First off, thank you and I’m glad you enjoy my food posts! I used to refrain from posting as much food content as I do now for fear of annoying my followers. Many people have asked me for more of that content so I’ve removed that particular worry from my anxiety bag!

Aside: I have serious doubts that Gordon Ramsey actually filled out this question but I left it because it was funny.

Early Cooking

I grew up as a picky eater in a small town (<12,000 people) in Kansas. Not exactly a place known for it’s culinary history beyond barbeque anyway. While the women in my family are all good cooks, we didn’t tend to cook anything of note except for holidays. I gleaned some knowledge from helping out a little bit, but for the most part I was likely in the way rather than helping.

Around the end of elementary school I stopped being quite so picky and learned I really loved the Chinese food at our one local Chinese place and NOT just their burger and fries. At about the same time I found The Frugal Gourmet on PBS and bought one of his cookbooks. Turns out, other than needing to learn a bit of technique and acquire the tools/ingredients, I could make something that was at least better than the frozen chinese meals of the day!

This is also around the time I found Julia Child.

But at this point the most difficult thing I had made was Povitica a couple of times with my grandmother. It’s a Croatian spiral dessert walnut bread that is a multigenerational family recipe. It’s amazing but time consuming to make your own extremely thin dough. You roll it out more like pasta. Cover it in your walnut, honey, and sugar filling and then roll it up.

Getting Somewhat Serious

Ok, let’s fast forward past college where I didn’t do much in the way of cooking other than re-heating or making something from a box.

As many of you know, I worked at the World Company which along with creating Django also had one of the first cable ISPs in the nation. My coworkers and I had a habit of going out for drinks Friday after work, as many companies do.

However, Lawrence is a college town and often my co-workers would head home around the time the college kids would come out. They have spouses and families to see and being single and on the younger end of the things I did not so I often would stay out a bit too long.

This meant a fair number of Saturday mornings being hung over.

I knew eating something would improve my situation, but in those moments nothing sounded good. I started watching the original few seasons of the Food Network to try and convince my mind and body that food was a good idea.

As it turns out, being hung over often is bad for your liver but amazing for absorbing hundreds of hours of Food Network content!

I’d pick up technique tricks randomly and sometimes realize that one dish didn’t look that hard to make and would venture to the stores to acquire what I needed.

Wash that over a few years of working there… and you can really cook!

Going Semi-Pro

Around this time I briefly dated a legit chef. She opened my eyes to the fact that, with less knowledge than you may think, one does NOT need a recipe. I learned to cook more by feel and taste and it was very freeing from always stressing over if that was the “right amount of garlic”.

It was also around this time that my business partner Jacob made fun of me for having too many single-use kitchen gadgets and that I needed to just get good with a chef’s knife. So I did… and he was right.

Small aside, one time my now wife wanted to make a pico de gallo and started to find, pull the pieces out of the cabinet, and assemble the food processor.
I was done before she got it ready to use!

Now I avoid single use kitchen gadgets like the plaque, you don’t want or need them.

Going Crazy

The first house we moved into and remodeled I was super happy with our kitchen that I designed mostly by myself. I hated to leave it so when we moved our deal was that we were remodel the kitchen at the new house “soon after moving in” to something even better than our previous house.

Then COVID hit and we got stuck wtih it for a couple more years than we anticipated. Both because contractors were too busy to call us back re-doing people’s decks and home offices, but also because the cost of materials kept going up.

We eventually completed our remodel. I call it my “mid-life crisis kitchen” because instead of getting some crazy sports car I’d never really use I got myself a kitchen.

I labeled this section Going Crazy because I got some crazy things. As close to a commercial kitchen that is legally allowed, with some fun things like:

• Restaurant chilled and filtered water dispenser in a counter. Gotta stay hydrated!
• Foot pedals for the sink so I can wash my hands without touching anything
• 1600 CPM hood with make up air
• Huge pantry and storage we still have not filled in 2+ years
• Oh and an indoor wood fired pizza oven we had to crane over the top of our house!

Now I get to cook for friends and family far more often because it is so much more enjoyable to do it. With this kitchen I’m able to comfortably cook up to for 20-30 people at a time.

Tips

So at this point you might want some tips. Here is my advice.

1. Consume tons of VIDEO content about cooking. YouTube videos where they show the process. Things where you can learn a small simple tip or trick along with the recipe. Masterclass.com is great for this.

2. Spend $100-400 on a GOOD chef’s knife. Get it professionally resharpened a couple of times a year. And use it almost exclusively. You’ll know when you need another knife, it will be obvious to you, but don’t get it in advance. Buy a bunch of cheap produce to practice with and make a soup.

3. Don’t cook tons of different things at first. Find something you like to eat and cook it say weekly until you can do it without referring to any recipe. You’re better off being able to good 8 things well than 42 things poorly.

4. Taste as you go. More often than you think. I’m always last to eat because I’ve been nibbling on all the food as I go to make sure it’s seasoned right or cooked enough.

5. Read the recipe twice before you start. Practice mise-en-place. It’s really worth it.

6. Clean as much as you can as you go.

Do all of these for a couple of years and not only will your cooking dramatically improve, but so will your confidence to go “off recipe” more and more.

Long term you should be thinking “Let me compare these 3 recipes for X and see what I want to do” and combine them as you see fit. This is what I’m doing these days if I’m cooking something for the first time.

Happy Cooking!