Oh, it’s nothing new, being into food. One of the most distinct cultural heritages of being Californian is a sort of a food snobbery, after all, coming from growing up absolutely spoiled with freshness that other parts of the country didn’t see thirty years ago.

My mom must have started that for me then, as one of my most consistent memories of her in my childhood is wrapped around the garden that eventually grew to be at least a third of our not-small backyard. Mom was very into organic gardening, before it was trendy (or possibly the first time it was trendy - this wasn’t too long after the 60s) and she was also big on food exploration. I grew up watching her grow different things and learn to cook new flavors, and I must have absorbed more of that than I’d thought at the time.

I sort of picked up cooking myself in high school, when she took a retail job that had her working in the evenings. I remember a dish or two from my dad, who floored us by knowing how to make a great lasagna. Where did he learn that? It certainly wasn’t from his mother, and I don’t remember him setting foot in the kitchen when my mom was in residence, except to carve the turkeys (which he taught me to do, and also to snatch the oysters before they got to the table) or maybe to barbecue. Did mom also do the outside cooking? I don’t recall.

But I took that lesson of not being afraid to make mistakes in the kitchen off to college with me. And mistakes there were, both from my mom and many, many more from me over the years. After the first dorm year, where I gained at least the “freshman 15″ from horrible dining service food, I was quite relieved to move to an apartment where I could cook for myself. And sure, more mistakes there, and some lean living, and a brief and embarrasing obsession with chili-mac, but my roommates and I settled pretty well into a cooking rotation. It was easier to cook for three than for one, and we just didn’t have the room to all cook at once, so at least once or twice a week, it was a communal dinner. The fourth roommate rotated, but was invariably weird, so dinner for three was the norm.

And I’d brought some paperback copies of my mom’s cookbooks with me; my favorite ones that I’d grown up reading like novels. I still have them, mostly old faded copies of the Frugal Gourmet’s series. Say what you will about the man personally, but he had a huge hand in developing adventure in my cooking, and a love of the backgrounds and histories of food.

I’ve had some poor years since then, and some dark ones, where I didn’t branch out into much of anything new, but I grow back out of it routinely. I get into cooking ruts, just like everyone else who has to cook for their family every stinking day. I get tired of it, and I get lazy, and then I pick up one of my now over two shelves-worth of cookbooks, and I get comfortable and I read. I rarely cook anything directly from a recipe these days, but I’ll grab concepts and file them into the back of my head where they can jump out and surprise me on some insomniac night, and just like that, the magic’s back and it’s fun again.

Sometimes it’s not even about the cooking. I’m not really into going out to eat very often, but along with my resolve to try to break out of my shell socially comes trying new foods and new places to eat. The little Thai place that my friend found downtown got me so excited about Thai food that I might have just the slightest crush on it, and it’s all I can think about sometimes.

Going to Vegas seemed to be the perfect opportunity to discover new things, and I had a great time doing that. I had a taste of Vegas-kitsch down at the Peppermill (which was great), I wandered into a Whole Foods and sincerely regretted not bringing a cooler on the trip, and when themis offered up a choice that included Thai, I jumped all over that. Wow, and did that ever fuel my crush!

She’d discovered the Thai place through a site called Chowhound, so I went back and looked it up yesterday. I’ve just now come up for air today.

I will probably never be the gourmet that lots of the people there seem to be, but I’ll happily take their recommendations to heart, and find more treasures. And if I can bring some of that home to my own cooking, all the better. I’d like to pass that on to my own kids; I owe it to my mom.

edited to add: tell me a story from your food history! I love the variety possible.