
You can all breath a collective sigh of relief: this, I’m pleased to announce, is the very last post of my 5th Year Anniversary Week. Ok, maybe I went a little too far profiling anyone whose visage ever graced these pages, but, I must confess, it was quite a kick taking such a long stroll…
Today’s the day, the official five year anniversary of my blog. Exactly five years ago today, at this very moment (well, actually, at 1:30 AM), I wrote these words: “I’m The Amateur Gourmet: a completely untrained, unaccomplished culinary lout with absolutely no expertise in anything having to do with food.” Despite my five years, now,…
As many of you know, this blog has parents and you’re looking at them right now. That’s right: Josh & Katy, my friends from Atlanta, were the ones–five years ago–who told me, no URGED me, to start a food blog. I had no idea what they were talking about but I acquiesced and that’s why…
In the history of this blog, I’ve had not one but TWO roommates. Both of them were women. They still are. The first, Lauren (pronounced LAW-ren, like Sofia Loren) was there at the very beginning; we lived together (we were attending Emory Law School at the time) and I said, “Hey I’m going to start…
It was easy to pick out my biggest disasters–they sort of speak for themselves–but how to narrow down five years of food blogging to just a few favorite recipes? The truth is that I can narrow it down pretty easily because there are two specific recipes that are all-time greats; so great, I make them…
Let’s be honest–you get a bit of a thrill when I screw up, don’t you? Lord knows I’ve screwed up enough on this blog to justify its name, and here are a few of my favorite disasters.
Here’s a quickie: in the past five years, I’ve written 2,375 entries and received 36,059 comments. Granted, many of those comments were from Spambots offering to enhance my genitals, but–still–it’s quite a statistic.
Where would this blog be without my friend Lisa? She was the Gracie Allen to my George Burns, the Betty Comden to my Adolph Green. In our early days, we cooked together, we ate together, and we made crazy videos and songs about food that I posted enthusiastically on the blog. We’re still good friends…
It’s a dangerous thing to devote an entire week to celebrating the 5th anniversary of your blog; that’s like shutting down the post office to celebrate the 500th anniversary of mail. Only I’m not the post office and blogging isn’t mail and, you know, after five years I think I deserve a week of celebration,…

Some of us have Oedipal complexes, others have Electra complexes, but very few of us have a complex based on apple pie. Allow me to lay on your therapist’s couch for a moment: I have a serious pie issue. My apple pie is inadequate–it comes from Martha Stewart–and though it often inspires a happy nod…