Some people are glad that Friday rolls along, but this week I am very happy that it is finally Saturday. It was a very busy one and I just noticed that I did not post for a few days as I ended up finishing work around 11pm the last 2-3 days. Of course I am still planning to work today as Normita is away again for the day at a trade show for her work. This leaves me with the fun tasks of either catching up on household chores, or doing some work in the office. Knowing myself I will probably end up doing a bit of both…

We were supposed to get the last of our furniture on Wednesday evening, but, of course, the carpenter building them called us to let us know that the last coat of varnish was not drying quickly enough. He would deliver on Thursday at 9am, which ended up being Thursday at 3pm. Don’t you like wasting your time waiting for trades people?

In any case we ended up getting our furniture and we set things up nicely on Thursday night, including the new aquarium, and last night we transferred the boys to their new home. They spent the evening swimming along madly as they now had 5 times the space to do so, compared to their old home. This morning they are at it again, so I assume that they will get in great shape from the extra exercise. I wish I was so lucky…

We will probably post some of the first recipes to the site this weekend as we will finally have time to really cook for the first time since we moved here. Our philosophy is that we do not want to post recipes that we have not recently done in our kitchen. Most of them are originals that are favorites of ourselves and our friends, and others are some that we have adapted over the years.

This is mainly for two reasons. First I do not believe that simply posting things that you find on the Internet as your own is fair, so how can people trust us if we do not actually cook and eat the stuff we present here. Like our dear friend Kurt always says, ‘I do not trust a chef who does not eat his own food, or that is too thin!’.

Second, I have a tendency to not measure much when I cook, and even for recipes of mine I need to double-check on the exact quantities as I rarely follow even my own written recipes. This is where doing all the recipes with Normita comes handy, as she will be able to keep an eye on me, take notes, and make sure that what we finally post will thoroughly reflects the way we cook. More on that and other things later today…

Lucito

We are finally somewhat settled in the new condo. Last Friday, with the wonderful help of Jorge and Margarita, we managed to clean the place up properly and wash all of the dishes, cutlery, glasses, pots and pans, and all the things we have for the kitchen, and then somewhat found some room for everything in its reduced space.

Tomorrow night a little bar and a small furniture for the aquarium should be delivered and the last things still sitting around on the counters should be stored away. We should be able to start posting regularly in the coming days. This took a lot longer than planned, but we are now ready. Normita is out of town on business until tomorrow so her introductory post will still be delayed for a few days. I am here and frantically preparing some nice posts and tasty recipes and they will be up regularly starting soon.

We do not plan to have a regular posting schedule at first, but I aim to post at least a short entry daily, and when the mechanics of production will be well oiled we will try to have a regular schedule for the posts.

