First post

I am from Texas, I am a Texan. As far as I have moved from my hometown of Houston (1834 miles to be exact), I still consider myself a Texan.  Somehow I found my way up to Oregon for college and have moved even farther north to find myself in Portland -- living among people that my grandmother still considers Yankees.

When friends discover my roots, the first question after "why don't you have an accent?" is "why did you come to Oregon?"  as if I am crazy, that there is nothing here worth discovering and I should turn back now before I discover that the river is too deep to ford and Sue has died of dysentery.

I have given a lot of consideration to that question, since I have never been able to offer a very good answer.  Maybe mountains are in my blood.  My father is from rural northern Montana and he has to go back every several years to reset.  Maybe I wanted a fresh start and to set out on my own, to get a piece of that Western expansion that seems so American and exciting. Either way I'm really not sure how I got here, but I know why I stayed.  I stayed for the food.

Since moving here I have tried things that I was never exposed to in Texas.  Beets that weren't from a can, Marion berries, Salmon Jerky.  And fruits that I had always loved were taken to a new level when purchased on a whim from a fruit stand on the side of the road: cherries, apples, peaches, berries.

As the season of feasts is upon us, and food is raised to the center of everything, I feel that it is an appropriate time to start this blog, and it seems only right that I should start by returning to the Bayou city to visit my parents for Thanksgiving.

Thanks for reading!