I'm back.

Sitting at a table in chef Shawn Gawle's exciting new restaurant, Camaraderie, on Sunday night, I finally felt it: the irresistible urge to write about Houston again. About this city's foodways, its folkways, its dizzying urban landscape that has captivated me since I landed here—fresh off the plane from Vermont, agog at the August heat—in 1965.

Since then, I've seen it all, and dined on most of it. Two decades as.the Houston Chronicle's restaurant critic left me severely depleted when I took a buyout from the paper last November. The pace of modern newspapering wore me down in my last couple of years on the job, and I needed time to reset, to chill, to gather my wits.

That happened. Freed from the march of investigating new restaurants—or eating out at all!—I began cooking for myself again. I sowed an arugula patch. I rescued a neglected calamondin orange sapling from certain death.

I began walking the near East End, where I live, gawking at vintage signage and garden quirks and the latest street art. Running errands, I allowed myself to wander, prowling side streets and ducking into improbable-looking grocery shops, coming home with a bottle of orange-flower water or way too many cashews.

In between sinking spells, I felt my zest for Houston—and for life—coming back.

When I dined out, I returned to comforting favorites as restorative touchstones. Visits to Mimo, Ninfa's, Giacomo's, Rosewater, Cocinita, Pondicheri and Magdalena's shone like bright spots in an increasingly bleak political landscape.

I wondered if it were ludicrous to write about food and restaurants while the republic appeared to be crumbling. But after every good meal shared with friends; every home kitchen success; every lively dish produced and served by restaurant staffers I like and respect, I felt fortified to go on rather than wallowing in despair. In my world, anyway, food really does exert a transformative power.

So over a lapidary arrangement of salt-baked celery root at Camaraderie, I felt compelled to share that good news. The ivory-hued batons were paved in green apple slices of near-transparent thinness, and bright rivulets of chili-crisp oil snaked across the plate. The technique dazzled, the counterpoint of flavors sang, and wonder of wonders, the chili crisp added verve without overstepping its place.

"I could eat this dish for breakfast," I joked to my friends, except I wasn't really joking. "Maybe on toast!"

I can't wait to tell you about that whole exciting meal from Gawle and company—including some of the most voluptuous butter I ever tasted, slivered into feathery curls as if it were Mimolette —once I get my Ghost feet under me later this week.

I'm still figuring out the platform. For now, my posts will be free. (And I think some of them always will be.) I'll add a subscriber tier when I'm able, in the hopes that I'll actually be able to afford eating out.

I'm thinking it will be fun—for me, free to write whatever I choose about Houston; and hopefully for you, too.