Welcome to my recipe blog. This is not my weekly recipe but more of an establishment of my mission statement. What I would like to do is to post at least one recipe a week of something I have cooked. I want to try and provide as detailed of an ingredients list and instructions as I can. However there will be plenty of times where I will not use an exact amount of something or use an exact technique but I will try and be as descriptive about what I am using or what I am doing as I can. It is cooking, not rocket science so have some fun…
I would also like to bring some of my friends on-board with this project. I know that many of them are no strangers to a kitchen and I think that the knowledge base that could be accumulated here is immense. So looking forward hopefully some of you will want to participate either by recreating what I am doing or by contributing your own recipes. Either way it should be good times.
Another aspect to consider is that I like to be challenged. So please feel free to either comment or contact me in some other way with things you would like me to take a stab at. Really I would like to make this as interactive as I can and as fun as I can. I mean, really there is no point playing in the kitchen if you are not having fun doing it.
A little about myself and cooking: I think my interest in cooking comes from my Grandma Stout and my Grandma Pat. My Grandma Stout was an amazing baker and just all round good cook. My Grandma Pat does fancier and more refined cooking. I can remember helping both of them out in the kitchen when I was younger. I am not sure if I was really helping of if they just put up with me in the kitchen… The other greatest influence was my mom. Of course most people will fiercely defend their moms cooking as the best in the world and that is understandable. My mom aside from being a mighty fine cook also taught me how to make something out of nothing, which is what she often had to work with.
For many of you this is probably the retelling of the abridged version of my life story…. For the rest of you … My formal culinary training consists of being a Navy cook for 7 years. More often than not it was mass production of food like substances more than it was actual cooking. But even in the worst case I still learned many of the basic skills of cooking during my time in the Navy. While I was in I also did a fair amount of cooking at home and really tried to refine those skills (thank you Kris for being a guinea pig). After my time in the Navy I went to school at Johnson & Wales and got a degree in restaurant management. I am pretty sure that the degree is not worth the paper it is printed on but I have it none the less. Now that I have totally divested myself from cooking for a living or for a scholastic endeavor my passion for it has picked back up (the Navy really did a job on ripping the passion for cooking out of me).
Now days I find that I primarily cook for me and my girlfriend. On occasion I will cook a little something something for a party, gathering or get together with friends. This seems to pick up during the summer when I am poolside and have access to a grill. If you have not been to one of my poolside cookouts you have no idea what you are missing…. So cheers! And here is looking forward to posting my first recipe. Not sure if I will be able to get to something this weekend or not as I have a term paper to write but I will hopefully have a chance to make something.
