Fight 4 Taste

 In the last couple of years I have learned that I thrive on disaster. The more chaotic a situation, the more in my element I am. This is where my love of contingency was born. I realize that just saying these words may seem wrong or off-center. It is nothing so weird. I was raised at a time when it took serious creativity to get by abundant limitations. I am so thankful because even though I say that there were limitations, there were also people that provided solutions to keep me and my family safe. Many of the survival skills in life that I learned, I learned from people around me, and developed the mindset that consistently worked out better ways to solve every day problems. In doing so, solving problems monetarily was erased from the manual. I subconsciously removed that as an option and as you might guess, there are an infinite number of possibilities. So, yes.  Most of the chaos, was implied threat to daily life. Eviction, the loss of a couple of refrigerators, two year...

 What happens after one writes an entry in a blog for 7 days in a row? The inclination is to pull over to the side of the road. To reflect. To analyze what just happened. But then I remember my thought process from 7 days ago. I was asking, why can’t I be more consistent in writing? It is then I know pulling over is not the answer.  This thing has a second gear and it is time to use it.  There is a bigger picture here too. Too many times when it comes to cooking I have done this symbolic pulling over to the side of the road. I will devalue my abilities before I move into the next gear because I get stuck in my own head and allow all of the obsolete traditional voices to beat me down into uncertainty. I have learn though some very interesting facts recently. Before COVID began, 16% of all Chinese restaurants closed permanently. This was due mostly to the generation of people running these retiring with no one able to carry on the legacy. COVID-19 did far more damage. By mi...

 I’ve often thought of my daily existence and collective existence as random particles traveling through the void. That is certainly true. After pondering this for about seven years now, I have come to the conclusion that random particles they may be, the good news is that they are all traveling in the same direction. Let me lose the abstract here. At the age of 57 there is an awful lot of clarity. My 28 year old self is extremely envious of that focus. But let’s face it, there are way too many non-existent bridges leading back to 1993. So deal with it. What I mean by this is, I know the things that I want to do and I also recognize that time is a more budgetary thing than I have ever realized. Despite this, I have my moments where I lose the fight against my 18 years of RA pain, fatigue, repercussions of hard living and don’t make the best of every moment. But that doesn’t stop me. Like someone tied down at those times, I struggle and tear against those bindings in order to make a...

An unexpected culinary journey It was an unexpected and unpredictable journey. For a guy who could cook less than a dozen things for the first half of my adult life, I discovered a wonderful gift. My cooking heroes have changed over the years. It makes sense. My launching point was the training wheels-like safety of the 20 years ago Food Network. Chefs like Rachael Ray, George Stella, Guy Fieri, and Tyler Florence? As I look back on this I cannot help but feel a wave of embarrassment. But this was the road that got me to where I am today, even though I’m not exactly quite sure where that is, although it is becoming obvious. I can tell you that my cooking heroes have certainly changed. At the top of my list, are June Xie, Stephanie Cmar, Adrienne Cheatham, and Anthony Bourdain just to start with. These are not cookie-cutter chefs, and perhaps in some definitions, not chefs at all. (Had to add this as June does not like being called a chef). 15 years ago there was definitely some excitem...

 Yes, there are many hurdles ahead, but this is my declaration that I AM DOING THIS.  Appropriately so, I was at the Miracle Mile Listen Center (regional thrift store) and scored one of the most important books in the world to a professional chef, and what was to be my next printed acquisition on Amazon, The Flavor Bible, for one dollar!  This means I have the CIA official textbook, The New Professional Chef, Salt Fat Acid Heat, and now this one.  These are in the top 6 all-time required chef references.   In other news, I was had, sort of.  Let's just say, "I see cooking stuff"

  Dropping Noah off at school on a beautiful June morning, I've returned to face the ten dump truck loads of dirt that I volunteered to take. I need them, but I need them to take the forms that I need them to. That is okay. It is my famous "Give a Mouse a Cookie From Hell" scenario. This needs to happen, but you can't spread dirt till you stack firewood in the shed, you can't do that until the rest of the splitting happens, you can't do that unless until ... And So It Goes. I suspect that deviously, my garage is probably involved, I just know it is!  Work time begins soon. I could sit and watch the news, but I don't want all that negativity in my life on such a beautiful morning. Lately, for me, it is been about understanding that I can finish things.  I have learned that having too many unfinished projects damages me into thinking that I am succeeding at nothing. It is a house of cards.  So what about the kitchen? I am years beyond just going to stores an...

Rice is life. About that stuff that went down last month. I was walking on a long journey to places I did not know or understand. I knew I was not eating. I knew I was not sleeping. Somehow I felt that the momentum of my entire life could push me through the valleys of cold depth that I was traveling. It never occurred to me that this defies logic and also physics. I did not care. I supported this corner of the world with the things I had acquired. And I foolishly thought that they could endure. All along the way, I never lost my inspiration and that was the one thing I was very pleased to find. After all, I have spent so much time being equally unimpressed with everything under the sun.  Racing toward the western horizon with my foot on the floor. 2 AM had just passed, then it happened without warning. The engine stops. I feel my emptiness wrap around me as it catches up to my lost momentum, like dropping from the speed of sound in which it suddenly overtakes me. I did not know th...

Fragmentation of my existence continues. I feel that some of us are more fortunate than others. We are staggering around through life and we get our foot stuck in a crack in the trail. This happens because we are either nice people or we are inducted into some sort of servitude temporarily. Others made an unpredictable course change equivalent to suddenly jerking the steering wheel rail-ward on a long bridge. No matter what they did, when everything settles, somehow the pieces of who they are, are found to be more assembled than ever before. It was certainly this way for Julie Powel, the author of Julie and Julia. BTW. I have never seen a movie that was so NOT the book ever before like this, meaning, if you saw the movie, you have no clue. Read the book. Julie clearly hated her life. She worked in the wake of one of the biggest tragedies there ever was. Even worse she worked for the bureaucratic remediation of said tragedy. Her personal life was empty or at least she perceived it was. ...

One of my friends at work today said, I don't think you guys eat anything normal. At first that is an easy statement to accept , but as I think about it it makes me realize why I am cooking in the first place. I actually want the food that I am cooking to become my normal. If I can see the progression of Trying a recipe and progressing to getting good at it and developing my own style then I can own it. Then i have acheived normal. Bibimbap is like that for me. In a subliminal quest to eat better I need the flavors to be like snapping life out of the jaws of death! people like George Stella and Juan Carlos on the Food Network told us many years ago that if we wanted to change our diet we could actually enjoy food even after you've made drastic changes to improve your health. I think we do eat normally. Eating a box of Kraft Mac and cheese (which I did try a forkful one time) would be the weirdest most NOT normal thing I could eat. So, what is "normal"? It is differen...

One of my friends at work today said, I don't think you guys eat anything normal. At first that is an easy statement to accept , but as I think about it it makes me realize why I am cooking in the first place. I actually want the food that I am cooking to become my normal. If I can see the progression of Trying a recipe and progressing to getting good at it and developing my own style then I can own it. Then i have acheived normal. Bibimbap is like that for me. In a subliminal quest to eat better I need the flavors to be like snapping life out of the jaws of death! people like George Stella and Juan Carlos on the Food Network told us many years ago that if we wanted to change our diet we could actually enjoy food even after you've made drastic changes to improve your health. I think we do eat normally. Eating a box of Kraft Mac and cheese (which I did try a forkful one time) would be the weirdest most NOT normal thing I could eat. So, what is "normal"? It is differe...