I have a list detailing every single dinner I have eaten for the past 1 year, 4 months and 26 days—and counting. That’s 512 dinners, annotated with the date they were eaten, where they were consumed (if not at home), and with whom they were enjoyed. Main courses, side dishes, desserts if there were any, drinks if they were noteworthy. The whole shebang.

That sounds rather obsessive, and okay, I admit it probably is. But it started off harmlessly enough: At the start of February 2007, Jeremy was away for a few days, and I thought it would be fun to keep track of what I ate so I could tell him about it when he got home.

This, too, may sound like an odd thing to do unless you are as obsessed with food as Jeremy and I are. When Jeremy comes home from work each day, the first thing we ask each other was how our respective days went, and the second thing we ask is what we each had for lunch. And when we’re apart for a longer period of time, our long-distance conversations start off with “How are you?” and generally progress quickly to “Have you been eating yummy stuff?” And in order to have a ready answer to that latter question, I started the list.

I never intended to keep the list going after Jeremy got back, but then I thought it might be interesting to integrate something like it on Principia Gastronomica—a “now eating” section instead of “now reading” or “now listening”. That still hasn’t happened, but I continue with the list to this day, in part because now I just want to see how long I can keep it up (2 years? 3? 10?) and in part because it’s occasionally an interesting window into my life beyond the dinner table as well.

The meals range from the mundane (takeaway curries and Chinese food, hamburgers eaten before and after gigs) and the strange (Sat. 7/04/07 - Black Bo’s in Edinburgh - banana stuffed w/goat’s cheese under sweet potato soufflé), to the extravagant (Sun. 20/04/08 - Haunch of wild venison with juniper and port reduction; sauteed celeriac with thyme and garlic; sauteed green cabbage with chestnuts and onions; “Cuvée Prestige” 2004 - Appellation Saint-Joseph Controlée), the exotic (Fri. 29/02/08 - Midnight feast on the street in Bangkok) and the nearly sublime (Fri. 27/07/07 - Tasting menu at Babbo, NYC).

There’s airplane food on flights between London and Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Berlin, Orlando and Dubai. There are meals eaten in airports and in hotels (Fri. 07/03/08 - PF Chang’s room service for me because I was too sick to go out - 10 bites of chicken fried rice and two fortune cookies), meals that really hit the spot (Mon. 20/08/07 - Delicious lasagna bolognese, green salad) and meals that really didn’t (Wed. 05/03/08 - Unsatisfying Thai vegetable green curry, unsatisfying cucumber and red pepper salad).

There are several recurring characters, of course. Pizza pops up almost, but not quite, every week, and there’s a whole lot of chorizo going on too. Lamb is also clearly very popular in my house, as is sirloin steak. I’m pleased to see that my cooking changes with the seasons (beans and sausages in the winter, fresh peas and corn in the summer) and interested to see how my travels and other events affect what I eat (I had Thai food twice in the year before I went to Thailand, but I’ve had it nine times in the four months since I’ve been back).

I realize it’s a navel-gazing exercise in every sense of the phrase, but keeping this list and reading back over it occasionally is actually rather fun. It reminds me of things I should make more often (kedgeree), things I can’t quite believe I made in the first place (filet mignon with port and dried cherry reduction, baby vegetables in thyme butter glaze, lamb’s lettuce and walnuts in walnut-horseradish dressing), places that have left an indelible culinary impression on me (everywhere from the southwestern United States to southeast Asia), and the people with whom I am always happy to share a meal—my family and my friends.