to be reunited with my kitchen toys after having them in the storage for seven months. I was cooking one night in the kitchen when I realized I had the exactly same feeling I had when I cooked in that chem lab back in San Diego. That was when I knew I was truly at home again here in Rochester. I have come full circle.
In one of our last conversations together, Dan told me that he truly hoped that I would eventually go back to writing because he enjoyed reading my stories and he said he was pretty sure there were other folks who shared the same sentiment. In his final letter to me which I received after he passed away, he wrote,
"Always enjoyed learning cooking tips because I find it interesting, so have much enjoyed times when you demonstrated different ideas and techniques for cooking."
Dan's spirit lives on....
I look forward to sharing more cooking and dining adventures. I am not sure how this blog will turn out... that's part of the fun, isn't it? It's a journey.
Let's get cookin'!
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