Have fun visiting us, and I will be back shortly…

Lucito

Phew… It’s been a very long month so far. We were planning to launch this new site at the end of August, about two weeks after we had moved to our new condo, but circumstances prevented us from doing so. We have been dealing with architects and trades people for the last month and the kitchen is yet to be ready for prime-time. Since it is a tad difficult to do a food-related site without having a working kitchen, we postponed the launch until we were ready. The last workers left on Tuesday, and last night we unpacked the kitchen supplies and spices, and stored them in the newly-built larder. Some of the dishes and implements of food preparation are piled up on the dining room table awaiting a good wash so that they can be properly stored tonight. It looks like we should be ready to start cooking by the weekend, and so we will be able to start blogging about it soon. I will now take some time to introduce myself and what I plan for this site, and Normita will chime-in, introducing herself, in the coming days whenever her busy schedule permits. I have been deeply involved with food since my childhood. I remember, when I was 4-5 years old, sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen while she was cooking, and helping her in making cookies and other treats. Our family was from a small village on the Laurentian Mountains north of Montréal, Québec, and, as with any good French family, food was an important part of our lives. I lived in Montréal with my parents and every weekend we would take the trip ‘up-north’ to my grandparent’s house and stay with them. You could get in the house, via the kitchen, at any hour of the day or night, and there would be something cooking on the stove or in the oven, and some industrial quantities of freshly prepared food in the refrigerator. I remember, when I was in my late teens, stopping at their place in the middle of the night after the clubs closed, and there was always a freshly baked ham in the refrigerator or some thick stew or soup slowly simmering on the stove. We would dig-in without waking up anyone and fill ourselves with great food before going out again for more revelry. After my early childhood in my grandmother’s kitchen, my interest for cooking became more formal. In my early teens my mother was taking cooking lessons from one of the best French chefs in Montréal, and when she was returning home I would pore over her lessons and prepare the newly-learned recipes with her. By the time I was at university I was taking regular night classes in various forms of cooking, including many years of traditional Chinese cooking. From then on cooking and later wine became my passions and I have been involved professionally as a food consultant and wine buyer since the mid-eighties as one of my many business endeavors. I lived in Québec through my early twenties until I graduated from university, I then moved to Northern Ontario where I worked in private practice. I was involved with 3 careers through the eighties, first as a dentist, second as a food and wine consultant, and third as a computer consultant. By the early nineties I abandoned the first career completely to dedicate myself primarily to the computer business. I have been involved with numerous IT startups since then, and also consulting on IT and the food/wine business. All of this while traveling the world for both pleasure and business. Last spring I was hired to develop and maintain a line of software for a web-based company, as well as overseeing the development of their newly re-launched websites. While we were undergoing the move to our new location we were planning to launch some discussion places to talk about the products that the sites were promoting. While looking for regular writers, Bob, our CEO, came up with the wonderful idea that our first one should be about food and that I should be the main contributor. Even though the sites are not really food-related, it would be a great idea for me to do something I really like and also to generate some traffic to the sites. Off we went with the concept and with the help of Kurt, our webmaster and dear friend of mine, the concept evolved into a site that will be about food, wine, fine living, hedonism, traveling, and whatever contributes to the joys of life. It will be mainly based on my experiences and those of my lovely wife Normita, as well as of some friends who will contribute whenever they have something relevant to say. This first post is a bit long-winded, as I thought that I should introduce myself a bit before starting to seriously contribute to the subject at hand. I want to keep things informal, and have people contribute in a format that will be both entertaining and educational. I will try to regularly post some recipes that I have both tested, and eaten recently, and will follow the day-to-day rhythm of what we do here in the kitchen and in our lives. Normita will introduce herself in the coming days, but let me first tell you a little bit about us. About 7-8 years ago we met on the Internet and we exchanged emails for many months before we first met. Normita is the warmest and loveliest person I have ever met, and we complete ourselves entirely. We do not feel whole without each other, and our love has been growing by leaps and bounds over the years. In those days I was back living in Québec, and she was living in her native Mexico City. After we first met, we spent the next couple of years traveling back-and-forth between Québec and México, and we soon realized that at this rate we would spend enough money to buy our own airline. We finally decided to get married in the middle of the year 2000 and in November of that year we tied the knot at Hacienda de Cocoyoc, a wonderful place about an hour south of Mexico City. We then lived in Québec, at the edge of a wonderful lake, for some years, but the long winters and the isolation finally got the best of us, and we decided over two years ago to come live in Mexico City. We rented a furnished condo for a few years, but decided to move to a quieter area of the city last spring and it took us many months to find such an area, and then to find a decent place. Once we moved, one month ago today, we have been struggling to make this place comfortable, and a place where we can share our love of life with our friends and family. We are getting close to this goal now. We both want to welcome you to our new place, and we hope that you will like what you will find here. At first, until the kitchen is finally operational, I will talk about cooking in more general terms, and also share our experiences in building a new small kitchen from scratch. We hope that you will find it useful, and that you will enjoy your stay with us. Lucito

 Hi Everybody! Welcome to our new place on the web! We’ll be online soon to discuss things that make our life enjoyable. In the meantime you can look around at our Cybermall or learn more about our wine consulting partnership at http://www.fitzcarraldoconsultants.com.

CU Lucito & Normita