What it is really like being a chef or working at a restaurant

I saw this online and it only started to bring back memories:
http://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/understanding-cooks-best-kitchen-advice?ref=facebook-868

 

 From the time that I was 16 years old, I started to work at a restaurant. When I think back to this place, from seeing and dining in so many other restaurants, it really didn't seem like a true restaurant, but it was.  I did so because it was easy work and fun when your friends worked there as well.  My older brother worked there and as such it helped me get my job there.  I didn't think of it at the time, but it helped light the fuse for my love of food and cooking.  I tried to avoid the kitchen as best as I could because I was young and 16 and didn't want to do anything back there that pulled me away from my friends and the windows looking upon the outside world.  There were a couple of times that my brother was pulled into the back to help and when he came out at the end of the day, he looked drained and smelled like a trashcan.  I just didn't want that and I did try really hard to avoid it, and did so at that location.  What happened when I was about 18, was that while school was one thing and I had friends there, my friends did not live by me and work with me.  The friends I had acquired at this one location, in Shrewsbury, were the friends I would go out and party with on summer nights, weekends and vacations.  That was my social network, it was Facebook and Myspace before those sites were even invented.  I don't try to sound old and ancient, but before there was the internet and even cell phones that did anything other than make and receive calls, there was a physical meeting of people at locations. 

My friends were all together and we were making friends with managers and then all of a sudden, they moved my favorite manager.  They transfer managers and move them around like chess pieces. (Wait, maybe not because that implies that the district supervisors who manage whole city's worth of restaurant locations would be capable of any intelligent thought.)  But my favorite manager was sent to another location, on Manchester Road, in West County and I was still stuck here in Shrewsbury.

I begged to be moved there and when I was, I noticed that things seemed different and there, I did volunteer my services to the kitchen when they had a cook call in sick.  I thought it was really cool that 2 guys would run the cook's line and maybe 3 on a busy day and there would be as much as 10-15 in the front of the house just working on the products of those on the cook's line.  So one day I was working and the cook called in sick.  There was a certified trainer back there and they needed someone to go back and I took the chance.  I slapped a hairnet on, a cap, a thick apron and went to the cook's line.  I worked there in what seemed like perfect harmony with the other cook.  He was on the ovens and I had steamer and fryer.  I was having trouble keeping up with the food taking and when the manager, probably in a drunken stupor came before me and pulled me over away from the cook's line.

"John," he says. "Recipes are just instructions.  If you can read, just do what they say and everything will be fine."

That is all it takes and that thought, that saying, coming from an a-hole such as he was, was the most remarkable thing I ever heard about cooking food.  That and my co-worker that night, Terrell, told me that cooking was "just having fun."

The rest is history but I can tell you this; the restaurant I worked for, Old County Buffet, was an all-you-can-eat restaurant.  People would pay as much as $10 for dinner and eat $100 worth of food.  I was frying 4 chickens at once in one fryer and about a pound of french fries in the other, while mixing 4 pounds of mashed potatoes in a large stand mixer.  My steamer was filled with 10 pound trays of corn, green beans and carrots and that was the tough part.  On a busy Friday or Saturday night, the line servers were taking food out of the Sham faster than I could cook it. 

The feeling and thoughts and memories, all came back when reading that article.  So, let's look at my favorites from that site:

[It gets really hot]- At the locations where I cooked, and at the restaurant itself, they did not have AC in the back of the house.  So, whether you were working on the oven and the grill or getting a burning facial with the fryers and steamers, there was no saving your body from the heat.  What we did, was use the meat freezer.  About 10 feet from the oven side, against a wall, was the meat freezer.  All of the meat was there, frozen, along with boxes of other stuff like vegetables to be steamed and so forth.  Let me tell you this: working for 8 hours on steamer side and then walking into a freezer is amazing.  It is so cold that the sweat on your hands actually starts to turn into frost after a few seconds and it feels wonderful.  It was a great pick me up during those hot summer days on the line.

