Mise en place; tiny bowls of various spices and herbs, a large bowl of whole carrots, a leek, and a celery stalk.

To keep to the medium: I, your humble and effortlessly talented narrator, have just awoken to the sound of birds singing and clear blue skies.

You can, of course, assume that it is currently—and perpetually—a leisurely Saturday morning. I check my meal planning calendar, a thing I definitely do and have, and— oh! Look at that: it is my special stock-making day wherein nobody emails me! I hop on my classic motorcycle, which starts. I ride over to my local butcher shop, where a cartoonishly jovial person greets me by name. I acquire pork trotters sawed into perfect 1" discs, chicken backs, and veal bones. Presumably, I come to posess a baguette and seasonal vegetables from somewhere; a farmer’s market or something? Point is, I return home and spend the rest of the day simmering. Soundtrack by whatever currently-hip band involves the most whistling.

Oh, and me? Well, I am someone that owns and wears sweaters. I volunteer part-time in the cafeteria of the local School for Fussy Children That are Notoriously Difficult to Trick into Eating Broccoli, where I have personally developed—if I may be so bold—some pretty clever kitchen hacks. I’ve certainly never eaten anything while standing over my sink.

Okay, fine.

I’m Mat “Wilto” Marquis. Professionally, I’m a web developer of very slight renoun—I even wrote a book about it. I wake up feeling like it is two thousand and eighteen. I shop at the Star Market near the gym because it’s near the gym, and we were also out of paper towels and dog food.

Unprofessionally, for several values of the word, I cook. Technically, I’ve cooked in the same restaurant as J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, for sufficiently broad definitions of both “cooked” and “restaurant.” I’m a former carpenter and amateur boxer that has been learning French cooking since childhood. I accidentally learned it from my father, who learned from my Great Grandmother’s long-term… uh, friend, Tom. Tom was a classically-trained French Chef. He was also, as far as I know, married to someone, but it wasn’t my Great Grandmother.

I’ve loved cooking since I was a kid, and got my hands on my first hand-me-down cookbook—The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook—as a kid. I still have it, crayon in the margins and all.

So, why a food blog, then?

I built this site for two reasons. One, to start tinkering with CSS Grid. Not a conventional-definition “cool” reason, that one.

The second reason, well, that started out pretty mundane too: I needed a home for the recipes I’ve been developing over the years. Unordered lists of ingredients scribbled on scraps of paper stuck to the fridge weren’t quite cutting it anymore.

But y’know, as I’ve worked on it, it started to feel like this thing could have some legs to it; that eventually, and with your help, I might be able to buy back enough of my time to turn this into… I dunno; a whole thing.

So, welcome. I’m making it all up as I go along, here. Let’s see where this thing goes together, yeah?