A Little History

Raised with no cultural cuisine to call home, my culinary background is fragmented.  Because my parents were raised in the North and then raised my siblings and me in the South, I ended up with a true love of New York delis that I’ve never been to and a curiosity for ChowChow we never made.

My dad loved to cook but rarely had the time.  Though, when I remember the smells of amazing food wafting from the stove and the oven, it was usually by his hand.  My heart and my stomach grumble just at the thought of those dishes!  My mom hated to cook.  In fact, on more than a few occasions, she would clean and straighten our entire tiny kitchen before actually starting on dinner just to put it off.  And while she made some pretty tasty dinners (a few of which have even made it into my favorite recipe list), a good majority of them featured a helper of some kind.

When I began to be tasked with making dinner, I thought for sure that I had followed in my mom’s footsteps of not enjoying the chore.  I over-cooked things.  I burned things. I set things on fire.  I botched many baking projects.  I convinced myself that I was not a very good with food but that I would survive if the goal was simply to fuel my body.  My sister was the one who was good at these things.  The dishes she made were beautifully prepared as well as delicious.  Then one day, when I was home from college my mom asked me to make dinner, and I told her that I hated making dinner (I even sang it in the song form she used to serenade us with each night).  She told me that I was lying, that I was simply parroting ideas I had heard from her over the years.  She challenged me to decide if I did for myself (a ploy or wisdom, I’ll let you decide).  Somehow, that actually did change my mind, though I did still have to prove that I could make tasty, not just edible, dishes.

I decided to tackle baking again.  I followed that recipe like it was the Bible.  I went out and got precisely the ingredients and tools listed, no straying whatsoever, and it worked!  I had finally made something to brag about.  I was hooked.

Every epicurean knows that the pleasure of creating food is derived from those silent mouths and wide eyes that are taking in your cooking.  It is, in short, instant gratification.

From there, I began the toddle of teaching myself to cook.  I watched Food Network like it was a religion and allowed myself to make extraordinary messes, along with some tasty though sometimes awkward looking food.  I had worked in the food industry for years while I grew in my understanding of what food should taste like and why people made such a big fuss about “their mama’s cookin’.”  I even thought I might become a manager for a chain restaurant at one point, until chance stepped in the way.  I had been living in the Triad with my (then honey, now) wife Yvette for almost a year and I knew that I wanted to find a more fulfilling job, one I could really sink my teeth into.  Yvette was searching throughout craigslist, of all places, and found a position we were sure was a hoax.  After all who posts awesome jobs like becoming an assistant manager and a spice merchant on craigslist and is not trying to sell drugs?  It turned out to be as legit as I wished it was.  Two years later, I find myself still immersed in the culinary world of spices and their effects on health as well as the outcome of our dishes and I LOVE it!  All the while I find myself searching for all of the wonderful flavors I thought folks were crazy to go so ga-ga over when watching travel and cooking shows.

I hope you enjoy as I wax poetic as I eat my way through life, imagined recipes and my local culinary scene.