Before we begin ...

I'll be honest: I'm kind of scared to do this website.

I started in journalism in 2009 as an intern, working my way to part-time news columnist and then full-time feature writer. Part of that was crafting restaurant reviews, a really cool gig that involved critiquing the work of people who knew food better than I did. So most of the time I tried to sound more knowledgeable than I was while learning everything I could as fast as possible. And while I I grew my knowledge exponentially over the years, I never fully lost that fear of being found out.

And there are other fears that come with putting my work in the public sphere -- the fear that it's not as good as others; the fear that I don't belong in the community. I'm brand-new to gluten-free eating, because I'm new to the realization it was tearing up my gut -- but it does and I'm on a better path now. Still, there's lots I don't know about eating this way, and even more I don't know about the Seattle area (a place I've called home for under four years, but mainly focused in the Tukwila/Renton/Burien area).

But I'm not new to writing, to news gathering. I'm not new to meeting people and lovingly sharing their stories, or to honoring the reader with accurate, relevant information. I'm not even new to community reporting, founding a Colorado Springs food blog that was successful by any measure. And this time I'm not new to starting out fresh, so I won't do it with anything less than full disclosure. This won't be a personal site, but I couldn't begin without it.

Because I'm incredibly excited to meet you, be you reader or doer or both. I can't wait to kick ass, support this way of life, and have so much fun. And this effort is really just a gut feeling that this is what I should be doing right now, without a lot of understanding of what it might bring. So I say yes to being scared, and yes to honesty. And yes to every person looking for information and community around the way we eat.

Welcome to Gluten-Free Seattle.