Food, culture, and discussion from South Louisiana
Hello! Welcome to the Gulf Coastal. If you’re reading this, chances are you don’t need an introduction as to who I am and why I started this newsletter. But if you do, I’ll try to keep it brief: my name is Zach and I like to cook. As a native of South Louisiana, my life has revolved around food in one way or another, from watching my grandma work in her kitchen after school most weekdays, to helping my mom with Thanksgiving dinner, to branching off and exploring my own passion for making good food for our tailgate each gameday on LSU’s campus.
I started this newsletter at the suggestion of a friend (you know who you are, and thank you) who told me writing about cooking may be a good way of further honing my skills in the kitchen, and that it may be a way of sharing any knowledge I’ve gained along the way.
That isn’t to say I have all (or any) of the answers when it comes to cooking because I don’t. My purposes for starting this little experiment are multiple and will hopefully benefit readers and myself. First, I intend to use it to share any knowledge I pick up while I’m cooking, good or bad. I’ll cook a staple in my cookbook or find a recipe, cook it while jotting down some notes and taking some pictures, and then report back to you, the eager reader. Even if it’s an unmitigated disaster! This is about sharing knowledge and experiences. Some missives may be celebratory in nature, others may be a culinary post mortem. Life in a kitchen is as messy as life in the outside world, and I’m not going to shy away from any failures I have.
Which brings me to the second purpose of this newsletter! It’s my hope for readers to be active participants in this gambit and hopefully start conversations with readers who may have some knowledge of their own to pass on. As I said earlier, I don’t have all the answers. I’m constantly looking to expand my knowledge and learn something I didn’t know. So, if you have feedback or suggestions on a previous recipe, or if you’d like to send a recipe along for me to try out and write about, I’m all ears! I also intend to share reader tips and feedback on previous recipes that I may get.
Sprinkled in with this will be the origin of the recipe I’m cooking, any significant changes or adjustments I’ve made (I like to tinker), and maybe a little background or history on what I’m cooking. I’ll probably toss in what I happen to be listening to while I’m cooking, whatever I’m drinking, or how my dog happens to be annoying me while I work in the kitchen (this happens frequently).
Lastly, I hope that this newsletter can build a sense of community between myself, readers, and those who read it. I hope that new conversations about food between readers may spring up, however that may occur (I still haven’t figured out how to make that happen yet). At their cores, I believe cooking and eating are community acts – one person cooks food for another, one person cooks food for many, many people cook food for each other, one person purchases ingredients from another person prior to cooking for themselves, etc.
No matter what, the cooking and eating of food is never far away from a sharing of time between one person and another. I hope this newsletter can serve to create more moments between individuals, even if distant, and I hope it leads to the free exchange of culinary ideas and opinions between people and that we can all benefit from the conversations it will (hopefully) spark.
Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue, which will hopefully drop on Monday, November 25th. And please, if you think others would be interested, please tell anyone you can, any way you can. Thank you!
In the meantime, tell your friends!