Eloise Madeline

I am an experience writer and photographer and a very new blogger. I recently returned to my home state of California after a three year social experience where I lived in the south. This experience led me to an interest in social documentation, which i am currently studying on my own, and soon shall be studying towards a masters degree in the field. If I had my druthers I would spend all of my time traveling with a camera and a notebook and interviewing people. I have a special interest cultures that are more steeped in tradition than usual, especially people in Appalachia, and nomadic groups in Europe. I also love to talk to people who work and live in very rural America. But alas, nobody will pay me to do that yet.

I make my living creating delicious and elegant dining experiences for people, which is a fancy way to say that I am a damn good server. I specialize in mediterranean food and wine with special interest in the cuisines and wines of Italy, the cuisine of Greece and the wines of Spain. I can't describe every single nuance of each wine to you, but I can tell you how it will feel in your mouth and how it will enhance or take away from the food you are eating.

I do a lot of cooking and baking in my spare time, with a special interest in simple but impressive desserts, and chocolate confections. I discovered this love when I taught myself how to make lemon meringue pie, and it turned out better than the picture in the recipe book, and tasted better than the one that cost $20 at the fancy bakery. I have baked not only for pleasure, but in exchange for wine at some of the restaurants that I have worked at, for our catering arm where b-list celebrities playing at a local theater ate my chocolate torte, including Wynonna Judd, Dionne Warwick and Ryan Adams. I also was commissioned to make a birthday cake for a certiain very successful author of best-selling legal thrillers that are almost always adapted for the movies. I am in the process of putting together a book of tasty recipes that I came up with after being laid off from a job when I was getting a good deal of my food from a local food bank.

I have two very large cats that I spoil, and so i could probably be called a crazy cat lady, but I don't apply that title to myself. Even though I talk to them like they are going to answer. I have moved them cross country a couple of times and have learned a lot about human feline relationships on those trips.

I am also working on a book about my most recent cross-country move, a trip that to call "fraught with peril" would be a gross understatement. Once I finally arrived at my new home I had as close to nothing as someone who grew up middle class could have. This experience has inspired me to write a lot more non-fiction, as I realize that things that have happened to me are far more interesting than things that I could have imagined.

I write on a variety of topics, from what I have learned about the cats, to cooking techniques I have discovered by accidents caused by shortages, and ways to travel with very little money and still have a rich experience. I have a lot of interests, and a lot of directions I might want my life to go, and no idea what's going to happen next.