I Just Can't Help Myself

Turn on TV...... 

Tune in digital music channel 850.....

If you have Insight Cable you can tune in as you read this blog post if you like.  Beware it may be a little early for you, but for me once Halloween is finished its time from favorite music ever created, Christmas music.  Thats right I am an idiot, and I know I should wait until after Thanksgiving, but for me the holiday season is a special time of the year and I can't wait to get it started.  It reminds me of all the good memories I have of my family.

One of those great memories was how we would sing Christmas songs together which were being played on a record player.  My Mom still has those albums and every year we get them out and play them and I have to admit they get this burly guy choked up every time.  None of us individually could carry a note, but together we sounded like professionals.  I know the idea of the holiday season being magical is one of the most overplayed themes there is, but I think in some way it is true.   Everyone I know has some kind of tradition when it comes to Thanksgiving and Christmas, whether it be a new tradition or one that has been in the family for over forty years.

Do you have a tradition?  Is there one that you just can't wait to celebrate?  I would love to hear them.  Throughout the next two months I will be sharing some of mine.

Okay you can go back to listening to Justin Bieber. 

Changing The World With Food

The lights are off and all I can hear is the snoring dog at my feet.  It is almost midnight and I am wide awake. Why is it that I am such a night owl?  Some people have told me that they find their best inspiration in the shower.  Not this guy, I mean I may sing a little too much, but no bright ideas.  No, I seem to find my best inspiration when most folks are sleeping.  I am not sure why, but it has been that way for a while now.  I think of a lot of things, its like my brain kicks into overdrive or something and I am brainstorming with me , myself, and I.

One of the questions I always seem to wrestle with is what I should write about on this blog.  I know I want to write, but sometimes I have so many ideas its hard to nail down just one.  Sometimes its a topic that jumps up and slaps me in the face and its easy, other times its much harder.  Then it hit me, forget trying to discover some magic idea and just shoot from the hip.  Yeah easier said than done for me, I don't have much hip action, its a scary sight. 

Tonight my shoot from the hip idea or better yet question is if you could change the world with food what would you do?

What a huge undertaking to be asked to change the world, but is it that hard if you really give it some thought?  Changing the world with food doesn't have to be a big idea it just needs to be a good idea that can grow big and become infectious. I would like to see people who would never sit across from each other be able to communicate by using food.  By this I would hope they would be able to express who they are by making food with love that is laced with sincerity.  I am not really talking about world leaders here either, no more like that family member you haven't talked to in months or that friend you gave up on five years ago.  I find that petty differences seem to wedge themselves between us and maybe just a simple jester of food is just what the doctor ordered to at least bring these forgotten friends and family members back to the table.

So is that too big?  Could that be infectious?  Sure I think so, but first one must put aside the ego and stubbornness and stop holding ill willed grudges.  Offering food to another person is a very intimate thing and can be used to not only provide sustenance to  your body but also to your soul.

So what would you do?  Challenge yourself and be inspired to change the world one meal at a time.

Almost Done And It Feels So Delicious

 “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own.And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go.”

                                                                                          -Dr Seuss

   
      So as I head into the last two terms at Culinary school I am met with anxiety and impatience.  The funny thing is I think that is how I felt the first day I walked into Cooking 1 two years ago.  So I suppose nothing has changed, but that would be incorrect, everything has changed. On my first day my anxiety stemmed from the unknown and what it would bring.  Thoughts then ranged from complete horror to embarrassment and the idea that I may be making the biggest mistake of my life.  Through the two years I have spent in my uniform at school I have learned a lot about cooking but it seems I learned even more from myself.  I learned that making mistakes doesn't mean you failed, it means you get another chance to be the best.  I never felt confident enough in anything in my life where I felt like I could challenge the best until I started Culinary school.  The trust I learned from myself was priceless and that trait will be with me everyday I hone my knife to head into battle on dinner service.

As for impatience it is a much easier explanation, I am inpatient and always will be.

So with school coming to an end soon I find a lot of folks asking me what I plan on doing when I am graduated.

"What?" , I thought to myself.  "You mean I have to get a real job and actually do this for a living.  You mean I can't just be a ten year student and live off employee dinners at the restaurant for the rest of my life."

