Five years ago, I was sitting with my sister, Meera, at the Dartmouth student center having one of those classic freshman-year identity crises about what my niche would be in college. From that identity crisis came “The DDS Detective,” the newspaper column that inspired this very book. So the first person I would like to thank is Meera, who gave me the confidence to carve out a path that had never been paved before. Meera, you challenge me to reach for the stars and pick me up when I’m down. You embody everything an older sister should be, and I don’t tell you enough how much I look up to you. David, I know you were there at Collis too, so thanks.
Thank you to my mom; decades of watching you cook up memorable creations in our kitchen inspired a lot of the recipes in the pages of this cookbook. If Mom was the inspiration, Dad, or should I say Agent Krishna, you were the architect. I have no one but you to thank for helping with the nitty-gritty aspects of the cookbook — logistics is certainly the least fun part of writing a book, and this whole process would not have gone so smoothly without you. I appreciate everything you do for me on a daily basis.
Thank you to everyone at Storey Publishing for seeing something in my proposal and for being so open and receptive to my ideas throughout this entire process. I would like to give a sincere thank you to The Dartmouth newspaper, specifically Amita Kulkarni and Eve Ahearn for taking a chance on a naïve freshman’s silly column idea. I want to give an enormous thanks to Dartmouth Dining Services, whose administrators have always been so supportive of me. I would particularly like to thank Don Reed for taking me to dining services conventions so I could gorge myself on samples and interview other food providers, and most important, for letting me test my recipes in the dining halls even after I had graduated.
Thank you to Gardiner Kreglow for tearing apart and subsequently helping me to rewrite my book proposal in Robinson Hall. Thea Stutsman, thank you for your wonderful photography work and for being such an excellent foodie partner-in-crime. Thank you to my roommates, Kate Taylor and Lauren Vespoli, for all of the moral support through the writing and publishing process and for throwing me the most amazing contract-signing party ever. Thank you to Kelly and the Tropin Family for giving me a place to finish writing in peace, even though you all think I am a food fetishist. Thank you, Pandora, and specifically the original Broadway cast of Mamma Mia. The songs of ABBA took on new meaning for me during the rough few weeks I spent finishing this manuscript.
Finally, thank you to all of my friends and family, for reading — or even just glancing at — “The DDS Detective,” for enduring my long rants about food, and for helping me find the strength I never could have known I had to publish a book. Sometimes I feel like I am living in my own world and that what I find valuable and interesting is valuable and interesting to literally no one else, but you-all’s support finally made me believe that I had something useful to say. You all gave me my voice. Thanks a million.