[No matter how hot it is, don't drop it]- What a great piece of advice.  I have dropped a large sheet pan full of baked chicken before.  It was so hot, out of the oven, that I burned myself on one of the doors on the side of my arm.  I dropped one side of the sheet pan and it fell down, as hot, molten, chicken fat and juices ran all down my apron and my leg and on my shoe.  While that sounds like I could have been saved, I wasn't.  The lava was so hot that I besides the food costs I wasted, I had to run around the corner, get my arm fixed up and take my shoe off to make sure and stop everything from burning my foot and leg.  What a day.

[Even in scratch kitchens, 98% of everything is prepared ahead of time]- Every night, before we closed and locked up, the cooks would prep for the next day's crew and shifts.  On steamer side, you had to get about 2 boxes of frozen vegetables and get them into some quarter pans to prep for the next day.  The oven side cook would get his chicken laid out and on pans for the freezer to be ready for the next morning.

[You must over-communicate]- My line, which was the cooks I worked with whether I was scheduled to cook or if I was sent back to help as kitchen supervisor, always spoke clearly and loud.  I had my guys yell when coming around a corner.  When you have dishwashers placing cleaned pans on a rack that is the same rack where my cooks were going to get food going, and having guys with grease and food stuff on the bottoms of their shoes walking into a wet and soapy area, it makes a huge difference between being quiet and yelling "coming around!"  When you had something hot, you yelled "hot coming around!" And when my team or myself opened a steamer or oven, customers in the dining room could hear us.  For good purpose because my team, had a flawless injury streak.

Also, a good one on here for people who are in this line of work or thinking about it: Don't date outside of your house.   This just means that if you are on the cook's line or dishwasher (back of the house), don't try dating someone who is in the front of the house, like a cashier, line server, or server.  It will make it very difficult to communicate and keep appointments.


 

Savannah Grille's spring time boards

No real story here or article, just some food porn.  Two weeks ago my wife's family and mine were going on a road trip to Branson via Lake of the Ozarks.  So, we had one afternoon of driving and then dinner at the Savannah Grille.  I asked Chef Robert, on the phone earlier that day, if he had anything special and he told me that he had some fresh tomatoes and would make something special for us.  He also had finished breaking a pig down, earlier in the week and wanted to make a better meat plate.  So, we ordered and it came, these are the boards:








































Look at how delicious everything on this board looks. He gave us headcheese, some terrine, some fresh sausages as well as prosciutto.  Then covered the board in all of these random vegetables, which he pickled.  Each pickle was a completely different spice or flavoring agent to complement the meat items.

Then, the tomato plate come out:

The board has some toasted bread on it and then these perfectly red tomatoes and a drizzle of some balsamic vinegar and sauce and these were just extraordinary.  The bite of these tomatoes tasted like that first day of summer.  

Chef Robert always makes great use of the items that he can get, always looking for fresh and seasonal.  My advice to you, is to go there, order these boards and try one of their new burgers.

Savannah Grille in the Ozarks

Hidden away, on Horseshoe Bend Parkway, on the way to the resorts in the Ozarks hills of Missouri, is a nice little restaurant named Savannah Grille.  While this nice cottage-looking restaurant look quaint on the outside it is the exact opposite on the inside, with Chef Robert Sills using modern techniques to perfect traditional food and dishes.  Chef Robert grew up in New York, then moved to South Carolina where he learned and gathered more culinary intelligence.  Finally moving to Missouri, he decided to partner up with the local farmers and the Farmer's Market, in the Ozarks, to create deliciously fresh, seasonal and sustainable dishes, that help show off the great and wonderful foods that can be found nearby.  Now, while not everything is found within a 10 mile radius or close to that, I think he said the eggs came from Tennessee, but everything did come from a farm and is fresh and doesn't use any GMO's or anything bad.

The restaurant is nice on the inside and has a wonderful view, from the side of a bluff, of the Lake of the Ozarks as well as some of the resorts.  The menu is incredible, everything is organic and the place is very friendly and great for kids.

So, here is what we had ordered:

First we had ordered the House Charcutrie Board, which was a board filled with house-made pickles and sausages.  It is huge and is well worth ordering for your party at your table while you wait for the main courses.  We ordered enough on here for 3 people and this was a large board filled with food.  Chef Robert told us that he had purchased a book on pickling and just started to play around with it, making almost anything into a pickle.  There were sweet pickles and sour pickles and the sausages and meats were just as tasty.  If you need a good board to calm your table down, get this.  I'd give the board a 4 out of 5.

