I’m not a real Foodie. I haven’t baked figs and drizzled them with honey. I can’t solve the City Palate culinary knowledge crossword without cheating (anyone… what is an eight letter word meaning vegetarian gelatin? J-E-L-L-L-O-O-O doesn’t work). I can’t toss together a mix of exotic dips and lovely breads and make it look like I didn’t scoop it out of a plastic container from Save-On Foods. I don’t own a stand mixer, I stick corks back in bottles of wine, and my oven mitts are 20 years old and have bits of almost everything that I ever had in the oven encrusted on them for all eternity.  Worst thing of all, my chopping knife is dull. Seriously. If you watched me try to saw through a grapefruit, you would cry. I know I do.

I had beautiful, sharp knives, and then the home of my knives, Laadvar knives on 82 Ave, shut down. Laadvar knives is now a Lulu Lemon, and unless there is a new yoga move call Downward Dog and Sharpen the Knife While Facing the Sun, they won’t be able to help me. I’m on a quest for someone who sharpens knives. I mean properly sharpen. Not with those sharpeners that we used to have on the back-side of can-openers. I want this guy…

In my mind, to be a Foodie, I need to be indoctrinated. To do this, I will need to bake the ubiquitous figs with honey, cook something with goat cheese, go ape-shit over saffron, get my knives sharpened, get new oven mitts, make babaganoush AND serve it to company… real company… not just family. Family is for testing. You’ve been warned.