About CbsoP!

Welcome to Cooking, by the seat of my Pants!

If you haven’t popped in before then I hope you’re having  blast on your first visit and I hope you come back soon.  If you’ve been here before, then I’m glad to have you back and hope to see you again in the near future.

Cooking by the seat of my Pants (which will be referred to from this point on as CbsoP, because, let’s face it, it’s a pain to type out Cooking, by the seat of my pants every few sentences), is a food and recipe blog run by me Jerry Russell, who I will introduce in a moment. This means that all the grub you see here was made by a real person with the full intention of being eaten by other real people and was generally enjoyed.

What is CbsoP?

When I started CbsoP in january of 2007 it was mostly a means to remember what I’d done in the kitchen a day or even a week before.  Cooking without a plan comes with drawbacks.  How can you remember what you’ve done if you just throw stuff at a skillet?  The answer was to write it down and put it somewhere I could find it later.

Over time my little project took on a life of its own.  It has gone through several incarnations, changed as my life has changed and grown along with me.  It gained focus in the second year of its existence and began moving in a direction that I never expected at the outset.

I never dreamed then that my little endeavor would grow to the size or stature that it has today.  Over the space of a few years CbsoP has gone from being a complete unknown with perhaps 5 visitors a day to a well known niche blog with tens of thousands of page views per month and  firmly seated in Izea’s top 100 blogs list.

The growth continues daily. I owe that more to the people who read this blog than I do to any innate skill in writing or  my talents in cooking. (I mean seriously… I’ve got typos all over and some of my contemporaries could out cook me with their eyes shut, so it ain’t all me!) For whatever reason that CbsoP works, it works.  I have no intention of stopping it now.

Who is Jerry Russell?

I’m the voice behind the sometimes collaborative efforts around here. Father, husband, cook, busboy and chief bottle washer among other things.  I’m not much on formality and have a tendency to pop in the occasional quip or ten when the chance arises because food is always better when served with a smile.

I have a deep distain for fake and you’re not going to find any here, but I do occasionally rip into the odd T.V. host that I feel has failed to be less than genuine.  These moments are rare however, so fear not, I’m not always nagging at something.

I’m the full time father of three, lifetime father of six and grandfather to three. (A title I gained at 38 years old, if you can believe that!).  I’m an avid guitar player, dabble in programming and web design, which is far more rewarding than doing it full-time as I did when I had a regular job, and spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with kids and a big, dumb dog that I love dearly.

For the most part though, everything here is about the food.

Food is the basis of every life on the planet.  It can bring enemies together and it has the power to warm and soothe us when our lives are at their worst.  It brings families together at the end of a hectic day and refreshes spirits as well as fueling our bodies.

So are you chef or something?

Nope!  Though I did do quite a bit of time as a line cook, I’m mostly living proof that if you love something ( I do SO love eating) and you apply a little time and effort to learning what works and what doesn’t you can master it to some extent. I cook what I like and I share the more interesting attempts with whomever wants to read them. Some are wonderful, some were just so-so (good to learn from, if not worth making) and some are downright disasters, which I think makes for a great laugh, so I include those from time-to-time as well. The goal here is to pass on one simple fact.

Cooking should be fun. It should be an adventure, and the best part of that adventure is sharing. Since I can’t invite the whole world for supper, and because I have no interest at all in returning to the world of the professional cook, this is my way of sharing. And hey, you can change it up however you’d like. I’ll never know!

And in conclusion

If you’ve made it this far into this little narrative, I applaud you for your perseverance.  You must be ready to pull your hair out by now, honestly!

I’ve run out of witty things to say about myself for now but be sure to come back later. I can’t resist a good chuckle now and then and I hope that you can have one along with me.

Enjoy the site!

Jerry D. Russell~ The man behind the curtain.

Need to get hold of me?  Go ahead!  Just shoot me an email at jerry {AT} cookingbytheseatofmypants {DOT} com, or use the contact form on the site.  I’d love to hear from you.