Now, the next thing we had ordered was for me.  It isn't on the menu now, but that is because the menu changes daily, due to what is available and fresh.  I ordered a house made sausage, with greens and mashed potatoes.  Can you say "delicious"?  The sausage was tender and juicy and the mashed potatoes were creamy, buttery and full of flavor.  There was a bit of a micro green salad with a very rich and tasty gravy. This was the kind of dish that you could just sit there, relax, enjoy the view and eat.  I'd give this one a 4 out of 5 as well.

While these helped make the meal enjoyable, these were given to us, just like bread and butter is given to guests at other restaurants.  What is it, you may ask?  What these are, are sweet cornbread muffins, with chunks of andouille sausage in them.  With each bite you can taste the corn bread and a bite of spicy sausage or pork fat.  These are so awesome and even better with some of the herbed compound butter.  I'd give these things alone a 4 out of 5 stars.

Now, just when you think you can only get great dinner and lunch food here at the Savannah Grille, they also offer a brunch menu on Sunday.  The delicious menu has all types of great things, including this omelet filled with meat.

I was one of 6 adults and we had two children with us and none of us, had any issues or problems with any of the food we had ordered.  Usually BBQ is a must-have while we go to the Ozarks and now, we will have to stop in and check to see what else is new and fresh and delicious.

Savannah Grille
1622 Horseshoe Bend Pkwy
Lake Ozark, MO 65049
http://savannahgrillerestaurant.com/

What is an Heirloom Tomato- By Chef John Johnson

What is an Heirloom Tomato?

Tomatoes are native to the Americas. Eating tomatoes always bring me back to when I use to hide in my parent’s garden on warm summer days with a salt shaker in one hand and picking tomatoes with the other. Eating them right off the vine will always bring a smile to anyone. I don’t think I have ever had a better tomato. If you want to come close the Heirlooms, come very close. There are nearly 600 varieties out there and many of which are hard to find. In most grocery or produce stores, they always seem to have what I call the standards; Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Golden Queens. These are then mixed together for the following recipe.

They are classified into four types: the Commercial Heirlooms are open pollinated tomatoes varieties that were introduced by seed companies before 1960, the Family Heirloom are Varieties that have been passed down from generation to generation, the Created Heirloom is one that has been crossed deliberately using two original heirlooms to create a new one and finally the Mystery Heirloom, which arises accidentally in nature due to natural cross pollination.

My favorite is a very unique tomato “The Garden Peach”, which has a light yellowish, pinkish color resembling a small peach when fully ripe. It even has a slight fuzzy texture to them. I have been lucky enough to find seeds from a wild breed of tomato from the Galapagos Islands. One of two wild species endemic to the islands, that due to growing so close to the sea water, have a sweet and salty taste to them. I can’t wait to try them.

The best way to eat heirloom tomatoes is simply cut them serve them salted with a little oil. The recipe below does just that and I have dressed them up with some tapenade and tomato pepper.

Plate Ingredients:

Assorted Heirloom Tomatoes 3 large

Assorted Cherry Tomatoes 6 each

Small basil leaves 4 each

Small celery leaves 4 each

Curry Hummus (recipe below) 1 Tbl

Kalamata Tapenade (recipe below) 1 Tbl

Basil Goat Cheese (recipe below) 1 Tbl

Hawaiian black lava salt 1 Tbl

Olive Oil 2 Tbl

Tomato Paper (recipe below) 3 pieces



Curry Hummus

Garbanzo beans, drained (save juice) 1 can

Yellow onion, rough chopped ¼ each

Dijon mustard 1 Tbl

Paprika ½ tsp

Garlic (minced) ½ tsp

Lemon (juiced) 1 each

Curry powder 2 tsp

Crushed red pepper 1 tsp

Olive oil 1 Tbl

Salt and pepper to taste


Place all ingredients in blender and mix until smooth. If the mixture is too thick use the juice from the beans to create a consistency to blend well. Reserve


Olive Tapenade

Kalamata olives (pitted) 3 cups

Garlic (roasted) 6 gloves

Red pepper (Roasted & seeded) ¼ pepper

Basil (fresh) 4 large leaves


Place all ingredients into a food processor and chop until blend with smooth with some small chunks. Reserve





Basil Goat Cheese


Goat cheese (room temperature) 8 oz

Basil (chopped) 10 large leaves

Olive oil 2 Tbl

In a mixing bowl blend all ingredients together until fully incorporated. Reserve

Cheese... by: Chef John Johnson

Let's start with every one's favorite.....CHEESE!!!!

