As a general rule, I don’t cook. Not only do I live in the food capital of the U.S. (and arguably the world), but my boyfriend weirdly doesn’t like to eat food not cooked by either his mom or some complete stranger in a restaurant. There are 343 restaurants that deliver to his apartment for free and 87 that deliver to mine on Seamless.com alone, so we have no shortage of new and interesting, non-home-cooked foods to try.

Except bánh mì. There is no bánh mì.

But I bought a slow-cooker recently. As a person who has an inkling of desire to cook but is supremely lazy, the appeal of the one-pot meal is immense. And morally, I’m very much in favor of home cooking. Not only am I learning a new skill, but I’m getting closer to my food. I know exactly what went into the dish I made and also where those ingredients came from. I took a seven-pound pork butt that was covered in fat and skin and hair (hair!) and labored over it and let it nourish me. It’s kind of romantic, right?

The thing is–as righteous as I feel about cooking for myself and as well as I think my pork butt turned out, it still didn’t satisfy me the way a non-home-cooked meal would’ve. It filled me but didn’t fulfill me, you know? And that has to be a social construct, right? I know a lot of people say they don’t even like eating out. That they get sick of it. That they think their home-cooked food tastes better. But I never have. I see nasty, greasy, fatty, salty, not-even-made-with-natural-ingredients food as a treat. I guess because I was raised on my family farm’s own beef and pork and the vegetables from our garden. And also because nasty, greasy, fatty, salty, not-even-made-with-natural-ingredients food is meant to be addictive, and I am a weak, weak person.

I loved my mom’s cooking, sure, and I look forward to holidays with my family where I get to eat those special once-a-year dishes my stepmom, aunts, and grandmother make. But for the most part, I don’t want to eat your home cooking. I appreciate your inviting me over to your house and taking your time to cook for me, but . . . can we just order Pizza Hut instead?

Fix me!

I mean, nobody likes boring ingredients, but I didn’t know that my tortilla company was specifically interesterfying my soybean oil:

Freaky.

I saw a great Q&A on Chow.com today entitled “Too Frumpy for the Good Seats?” in which a woman asked if she and her friend were relegated to the old people’s section of a restaurant’s dining room because she wasn’t dressed like a tramp.

This is something I wonder to myself allllllllllllll of the time, because while my boyfriend always pairs snazzy blazers with cute t-shirts and sweater vests and looks better than anyone else everywhere we go, you’ll never see me in a cocktail dress and stilettos. I would hope I still look nice, but my style trends more toward granny-in-pearls than hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold.

So when we got seated in no man’s land at Fig & Olive, for instance, I had to wonder if it was because they were keeping their more drunk, less taking-photos-of-their-food patrons in the front where the expansive windows were. And now I know I was right.

The only time I think I’ve ever asked to be moved was when they tried to seat my friend and me directly in front of the kitchen doorway at Serendipity 3, and even then, I barely cared. If I have a specific seat in mind, I’ll always note it in my OpenTable reservation, or I’ll just put something general like, “It’s my birthday, and I don’t want anyone watching as I consume an entire ice cream cake by myself, so please seat us somewhere private!”

I’ll tell you what, though–I feel pret-ty hot now about the fact that Nougatine put us right in front of their big windows facing Central Park the other night.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail from a journalist who was working on a piece for NPR about food bloggers–or “food paparazzi”–and whether their photos and reviews were helpful or hurtful to restaurants, if their shots are “sleek and beautiful” or “harmful and amateur”. And then she asked if she could use some of my pictures from Colicchio & Sons.

I wrote back and said, “I have to laugh, knowing that you’re asking because those photos in particular are the exact opposite of sleek and beautiful.” She replied, “We do want to show a range of photos, of all qualities, so I’m glad that my request seems transparent.”

I bragged to everyone that NPR was going to make fun of my photos, because like they say, all press is good press. And in actuality, I was excited about the piece, because I have no idea why food bloggers are getting such a bad rap lately. Suddenly, I see articles everywhere about diners setting up tripods and lights, standing on their chairs to get better angles, and letting their food get cold while they take the perfect shot. Obviously my boyfriend and I eat out a lot–literally more than anyone else I know–and I’ve never EVER seen someone use a tripod, extra lights, or their chairs as stepstools.

Anyway, despite showcasing two of my photos, the the NPR article totally disappointed me. I guess the author wanted to take an unbiased stance, but I know I couldn’t have helped but rip into her when the VP of Operations and New Projects at Craft Restaurants said “she doesn’t want amateur food writers influencing people’s dining decisions”.

The same woman also said, “When you feel like they’re having that influence without really knowing what they’re talking about, it’s very frustrating.” Sorry, not really knowing what we’re talking about? Because to enjoy or not enjoy food, you must have endured hours of classical training? Well, I’ve endured years of classical eating, bitch.

I’m sort of just kidding about that, but the thing is: my photos show what the food REALLY looks like under the ACTUAL restaurant lighting. In fact, if I’ve Photoshopped my pictures, then the food looks BETTER than it did in the restaurant.

When it comes to reviewing, I don’t order things I don’t expect to like, and I have a very open mind. If your dish doesn’t delight me, there’s something wrong with it. I’m aware of my biases against seafood, tomatoes, mushrooms, and desserts that don’t fill me up to the point of puking, and I make sure my readers are aware of that bias, too, so they can tailor my reviews to their needs accordingly.

And the idea that restaurants could possibly hate being written about blows my mind. How many times have I gone somewhere (Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s restaurant, The Mark, most recently) just because I wanted to argue with someone else’s (the New York Times) negative review of it?

Restaurants should be taking advantage of food bloggers, not poo-pooing us.

My boyfriend and I had just finished a 3-hour, 9-course meal at Seäsonal. He had ordered a coffee, and I had ordered a Diet Coke, and our food was quietly digesting as we discussed what I should do with my life.

The table next to us, which was approximately six inches from ours in true NYC fashion, had been mostly well-behaved all night. Two of the four people seemed to be dating, and the guy had brought along a British friend who was new to the city, so the girl had brought along a friend for him. One of the girls had graduated from culinary school, but she wasn’t being obnoxious about it. They seemed like not-horrible human beings.

But then two more friends arrived. The girl had a Latina-Jersey accent, and though I originally thought she was dating the guy she came with, she was soon working all of the men at the table. The guy was just generally loud and annoyingly thought it was appropriate for him to go over the success of their dinner’s wine pairings with their waiter. The final decision: not successful.

I could deal with all of that, though. What I couldn’t deal with was the way he then started in on the girls at the table for drinking coffee with their desserts. He chided them for not being as sophisticated as he was with his red wine, and then he added, “But the worst is people who drink Coke at nice restaurants. This isn’t McDonald’s.”

Naturally I took a sip of my drink at that moment and said, “Mmm, this Diet Coke is delicious,” but he didn’t pay any attention.