Take 5 with Jarrett Byrnes

Title: UC Davis Grad Student/Marine Scientist/Culinary Enthusiast/
Webmaster of Food Porn Watch, the ultimate food blog aggregator
(FPW updates which blogs have been published every hour, on the hour)
Home town: Baltimore now living in Sebastapol

1. How long has Food Porn Watch been running?
Since the Spring of 2004. The code is something I taught myself. I was reading Grub Report and learned about some other food blogs. That's what inspired the site. Lately there has been an exponential growth in food and wine blogs, which is exciting. Food writing is a sensual adventure in words...

2. What do you cook for yourself at home?
Anything! I love to cook. No one specialty. Sometimes I hit a rut and just bake tarts or make things with coconut. In general, I cook lots of seafood. I also try to use what's fresh from my garden.

Everyone in the lab is a foodie. I have to trudge 1/4 mile to get to one research site with my lab partner--and the thing that keeps us going is discussing what we're going to cook for dinner. I surf blogs for dinner all the time.

3. Care to share any memorable meals inspired by blogs?
A rocket pesto from Chocolate & Zucchini. I had just gotten some nice looking jars, so I bought a ton of arugula and made the pesto.

One day after a long dive I remembered a post about a cherry tomato salsa for fish. I was at Lucas Wharf in Bodega Bay and I saw a gorgeous ling cod fillet. You're not really supposed to eat it, but even for a marine scientist, it was too tempting. I'd just spent hours underwater looking at ling cod!

4. What's the best thing about living in the Sonoma coast?
It's a foodie paradise, gorgeous, breathtakingly beautiful and a cornucopia of produce, wine, and cheese. It's unbelievable, the best of all possible worlds. I love the great restaurants-- like the Seaweed Cafe in Bodega Bay, and the small personal vineyards in this area.

5. What's the weirdest blog you've come across?
Cooking for Engineers--having almost gone into Computer Science I'm attracted to the sheer geekery of it, it's Alton Brown kicked up a notch.