     This is now the first time I have been asked that question when it didn't make me quiver in fear.  Reason being is because I didn't have the skill set or confidence level to imagine working professionally.  But now I do feel a lot more confident in my abilities but do I have the stamina?  Time will tell but one thing is for sure I will be having fun no matter what.

I know I am making all this sound like fun and games but it is not.  Far from it, it's hard work, it's crazy hours, it's scrubbing and cleaning every night.  Although it is empowering, it's exciting and and its a passion, and that is why cooking is so delicious.

Soul Food

So when you wake up in the morning do you feel like your soul is being fed by what you do?

The soul is a forgotten ingredient when making or preparing food for others.  Sure most of us are just happy if we can get something in and out of the oven in time for maybe half the family to the table to eat.  The idea that you could inject some type of love or soulfulness to the food is almost unheard of really.  America just moves at a pace that never really allows itself to slow down enough to even acknowledge any type of soul in food if it did exist.


As a very low totem pole cook in a sea of masters I see a lot of chefs showing off what they know but with no purpose of reaching someone's soul. They get lost in that ego waterfall that is seen on TV.  Ego is the complete opposite of soul, before you can find your soul in cooking you have to lose the ego.  The sad part of that suggestion is that most new tattooed chefs rolling out of culinary school correlate ego with money and celebrity chef status.  Most of those money hungry clones will had already sold their soul to the devil somewhere between their third and four year at culinary school. 

Once in your life you should experience food made with passion and soul.  This doesn't mean you search out for the most expensive restaurant in town.  Actually to the contrary, most places that will sell food with passion and soul is the guy with a ten seat restaurant in a neighborhood you would never go to after dark.  Or the guy off the side of a country road selling barbecue out of a trailer.  Be aware and look for these folks and look into their eyes and discover that passion and soulfulness isn't bred from ego and pretentiousness, but with a heart that refuses to ever stop making food perfect.

Just A Little Patience

Woke up today and I couldn't get the song Patience by Guns N Roses out of my head.  I know what a great way to wake up right?  Tell me about it.  Then as I couldn't shake the song virus I found myself at work and getting my mise en place ready for dinner service and I was whistling the tune.  For the record I love songs that have whistling in them, they just make me happy.  Then a few other of my fellow co-workers picked up on the tune and joined in somewhat.  Somewhere Axel Rose just fist pumped while in a heroin stupor.

Patience is very important in food, and from what i see anymore has been forgotten.  Everyone is reaching for boxes of processed garbage to sustain them.  Or speeding through the drive-thru for a .99 cent heart attack.  With the increased pace of life cookbooks have been replaced with iPads and Kindles.  Now I need to make sure I give full disclosure here, I am as guilty as the next guy of this when I am home.  At work its all about recipes but I have to admit that quick and easy at home normally wins out.  I am not proud of this by any stretch of the imagination.  Now i am only home two nights a week and normally my old decrepit body just wants to relax.  So quick works for me... as far as food I mean.

Now I have talked about the slow food movement on this blog before and it is a great idea but only if you are super organized or a person who is very proactive.  For which I am neither so how do I or we get life to slow down enough to start respecting real food and get away from the processed food armageddon?  I would have to say first you need to pick out things you love like fresh fruit for example. Find some interesting ways that you can incorporate fruit into your life.  Or maybe its picking a day when you set aside time to just slow everything down and really be conscience about eating "real" food.  This doesn't mean you upgrade from Golden Corral to Applebee's, no I mean pick a wholesome recipe and make it with honest respectful ingredients.  At least for that day you can have a great conversation  with a new vegetable you have never met before or shot the breeze with a new fruit.  You would be amazed what you can learn from some real food, they like to gossip.

So I hope first of all that you have the song, Patience, in your head all day like I did today.  I know this may sound mean but maybe it will help you remember to slow down the life that has a stranglehold on you and take a chance on some real respectful food.  And you never know, you might just find that taking some time for yourself is just what you need..

"Just a little patience ... yeeeeh yeeeah.."  (Swaying back and forth like you have to pee)