One of my favorite things to do is to make making mozzarella cheese. Making Mozzarella is usually a two part process. First making the curd which is made from fresh milk and cannot be made from the processed mild that we get from the stores today. You can buy the curd direct from some local dairies or on line like I do.

http://www.dibruno.com/fresh-mozzarella-curd.html
Traditionally once you have the curd you can begin by warming the curd with warm water so you can begin to stretch the curd and create the long strands that define good mozzarella.  Once the curd is stretched you can begin to form the size ball you want. The name of the mozzarella is determined by the size of the ball. The word mozzarella actually refers to the tearing away of the ball from the curd.

Here is where I get a chance to play in the kitchen. Instead of using warm water and salt I like to use different flavors and herbs to not only enhance my cheese but to create something that no one else has. Playing with different combinations like:Vanilla Port, roasted garlic, ginger beer, and my most current tomato basil.

Replacing the warm water with fresh squeezed tomato water adding basil stems and salt I warm the liquid to 175 degrees and warm my curd in this before stretching the curd and forming the mozzarella balls. Creating flavored mozzarella with an unlimited palette of combinations. For all the Foodies out there this would make a great interactive wine party. If you plan it I just may have to see if i can come and help.

Playing with your food is not a bad thing anymore!




-Chef John Johnson is the Executive Chef for the restaurants at both the Lumiere Place and River City Casinos

I'll be Hansel and you be Gretel

Whenever I think of a gingerbread house, I think of a happy moment from my childhood:

While I know that it was never shown or told that the house was made of candy and sweets, at least it lent the idea that it could have been and the kids were just thrown in a pot anyway.

Watching this, then made me think of a game I have recently played called Katamari Damacy:

If you are not familiar with this game, the point is that you have a ball that you basically roll stuff up with.  Like a snowball rolling down a hill, the more your roll up, the larger your ball gets and then more that the perspective and scale shifts so that it appears that you are getting larger and larger.  In this level, you had to roll up as much of this gingerbread house you could.  It even comes complete with a witch riding a broomstick.  As a fan of donuts and other great baked goods, a house made from real baked goods, does sound delicious.

Now we get to St. Louis, where to the side of the main hall of the River City Casino, they have this:

This past Saturday I was allowed to enjoy something straight from the fairy tales: the giant gingerbread house.  I thought to myself, 'how can a gingerbread be that cool?"  I was quickly surprised of exactly how large-scale this gingerbread is.  Candice Coleman, sent me over the recipe and what was required to make this and I was shocked.
[

Gingerbread House

450 pounds of gingerbread dough
100 pounds of shortening,
100 pounds of granulated sugar,
90 pounds of corn syrup,
117 pounds flour.
Baked off 500 6 inches by 12 inches square bricks.
100 house made gum drops
400 fresh baked cookies
130 fresh baked cupcakes
300 pounds of royal icing
]

Okay, so imagine how big of a item you could make with 450 pounds of cookie dough!  What they did, was create a wooden house and then using frosting, they glued these gingerbread cookie slabs on to the outside.  While reading that list I also thought of how big it could be, with only 400 cookies, 130 cupcakes and 100 house made gum drops.  My mind immediately thought of those store-bought gum drops and how 100 of them is hardly enough to decorate even the store-bought gingerbread houses.  That is, until I saw them up close:

That large yellowish thing with the sugar on it, is the "house made gum drops".  Really?!?!?   Way to fool me Chef John.  That thing is huge and looks to be about 3 inches tall and about 2.5 inches in diameter.  It reminded me of those giant "novelty" gummi bears that you can buy at the World Market in Chesterfield and everyone sinks their face into.  I'm surprised no one has taken this idea and made some kind of weird candy fetish video with giant gummi bears and huge gum drops.  Take these into account with the normal sized cupcakes and those cookies look to be at least 6 inches across.

