When I moved away from my home in Florida, college-bound, I often times found myself craving all of the home-made, delicious meals that my mother makes.
All five of them.
That's not to say that of all of her concoctions, only five of them were incredible - in fact, she's batting 1.000. She ONLY makes five recipes.
Well, six, if "making" reservations counts (I vote yes).
See, as a child, family dinners consisted mainly of my father grilling some sort of protein on our infrared grill (by which he swears), Chinese delivery, one of the aforementioned "signatures," or the ever popular "fend for yourself." Despite this, we almost always found time to eat dinner together as a family, and I consider myself extremely lucky for that.
Needless to say, this left something to be desired as far as my palate was concerned. So, as I neared my senior year of high school, I started tinkering with these little things I had heard of called "cooking" and "baking." They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and this was no exception. I am by no means an excellent chef - my skills have improved, to be sure, and I can make some pretty decent pastries, but more than anything this experience gave me an appreciation not only for what food can be, but what food ought to be. Food ought to bring people together. Food ought to teach you something you didn't know before.
You can tell a tremendous amount about a culture by the food they eat, and in all of my travels, I try to explore my destination through the local cuisine. That is why, when I arrived in San Francisco knowing only two other people (and vaguely, at that), I decided to turn to the wide world of food for friends.
An intense (and, I admit, slightly stalker-esque) Twitter campaign led to my first breakthrough, where I met Kai Kronfeld, affectionately known as "The Bacon Crack Guy," for a bowl of his chili outside of The Page. Since then, I had the opportunity to volunteer at the Street Food Festival, experience the "Bacon Takedown," and have even graduated to attend a Monk's Kettle Trappist dinner and an Incanto "Head-to-Tail" dinner.
Some pop-ups and food trucks even know me on Twitter - so I got that goin' for me.
A chef is an artist with food as the medium. My goal with this blog is to tell the stories of these artists - chefs and bakers, pop-ups and food trucks. I want to find out why these people put in countless hours, days, years - all to make one morsel at a time. I want to learn about food through their words so that when we finally taste their dishes in reality, we have a better concept of the bigger picture beyond the calories on the plate.
I want to learn to appreciate food for what it is - not merely a means of sustaining life, but a way to experience it.
All five of them.
That's not to say that of all of her concoctions, only five of them were incredible - in fact, she's batting 1.000. She ONLY makes five recipes.
Well, six, if "making" reservations counts (I vote yes).
See, as a child, family dinners consisted mainly of my father grilling some sort of protein on our infrared grill (by which he swears), Chinese delivery, one of the aforementioned "signatures," or the ever popular "fend for yourself." Despite this, we almost always found time to eat dinner together as a family, and I consider myself extremely lucky for that.
Needless to say, this left something to be desired as far as my palate was concerned. So, as I neared my senior year of high school, I started tinkering with these little things I had heard of called "cooking" and "baking." They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and this was no exception. I am by no means an excellent chef - my skills have improved, to be sure, and I can make some pretty decent pastries, but more than anything this experience gave me an appreciation not only for what food can be, but what food ought to be. Food ought to bring people together. Food ought to teach you something you didn't know before.
You can tell a tremendous amount about a culture by the food they eat, and in all of my travels, I try to explore my destination through the local cuisine. That is why, when I arrived in San Francisco knowing only two other people (and vaguely, at that), I decided to turn to the wide world of food for friends.
An intense (and, I admit, slightly stalker-esque) Twitter campaign led to my first breakthrough, where I met Kai Kronfeld, affectionately known as "The Bacon Crack Guy," for a bowl of his chili outside of The Page. Since then, I had the opportunity to volunteer at the Street Food Festival, experience the "Bacon Takedown," and have even graduated to attend a Monk's Kettle Trappist dinner and an Incanto "Head-to-Tail" dinner.
Some pop-ups and food trucks even know me on Twitter - so I got that goin' for me.
A chef is an artist with food as the medium. My goal with this blog is to tell the stories of these artists - chefs and bakers, pop-ups and food trucks. I want to find out why these people put in countless hours, days, years - all to make one morsel at a time. I want to learn about food through their words so that when we finally taste their dishes in reality, we have a better concept of the bigger picture beyond the calories on the plate.
I want to learn to appreciate food for what it is - not merely a means of sustaining life, but a way to experience it.
