Gathering Ingredients

I've noticed that between cookbooks and cooking magazines, I have oodles of recipes to catch up on. Julie Powell tackled 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, I am not so ambitious. My first project will be to cook all 40 recipes in the cookbook, "Asian" from the Williams Sonoma collection in a reasonable amount of time.
I grew up in Michigan where my appreciation of Asian food began with Chinese cuisine. I believe my mother and I are in a minority of people who have a special bond over sizzling rice soup. After a brief stint in San Diego (location of my first taste of sushi-YUM), I moved to Seattle in 2000. There is a great deal of food to explore here, especially Asian eats and I am game. My native-to-Seattle friend Kathryn has played a huge role in my food adventures. I can still remember her telling me about a Vietemese soup that she wanted me to try. I suppose our special bond is over Pho, or would it be sushi?
I've dappled in Japanese and Chinese cooking, but have always wanted to take it further. Now I have my chance. Not only does Seattle offer an amazing variety of places to eat, it has highly equipped grocery stores ready to sell me dried seaweed! That's right; I have already picked up the ingredients for my first recipe, "Miso Soup with Tofu and Seaweed" page 40. I will reveal the results in a future post.
(Thanks for the cookbook mom.)