Now, while this house enough sugar to give every child in America a sugar rush and is cool to look at, there is special food that can be ordered.  The gingerbread house has a special menu, which allows you to pick from your first course, your entre' and get your dessert all for one low price of $25.

I had the pumpkin pie soup, which  had creme fraiche and toasted pepitas.  It was great and sweet but not too, too sweet.  It tasted like pumpkin with some sweet elements to it.  A great way to judge a dish is to get a kid to eat it and my 6 year old loved it.  He kept asking for more and he sat in front of his breakfast plate.
The soup was an easy 4 out of 5 for me.

 Between the choice of the ham and the turkey breast, I chose the ham.  (It is a pork product after all.)  The ham had a 1904 Bourbon glaze, with a sweet potato and yellow potato gratin and then had some baby carrots.  The carrots were as sweet as the soup, which is a good thing, for me.  I prefer my vegetables with large amounts of butter and or brown sugar or maple or other sweet applications.

So, it was huge, a large amount of food was offered to me and presented and I was already ready, already.  The ham was tender and juicy and flavorful.  The gratin was tender and easy to eat and creamy.  The carrots were awesome.  The meal was an easy 4 out of 5.

There were others:  Like the eggnog flan that came with this prefix meal.  I'd give it a 4 out of 5.  Then there was the egg and Canadian bacon sandwich with potatoes that my son ordered and ate his fill of, loving every bite of it.  Even the Beignets came out correctly.  They were light and fluffy and delicious.  We ordered the traditional and plan on trying the maple bacon when we return.

While going to the casino and eating in a giant gingerbread house may be just regular average droll for you, it is important to note that doing so, helps a charity.  To reserve your spot for a meal in this house, requires $20.  This $20 goes straight to the Center for Hearing and Speech, which helps hearing impaired adults and children in the St. Louis area.  This isn't some organization going to help people around the world or in some other city but takes care of the people HERE.  Every cent of that $20 goes to the organization.  Now, while you may be wondering, what you get for your $20 other than a spot in this edible house, here you go: activities for your kids.  The gingerbread house is a great place to go with your kids.  It seats 4 people comfortably and after ordering adults and kids alike, are given slabs of gingerbread with colored icing, with which you can decorate your tile.  Tiles or slabs of cooked and decorated gingerbread can be donated to the house, where a chef will get to glue them on to the house, using frosting.  So, you can make a funny picture, write your name, or even write the name of your website.

So, this holiday season, spend the $20, help someone hear for the first time and enjoy some great food.

The best in a chef?

What I have here is a story that every chef should read and understand and agree to.  Two weeks ago, on October 4th, I was asked to a private tasting of the food for the Capitalist Pig, which was a BBQ take-out restaurant located in the Mad Art Gallery.  The grand opening was supposed to be on the 10th of this month also and foodies and writers and bloggers were given early access to taste what Ron Buechele had in mind.  Now, I went with my wife, dressed up nicely, had beer, talked to some people and the went up for what looked like an all-you-can-eat BBQ buffet.

There was all sorts of creations and while my first instinct here is to show you picture after picture of what each item was and how it tasted let me stop you right there:  I will not.

What happened that night was something so magical and so incredible and so "unlike St. Louis" that it makes me thrilled just thinking about it.  That event, this singularity of awesomeness gives me hope that there is something or can be something great in St. Louis that will draw people from around the world.  What this event was, was the head chef and owner, Ron , discovering that the food was coming out as good as he thought it would be.  That's correct, you read it right.  The food was not as good as we, the people and even the chef thought it would be.  So, while I wouldn't mind telling you that the sauces were good, or the smoked pork belly was like heaven, I don't want to get into how the chicken was flavorless and had a rubbery skin on it, because it will most likely be fixed.  There is no reason to get into any of the issues and problems I had with the tasting, because Ron already knew it.  What was so magnificent was that a chef or restaurant owner decided to put off the opening of his restaurant to fix everything.

Huh?

