A Supertaster's Sanctuary

I must say it is very hot, humid and sticky here in my little corner of the world. I have to whine just a bit that I gave up a beautiful swimming pool in our home in the Dallas area last year to move so that we could all be together as a family. Hubby had been commuting for over a year and we just missed him too much. Thus, I traded away that pool for a gorgeous new house in Houston with a fabulous kitchen (remember, I have a gas cooktop now--hooray!). So now we have a pretty empty back yard but I can cook to my heart's desire. It's only during these awful summer months that the trade-off truly makes me sad, and it has invoked much reminiscing of late about summer days as a child. That Panhandle town where I grew up is small. Some people say it's not the end of the world but you can see it from there! Basically it was just a simple community of primarily agricultural folks, with a grand total population of just under 7,000 when we moved there in January of 1977. I was 10 y...

Hello fellow foodies! I'm excited for our next installment which I've been thinking about all week. There are so many ideas and recipes I'm wanting to share with all of you. But first, I must take a moment to thank all my friends and family for the kind emails and Facebook postings complimenting my blog. It's exciting to see how far around the world the written word travels these days in such a rapid fashion! So this week I really wanted to be sure I clarified for those still in question what a "supertaster" truly is. There's tons of information on the internet these days about this phenomenon that was evidently originally studied/discovered by Dr. Linda Bartoshuk of Yale University. "The 'neon taste world' of people who Dr. Bartoshuk calls 'supertasters' is roughly three times as intense as the 'pastel world' of the nontasters. This is because the tongues of supertasters have a higher concentration of taste bud-containing stru...

Hello friends, family and fellow foodies ! And welcome to the inaugural posting of my new blog, sharing my memories and musings through my passion and love for food. I'm Andrea Siebert Peterson, a 43 year old suburban mom with a business degree and hours toward a masters. My 22+ years experience in the working world revolve around business operations and meetings & events management in the real estate industry and non-profit sectors. I have been married to my college sweetheart for 22+ years and we enjoy raising 2 beautiful daughters who are rapidly forcing us into "empty nesthood." Family is a huge part of our lives as I'm the eldest daughter in a group of 7 children. Being raised in mid-western and then Texas Panhandle farm communities, it's no small wonder I've probably spent more working hours in the kitchen than any other room in the house! After a fairly recent corporate layoff, I have been trying to find my new niche in the working world. No matter...