Welcome, Epicurious Readers!!!

Last night, I couldn’t sleep at all.

In fact, I couldn’t sleep all weekend. The anxiety was killing me.

But today, honestly, is one of the best days of my life.

In June I was contacted by Lauren Salkeld, an editor at Epicurious.com. In her initial email, she asked me if I’d be interested in doing an interview for their back-to-school coverage. Would I be interested? Would I be interested?

I nearly fainted.

Today the article was published on the Epi-Log blog, one of the go-to sites for food news and discussion (and also, um, my dream job). If you haven’t seen it, please read the article here! We are truly so honored to be a part of this and never ever expected this kind of recognition.

In the interview we talked about what it means to eat in a college environment, as well as how I feel about the future of the local/organic/seasonal food movement and how it affects young eaters. A snippet:

Epicurious.com: The food world is all about fresh, local, seasonal, and organic food. How is this affecting on-campus dining?

Alexandra Harcharek: Colleges are indeed changing the way they look at dining, and students are the catalyst for that change. Schools are listening to students, forming “dining committees” to discuss ideas but only when students actually take the initiative to speak out. I’ve seen student activism produce more vegan meals, bring in gluten-free options, and force our university’s dining company to serve free-range, cage-free eggs. Students: remember that you are a customer and not to settle for second best!

I foresee a shift towards more local ingredients and organic foods, especially now that Michelle Obama is pushing for an organic America. We need to demand sustainable, healthful food in the cafeterias at all levels of education.

All of those things are values that I truly believe in. Last night, during my sleepless anxiety about today’s publication, I sat down and really thought about why Brandon and I started this website and why we continue to devote our time and money and love into keeping it running.

We had this naive vision about writing for college students living in dorms – but we also wanted to be more than that. We want to write for everyone – for harried parents and ambitious twenty-somethings and rabid foodies and people who are terrified of their ovens. We want to educate people and figure out how to do that without seeming like phonies. After all, we’re still learning ourselves.

To start, we’re writing about what we know: navigating college, making attempts at romantic dinners and figuring out the limitations of working in a kitchen that literally used to be a closet.

Why this audience? I’ve seen how young people eat and feel like there are two very different factions.

There are the ones that couldn’t care less, who consider the act of microwaving Easy Mac cooking dinner, who slop on the pizza and fries in the cafeteria. The guys who proudly say “I don’t eat vegetables. Or anything that’s green.” They eat because they’re hungry. They simply eat to eat.

Then there are the people who eat for joy. The ones who gush about Top Chef and switch off South Park when Barefoot Contessa is on. I’ve seen people at my university get passionate about the food they eat, protesting when our food provider did something unacceptable, asking for organic lettuce at the salad bar. In a recent online journalism class, there were a half-dozen students who started fledgling food blogs and diligently kept at it for an entire semester’s worth of eating and experimenting.

The amount of young people who are interesting in cooking is clearly on the rise – and we’re so excited. But we want to write for both kinds of people. For the ones who will spend three hours making the perfect batch of red velvet cupcakes AND the ones who aren’t really sure how to know when an avocado is ripe. Or what an avocado is.

There is so much that I could continue to write but I’ll just stop here and say thank you. Thank you thank you.

We’ll keep trying and learning and writing and cooking.

Please keep with us for the rest of the way.

Love and happy eating,

Alexandra