The start of my culinary journey

 Hi there! My name is James Lee. For those of you who don't know me, you should know that I love food and I love travel . . . a lot. Like serious, they are two of my favorite things. Oh and wine. Good god, the amount of wine I have consumed in 2020 would make you blush like . . . well, a glass of wine.  I have been blessed to work in a field where travel is kind of a constant thing for me for at least 15 years now. Though I usually stay in the states, I have been assigned to projects in Japan, Turkey, Sweden and Italy. Not to mention the good use I get out of my Frequent Flyer Miles which get me to even more places. And to this day, one of my favorite things in life to do is to find a top rated local eatery, grab my kindle and experience a wonderful meal with a glass or two of wine and enjoy new local cuisine. (insert brake screeching sounds plus car crash here) Then came the pandemic. 

Remember March 2020? I wanna say it was March 14th. Covid was already all over the news. Then the news conference happened. Our former president, I dare not utter or type the name, announced that all flights in and out of Europe were cancelled.  Talk about cancelled culture! I was in Raleigh, North Carolina literally eating an amazing meal at this Brewery/Dim Sum place called Brewery Bhavana. Seriously, if you are ever in Raleigh you must check this place out. I digress. So,  I get the news alert on my phone about all European flights suspended. My Skype starts blowing up with my co-workers, who also travel frequently. Are you seeing this? Is this for real? This is unbelievable. I had no idea that this would be my last meal while traveling for the year 2020. And it was. 

All future trips were cancelled at that point. What we do onsite was now pivoting to us doing everything remotely. And while that is possible, it is not ideal for the client. But we have managed. I live in Dallas, within a week all restaurants and bars had closed all dining rooms and only to go or delivery orders were available. My partner, Mikey and I love to cook. So we just decided to buy shit tons of groceries and cook. Good lord, I have probably cooked more this one year than I have in my entire life. 

So that was in March, fast forward about 5 months or so and I was finding it challenging to find new recipes or new ideas for meals. Mikey and I started doing weekly menu planning to limit our trips to the grocery store and not depend on Grubhub, Ubereats or Doordash for every meal. Then an idea just came to me. Why not plan a recipe from a country each week? I can make a project out of it. I have actually been using the internet to provide random countries. There are a couple of generators I use. 

So I started the project and I have been posting them to Facebook and Instagram. A friend of mine suggested that I do a blog about it, sooooo here I am. Doing my first blog ever. I am kinda doubtful that anyone would see this, other than a few friends, but who cares? To be honest, I am kinda just doing this for myself. But if you are reading this, and future posts, I certainly thank you for your visit and encourage to come back. 

So with that being said, on with the show.