Cooking and food have always been the equivalent of love to me. Holidays, family reunions, birthdays all center around what is going to be cooked together, and what is going to be eaten. Some of my favorite memories are fluidly moving throughout the kitchen with the rest of my family on Christmas or Thanksgiving, all fixing one thing or another, chatting and laughing with the television playing some marathon of “A Christmas Story” or James Bond movies. Even the bad memories, like the Christmas I sliced my knuckle off with a cheese grater, still stand out in my mind as a moment of love and family bonding. I truly enjoy cooking for my friends and inventing new recipes, seeing the looks of joy on their faces as they say “you really made this? It’s the best thing I have ever eaten!” Or having them beg you to make their favorite dishes at the party you are throwing. Food is love.
I remember as a kid of maybe 4 or 5 years old watching re-runs of “Great Chefs of the World” with my parents on the couch. This was prior to my discovery of the magical channel called the Food Network and watching episode after episode of Emeril’s and Iron Chef (prior to Iron Chef America). Well I remember sitting on the couch, absolutely captivated and fascinated by the combinations of flavors used by the different chefs as they created new recipes for the camera, how quickly their knives whirled, yet fingers never separated from knuckles. This was about the time when I started thinking about career choices, and I told my parents “I am going to be on that show some day”. Their replies of “sure, sure” was not exactly reassuring, and I did stray from that path for years. But now I am back on the path of the culinary world, and plan to tell my story.
In high school, back at my days at Foxcroft School, I was very interested in joining the FBI. I wanted that existence. With college at Transylvania University and my degree in Political Science and my minors in History and Spanish, I had decided. I actually wanted to go to law school and be a corporate lawyer. This lasted until 3 LSAT exams later when I decided maybe that wasn’t what I wanted after all. I had taken a year off to work in the Governor’s Office in Kentucky for the General Counsel, when I decided I would go get my PhD in Political science. After spending a year at the University of Kentucky, I have finally decided to go back to what I truly am passionate about: food.
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