A Beginning

Good evening. I have started this humble blog for several reasons:

First, to write about food in an accessible, enjoyable manner—after all, what good is a chef who can't tell you a thing about food, or who is so confusing in their speech that all you understand is that you're about to eat something?

Second, to encourage the creativity of my fellow steampunks. We are, after all, an intensely creative community of people; why should this creative energy be applied only to literary and presentational pursuits? That is to say, we can and should do so much more than write stories and make costumes. Creativity in the kitchen is just like creativity elsewhere—it is a skill to be honed, to be practiced, and most importantly, to be shared.

Third, to encourage my own creative process—"steampunk food" is a nebulous concept (to be fair, steampunk itself is somewhat nebulous,) and I want to force myself to think within my own constraints and develop delightful foods to flesh out my enjoyment of the steampunk world.

I suppose there's a fourth, and necessarily more general, goal—I like to have fun, and this seems an awfully fun way to approach food. After all, if hundreds of other food bloggers are doing it, it's got to have some merit.

Photo by Robert Egan

A little more about me, then.

I am Aaron, also sometimes known as other things, but for now Aaron shall suffice. I am many things in life, and for the purposes of an introduction, I shall tell you some of them: I am a cook training to become a chef, I am an historian, I am a tailor, I am a steampunk enthusiast, I am busy, and I love to eat food of many varieties. In the time I am able to take away from cooking and studying about cooking, I am involved in the Imperial Anti-Piracy Squadron, a performance and educational group specializing in steampunk—you might encounter me as Graf Georg von Ziger (or a host of other characters) at cons such as the World Steam Expo. I also work behind-the-scenes assisting my good friend Miss Kagashi in her monumental task of running the group. It's good fun. Miss Kagashi also runs a blog called The Steamer's Trunk, which I think you'll enjoy.

As a cook and a steampunk, I find it interesting to explore the intersection of those two pastimes—so, onward!