My Life as a Chef

By way of introduction, let me note that I LOVE cooking. I watch cooking shows and try things I have seen that look doable and sound good. I spent my childhood in the kitchen, licking baking dishes, carving melon balls, stirring pots as instructed, and generally monitoring both our maid Rebecca, and my mom, who were both busy cooking for 6, or often as many as 14 on Sundays or even more on special occasions. During my first marriage, Melissa did the cooking, mostly, I was in charge of the BBQ. Food in our house was not spectacular. Pretty serviceable, but nothing earth shattering. I used to watch the cooking shows longingly, and we would eat out for variety. When we split up, I made the choice to learn how to make delicious food. I started cooking for myself and found I had an aptitude, and really enjoyed it. My first quest was to learn how to make perfect pasta. It took me several iterations till I found the secret, “Get as many yolks into the pasta as it will hold” and that is my go to.

Heather came into my life and from the beginning, she said, “You are a chef, own it!” So,on a gradient, I began to own it. I researched recipes, first in books, and then online. I tried various things, playing with temperature, flavors, salinity, heat and sweetness, often getting very ambitious, and little by little, the flavors I was able to conjure up began to consistently be very moreish! I began to take on more complex cooks, and became very adventurous, taking on food culture from around the world. My rationale was, “It can’t be that different, we all cook with protein, carbs and fat!” I already had developed a high capsaicin tolerance, so diving into peppers was in my wheelhouse, anyway, I digress.

Things have progressed, and now, we take a moment every Sunday morning to discuss our meal plan for the week. We select a menu, look up and make sure all the necessary ingredients are on our list, then off we go to shop for the week. We consider it a “perfect shop” when we do no backtracking in the store! We might have to go to several stores to get the ingredients we need, especially if we are including Asian or Mexican meals in our plan. Luckily, we have several GREAT ethnic grocery stores locally, including Mexican, Indian, SE Asian generally in addition to 3 major brand grocery stores, Safeway, Whole Foods and QFC, all of which are within a mile of our place, so it’s a rare day when we cannot find an ingredient. On occasion, we have gone on food quests. It started with our World Chicken Quest. Since then we have gone on a World Soup Quest, and our latest iteration is our extraordinarily yummy Pizza Quest.

I am blogging our meals at Heather’s request. So, after giving it some thought, how I am going to approach cataloguing our meals is to write about the things I make, as I make them, with any tips or tricks I use to make it taste great. Later, I will reorganize the items so that they are more searchable, putting like foods together, like curries, breakfasts and so on. Anyway, if you have thoughts or questions, please fire away! One last note, because it was over Thanksgiving that Heather put this idea forward, naturally, my first post the Thanksgiving related!

• Thanksgiving Turkey and Stuffing
• Turkey Carcass Soup
• Tiki Masala Curry
• NY Steak
• Pad Thai
• Slow Roasted BBQ Ribs
• Sausage Rolls
• Marinara (Tomato Sauce)
• Meatballs!
• Spaghetti and Meatballs
• Meatball Sandwich
• Dutch Baby
• Roast Leg of Lamb
• Bacon Cheese Burger
• Spaghetti with Clams