Prelude.

I’ve dreamed of being a chef ever since I was a little boy. I have fond memories of being in the cramped kitchen of our East LA apartment, watching my mom cook fantastic meals with expert-like efficiency. She was a stay-at-home-mom at the time and would make breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. Each day after school I would rush home to watch my mom cook in the hopes of being allowed to help prepare that day’s meal and learn the secrets of a hearty home cooked meal.

None of that is true. Except for the fact that my mom stayed home while I was growing up and cooked everything for us, nothing else is even remotely true. I would sort of float in and out of the kitchen depending on what my mom had going on. If beef was on the menu, I’d stalk the kitchen and steal a piece of raw meat like an opportunistic jackal and leg it out of there before the long reach of my mom’s expert strike could do any real damage. I still enjoy the raw stuff.

My brothers and I had chores same as other kids; we cleaned and made our beds and did whatever else our parents told us, but that never extended to the kitchen. For some reason my mom didn’t think it necessary to teach me how to cook, but she did spend a lot of time letting me know my bed making skills were lacking in precision. I didn’t really bother learning how to feed myself until I had to. That happened right after Erica and I got married.

See, back in the spring of the year 2000, after everyone realized the Y2K scare was just a lot of bullshit, we found ourselves married and living in Downey. For the first time in my young adult life I was expected to fend for myself while Erica went to school and worked various part-time jobs. We had very different schedules.  The way I saw it, I had a choice; I could starve, eat fast food every night, or learn to cook. I have to admit I considered just eating fast food every night as there was a fifties themed diner a few blocks away and I love onion rings and am inherently lazy. However, being newlyweds, we weren’t as financially stable as we are now and spending all that money on fast food wasn’t the best of choices. So I started to cook.

My first attempts were less than perfect. In fact, they were crap. I mean you have to understand I could barely cook a hot dog or scramble an egg properly. But I persevered. I have to hand it to Erica for sticking by my early attempts and not crushing my ambitious from the beginning. The hardest criticism she’d level at me was, “um…it was ok. I don’t want any more though.” Looking back I know they were not the most appetizing of dishes, but it did spark something in me. Apart from music, I’d never found something as artistically liberating as cooking. Much like my early attempts at music, my ambitions went well beyond my abilities at the time, but it didn’t stop me. I kept at it until I could make at least edible dishes.

Fast forward a decade and I’m now enrolled in culinary school. This blog will be sort of a journal of my experiences at school. I’ve only been there a month and I’ve already learned so much! I mean I know how to cut vegetables, but never at the level of precision. I’ll try to post as often as I can, however I only have a few days between classes to get all my work done. I never knew chefs gave so much homework!