Welcome!

The Green-Eyed Gourmet is a new blog by poet and pastry chef Candace Caceres (that's me!) After months of showing off my mad skillz to every neighbor and friend willing to take a taste, I finally decided to take the cult of my cooking online and share the delicious doctrine with you, dear readers.

The basis for the "green-eyed" theme is that I love to eat my veggies. I've been a vegetarian off and on for almost 8 years, so a large part of this blog will be dedicated to the many amazing vegetarian recipes that I try out each month. I inherited a very intuitive" dash-of-this, pinch-of-that" cooking style from my Italian grandmother, but I will certainly make an effort to be friendly to everyone out there for whom the recipe is more gospel than guideline; to mark my quarter-cups and teaspoons so that you can make it taste the way it was intended.

Also, I am green-eyed as I ponder the whole "green lifestyle" dilemma from the perspective of a small young family on a tight budget. This perspective makes some green choices easier, like making our bicycles our main form of transportation, and keeping a veggie garden as a cheaper alternative to organic store-bought produce; but it can also make some choices more difficult, as the free-trade, organic, etc. products seem to be much more expensive, and consist of more corporate hype than actual quality. So in addition to my recipes and other odd food-related experiments, I expect that I will from time to time discuss my feelings about a "greening" society.

I work as a pastry chef and cake decorator, so although my recipes are vegetarian, some will not be "healthy" per-se, and many more will not be vegan. The whole idea of the vegan "cheez" sauce icks me out, so the vegan recipes you will find here will be coincidentally vegan, and not forcibly vegan. What can I say--a life without cheesecake hardly seems worth living. :)

So thanks for stopping by, and please check back again later for some taste-bud tickling treats, Green-Eyed Gourmet style :D