It may not sound like anything important to you, but there are so many restaurants in St. Louis that suck.  They are really awful and I wouldn't eat at them if you paid me to do so.  But, those restaurants, like many of those shown on shows like Restaurant Impossible, are filled with staff who believe that their food is the best and flawless.  They are so blinded by the truth for one reason or another that they do not wish to change, much less take any comments or critisezm.  What you have is a chef or owner volunteering to not open his restaurant at the specified time and date and instead make sure everything is perfect.  I was so worried because so many people have their heart in the right place and want to bring business to St. Louis and want to open up restaurants.  But, their food or service sucks.  Then they close down in a matter of years and act like it is a bigger mystery than Atlantis as  to why no one would come to their place.  It take a real chef, much less a real St. Louis citizen, to see that it is better to not open on time and do it right than to open early and ruin it.  

I love Schlafly's

Schlafly's Taproom is one of the hidden mini breweries in St. Louis that no one thinks about until its too late. When people think of getting a bite to eat with great food and fresh brewed beer, they still think of anywhere in St. Louis which serves But Schlafly brews their own beer. You may have seen their bottles in a store near you and what makes them even more different is that they have a restaurant where you can eat some food while enjoying their beer.

Their restaurant is inside of the same location where they brew their beer, just on the side with the restaurant. One cold day just last month in February, I stopped in for dinner and some drinks and this is what happened.


I wanted to order the beer bread which was all out and ordered the french fries instead. The fries came right out with a dipping selection of a creamy ranch style sauce and something that tasted like ketchup mixed with hot sauce, providing a nice kick to the normally tasty potatoes cooked up. Nothing too fancy and nothing too salty as it was just a simple dish and an easy 2 & 1/2 out of 5 stars.

Next came a main course dish: bangers and mash. Here you can see the mound of red skin mashed potatoes surrounded by two large brats, a tower of super crispy onion rings on top and a wonderfully delicious red onion gravy. The potatoes were wonderfully chunky and flavorful, the brats were tasty and meaty, without any bone chips or gristle, the onion rings were light, flaky, crunchy and not at all greasy and the gravy reminded me of a "brown sauce" or a reduced veal stock sauce. This dish, a good 4 out of 5 stars.

This accompanied with a nice glass of cold Irish stout beer was an awesome use of a cold weather day. So, go to Shlafly's and enjoy their food. Their location is below.

2100 Locust Street (at 21st)
St. Louis, MO 63103
314.241.BEER

Anthony Bourdain

Of all the shows that I watch on tv, there are mainly two that I cannot miss: Good Eats and No Reservations. Last night's show had Anthony Bourdain interview and ask bloggers, chefs and foodies, why they are obsessed with food and writing.

I think my excuse doesn't follow an idea of obsession, other than to help people make good decisions. I learned recently that speaking bad of a restaurant wasn't a good idea and people don't want to hear about which places to avoid but which places to attend.

I have been obsessed with food as soon as I could drive as I wanted to explore the city and move out and away from the small circle where I was only previously allowed to be. College helped me with this as then, I had my own car and could drive with friends anywhere. I moved from going to MacDonalds each day and started to go to Applebees, which had a very good variety and quality of food versus the previous fast food location. While going to college, I worked as a manager at an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant and saw the workings of how a restaurant should be run, from ordering the right amounts of meat to cooking the meat properly and serving it to the customers on the line. I learned how to order meat based on previous days' guest count, I learned how to prepare the meats once from the cooler for cooking and learned how to serve them.

While in College, I went for almost 2 weeks to Ireland, for a quick tour and enjoyed myself as well as the food. It was European style and a bit like the American food I was familiar with. It was in college that I fell in love with and married a Lebanese woman and jumped right into the Mediterranean food cuisine. A few months later came my first trip to Japan and I experienced what Japanese had to offer in the way of food and also saw how girls in Harajuka really dress, not like Gwen Stefani envisions that they do.
About a year after that, with my mother-in-law opening a spa, I worked on a degree in holistic nutrition so I could help out. On my own also, I worked on a certificate in Catering, which gave me the culinary knowledge to do what I could with strange and unusual ingredients that were healthy and not used in normal cooking. About this time is when my father-in-law was diagnosed with diabetes and when he couldn't enjoy desserts and my frequent snacks which I prepared at home and brought into work, it upset me. As a chef, I don't like to just make food, but I like to make food and watch people enjoy it. I don't care if I don't even get one serving, as long as they enjoy it. But what do you do for someone who can't have sugar or high GL foods? You do math.

