Food is one of the first introductions to the self that we have. As infants, our palate knows what it likes before we know what music we like, what television we like, or even if we like to read or not, because, well, our parents can read to us but we can’t quite read to ourselves, yet. Food is our first idea of community, whether we’re feeding from our mothers’s breast or sipping from the bottle. We are being fed. We know that we are being fed, and our first ideas are formed from such.

The idea of the culinary arts becomes our first soiree into human nature. It’s our birthdays, our celebrations, our holidays. Everything is formed around food, whether it’s ham on Easter or paella, which is what I always had in my Hispanic family, on Christmas. It’s celebrating your coming-of-age birthday with your first, real, legal cocktail or your first, real, legal beer. Mine was a Negroni, by the way.

It’s following a wine trail.

It’s picking blackberries in the spring.

It’s foraging for truffles.

It’s making your first roast marshmallows for your first s’mores.

Everything comes down to what we eat and why we like it, why we eat it, and how we take care of our loves for food. Who we are and how we are is what we eat. Who we are is our souls on plates as we learn how to create and how to live.

For while now, I’ve felt like I’m watching the culinary arts suffocate. Nobody really cooks anymore, and it scares me. This is why I’m creating ‘Kitchen’ on Armida Warrior. Sometimes, you need to fight back with what you have and who you are.

If food has created who I am, because we all need to eat or else we starve and die from starvation, then I’ll create food, my soul, my plates. There will also be cocktails and mocktails.

Have fun and meander.