While walking today I was listening to my favorite podcast, Armchair Expert. The interview I heard today was with author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love). During the interview she talked about the fact that she loves to write. She loves writing more than doing just about anything else.

Well, I love to write. Not as much as Ms. Gilbert. Other things come before that for me: family, photography, cooking and travel. But since the pandemic started there has been nothing special to take photos of, only a few visits from the kids and of course no travel. I have been focusing on cooking. While cooking is fun, there are only so many dinners for two that stretch my creativity. And our freezer is BEYOND FULL of leftovers. I could stop cooking for three weeks and we would not go hungry.

So hearing Ms. Gilbert talk about writing with host Dax Shepherd (who is also a television/movie writer as well as an actor and host of one of the top podcasts) made me realize that I need to write more. But what to write about.

Then over on Instagram I met a fellow blogger who loves traveling and cruising as much as I do. He lives in Great Britain and we have been keeping up a correspondence on his blog, this blog and Instagram. He told me that I inspired him with my daily Instagram travel photo to start going back through his travel experiences and posting photos on Instagram. Which in turn has inspired me to think about how I could do the same thing with writing.

Stay with me here…I have a little bit further to go here…I am going to explain what you will see on this page in the weeks to come. Remember that podcast I mentioned? Well I listen to it every day. And two days before Ms. Gilbert was on, I heard an excellent interview with Samin Nosrat. She is a food columnist with The NY Times Magazine and the host of the Netflix show, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. She and Dax got into a discussion about dining experiences. Not just cooking or eating, but eating experiences.

I got that. I understand exactly what eating experiences are. How they are different than just food. They are about the entire experience which might include getting to the restaurant, why that particular restaurant, obviously the food and the service. Over the years so much of our travel has involved food. I spend more time researching restaurants than I do hotels. Maybe because on a city visit, you are in just one hotel, but you get to eat three times a day. In every one of those meals on the road and here in Seattle, we are always looking for great food but more than that we are looking for food experiences.

So here is what this is all about. As I finished my walk (where I had listened to Ms. Nostrat) I begin to make a list in my mind of the greatest food/dining/lunch experiences we have had both here and on the road. You know how much I love my lists and this one just kept growing and growing. So my new goal is to write about those experiences in a series of short posts over the next few weeks. I hope to post twice a week with a new one. If you love travel and you love food, I hope you will like the stories.

I always encourage people to get out there, travel the world, see new things, experience new people, experience new food, experience new culture. What happens is that helps you to grow and be your best self.
—Karamo Brown