Welcome to KitchenBoy.net

First a little about myself, I am someone who loves to cook, bake and talk about all things culinary. I got my real start just over 15 years ago. After I married, I began to take a greater interest in cooking. I was concerned with making healthy food and found the best way to do that was to prepare it myself. Prior to meeting my wife, I did cook, but it was mostly steamed veggies and buttered noodles – single guy food, quick simple preparation. I actually ate quite healthily but it was limited to simpler meals.

As time passed and my interest grew, I began to take over the cooking duties. Being a man, I became interested in tools and gadgets to make food preparation easier and more fun. As I do with most things I enjoy, I became immersed in the details of gadgets and tools. I wanted to know why a certain tool was good or useful and whether it was necessary or just something I call “almost a good idea”.

Since my cooking interest began, I have had only galley kitchens with limited storage space. This has forced me to carefully consider whether the things I used were really necessary. As time passed and my culinary interests grew, I continued to explore the hows and whys of this new world.

My wife and I found ourselves in a position to take some time away from the corporate world, a sabbatical if you will. During this time, we began to explore those things that interested us hoping that our second career would emerge from one of those areas. I took a part time job at a kitchen retailer, who shall remain nameless. As much as I knew about cooking and culinary related things, I learned more as the company provided training on various products. I found that I enjoyed sharing my knowledge with other people. As of this writing I still work at this store, but my interest in all things culinary finds me searching out information to grow personally and to enable me to better assist customers – No Really!

The purpose of this particular Blog is to share my knowledge and opinions on a variety of culinary topics and hopefully help you decide if a product or tool is right for you. I will write about not only cooking and baking tools and resources, but also wine and coffee related items. I believe wine and food are intricately linked and as for coffee, well I just love it so. I will from time to time write about techniques, but will try not to get into recipes, as there are so many really good recipe websites. I want to limit the discussion to things that relate to tools, gadgets and equipment, but I know myself; I will drift into other areas from time to time.

It is not my intention to give ratings or recommendations but to provide the information needed to make informed purchases, to educate really. This is the part of culinary retail that I enjoy most. I love discussing and helping people who are truly interested. While I will of course state my opinions about various products, I don’t want to give thumbs up or stars or forks or other ratings. Everyone has different tastes and experiences and won’t agree with me. That is ok – the exchange of ideas is good and our willingness to listen to each other and consider other views vital to finding our way.

I also don’t want to endorse one company over another, as each one has strengths and weaknesses. To me, the idea of buying all my cookware from one company has never appealed. There are too many good selections in the world to limit myself to one manufacturer. Also, I feel that having tools and appliances from various manufacturers gives you feel for the different approaches and techniques available. You may find that you end up liking a product you would never have considered.

In summary, I hope to become an axis point for good information and the exchange of ideas. I hope to learn from others and to be informative as well.

Enjoy the site and as Jacques Pepin says, “happy cooking”!

ADDENDUM:

I have many foundations that I would like to share with you that may help you understand my culinary identity.

I am a great advocate of eat fresh, eat local and where available organic. To me, organic simply means food grown with no artificial chemical pesticides, fertilizers or other such things that harm the land and adversely affect the food itself.

I believe that simple ingredients and preparations are the key to great food. From time to time, involved preparations and multi-step techniques can elevate food to levels of greatness and can be used for special occasions in the home for friends, family and loved ones. It is not necessary everyday, unless that is how you choose to eat, and if you have the time.

I believe that prepackaged foods, while convenient, should not be used the majority of the time. They are in the end bad for ones health and take us further away from the basics of cooking and therefore further from good food. I believe that cooking from scratch takes little time and planning to prepa