Yesterday was my grandmother’s birthday.

She would have been 89.

In honor of my lovely grandmother, I made a birthday cake. I think she would have liked the aesthetic, and green was her favorite color. I’m no professional cake decorator but I think it came out alright.

One of my favorite memories of Nana was baking together. Christmas was a big deal in our family, and every year she would meticulously prepare a spread of cookies. They were arranged according to type on Great Grandmother’s glass dishes, and if we were sneaky, we could steal two or three before the meal. Gawking at the fantastical dessert displays was part of what made the holidays so special.

Nana and I baked together a lot when I was a kid. Her weathered hands taught mine how to knead dough for biscuits and press spritz cookies. Later, after she and Bapa moved out to the desert and I went away to college, her baking became a sort of bridge between my new adult life and the family traditions of my childhood. It was only over the past few years that she reined in the kitchen productions.

Nana’s recipes were among her most cherished possessions, and she chose to pass them along to me during my trip to California last year. I didn’t know that that trip would be our last visit. We spent a few nice days together, and even got some photos of her with her great grandsons.

I want to use this blog, in part, to cook and bake my way through her recipe books. She had a couple of those old 1960’s cookbooks (in addition to recipe cards and a whole notebook of my grandfather’s favorites), and I’d like to try my hand at some of those dishes.

The only real tradition I follow religiously is to have champagne and chocolate every year when I do my taxes. I think I’d like to start the tradition of baking a birthday cake every year for May 2.

I’ve never really published my own blog before. Maybe you could count LiveJournal, which still exists somewhere out there, but I’m going for something a little different this time. An upgrade in sophistication and customization, I guess. Of course, I’d be remiss not to mention the good company kept on LiveJournal, considering the beginning of George R. R. Martin’s Not A Blog.

The plan is for this to be an everything blog. Kind of like an everything bagel, which is the best kind of bagel. Sometimes I’m in the mood to write or I have a thought to share or whatever. In those times, it will be nice to have a forum more personal than Facebook.

My original idea for this blog was to document my search—nay, My Quest—for a suitable San Diego style burrito on the East Coast. (Don’t worry, I’ll endeavor to keep the reader abreast of my slow and disappointing progress on that front.)

I almost trashed this after spending about 36 hours trying to get the customizations just right. If you know me, you know that’s in keeping with how I tend to focus my energy. But I’m trying not to lose the forest for the trees, so to speak. And I’m happy with the simple black and white look. Maybe I’ll get better at this formatting thing as I go along.

Welcome! Thanks for reading.