Math: the bane of my existence and the enemy of so many other people, was the only way I could change the recipe formula around so that it still worked when I substituted and changed things. Well, along with science...

With my holistic degree knowledge behind me, I started to look at sugar substitutes and finally found one that is perfect. I also looked at things and ways to substitute one kind of flour for another so there is less GL's. The baking and the jam making, with no sugar and low GL's is still just another obsession in making people enjoy my food in every way they can. A trip to Lebanon also showed me what items could be made with sugar, as the dessert capital of the world, they had more sweets available than anyone else and with these sweets, I came to see many sugar-free possibilities.

So, is that the only obsession? When paired with writing, it is. I love to write and while I may not be very good at it, like all skills, practice makes perfect. My stories may not be technically correct but at least I can write a small article about something, like the dangers of high fructose corn syrup. This collection of writings has become my new obsession as I try to make favorite desserts into sugar-free designs and then blog about it for everyone to read about, hoping that someone who is diabetic will see and then buy my products in the future.

On the show, Bourdain spoke with many food bloggers who had low self-esteem and write about food as when girls were not there for them, food was. I can't say that and actually say quite the opposite and in the case of food, like them, I want people to go to the best places, so I rate them and their dishes in hope that people go there. Over the two, I admit that for about a month, I was obsessed with making a sugar-free and low fat gooey butter cake, which sounds impossible. How do you take almost a pound of butter and sugar and make something that tastes as good without either one? I admit, I failed in every attempt to deconstruct all of the ingredients and then replace them back without the butter and sugar, took a couple of attempts and decided to quit for a month or so until I have better ideas. But overall, my boring time at work, in between normal working and the random photo shoots, I do try to recreate dishes I see on tv, in the movies or hear about. That is my obsession.

Is it a gift or a skill?

I was first introduced to the world of cooking as being something fun when I sat in my friend Sean's living room, with a bunch of friends, to watch Iron Chef that evening. It was the first time I had ever seen the show and this was also one of Sean's great co-ed sleepover parties so there was both men and women lounging all over the room to watch. This battle was over some sort of fish and like always, the greatest of Iron Chefs was to battle: Chen Kenichi. As I sat there watching, I became enthralled at the amount of knowledge this chef had for cooking strange and unusual ingredients. Even after the episode was over and everyone was moving downstairs for more activities, I turned back to the TV, almost hearing it call out to me, like a siren's call. It called to me, wanting to seduce me and take me down, to kitchen stadium, down leagues and leagues where I drown a happy tasty death.

From that show's first burned image in my mind, I have always loved how trained chefs can take any ingredient and do something with it. I shall not comment on the fake and staged show that is Iron Chef America as they know ahead of time what the ingredient is, they make dishes that they have already made before and they only have to make one of each, unlike the old school version where they had to make everything there on the fly. I wanted to so badly become a chef, like the Iron Chefs, as one who would be given a chicken breast and come up with multiple things to do with it.

Unfortunately, I am not an Iron Chef nor can I come up and cook everything well. I am slowly learning a new appreciation for seafood and some of it, I just don't like so I don't cook it because I don't know how it will turn out or is supposed to taste. I also don't like cheeses that much as my tastes changed as I grew up and I grew out of it. I remember eating cheese, lots of cheese when I was young but then growing up, I learned a dislike for most of them.

What does make me proud is that when I hear some of the biggest chefs in the world, talk about what they do, they complain. I remember Bourdain complaining about how he can't do pastry or baking at all. I have heard other chefs, even Iron chefs say that they can't do cookies or even a simple jam. Well, one man's poison.....

I can do baking and can accomplish it quite easily. I can make batches and batches of cookies even without a recipe work fine. I am about 90% good in that if I find a random recipe, 90% of the time I can make something delicious out of it. Making jams is just as easy if not easier and to hear a large number of people and chefs exclaim at how difficult it is. That makes me feel good knowing that I can do something they cannot. It still makes me humble though because in the same way, I can't cook the foods that they can. So, while I may be able to make a jam or dessert that would best compliment a meal at Mesa Grill, I wouldn't be able to come up with any of the dishes.

So, like me, go out there and try to cook something. If you can't cook a steak properly, then move on to something else. I think everyone has some cooking skills, you just have to figure out what facet it covers.