Sometimes inspiration comes at the strangest times in life. Sometimes, it just hits you like a brick in the face. That’s what happened tonight as I was watching “Jamie at Home on the Cooking Chanel. I realized that I needed to start writing down my recipes for my son who is about to turn 3 years old. Out of this realization came the inspiration for this site “The Everyman Cooks.”
Let me start with a few facts. I’m soon to turn 38 years old. I have spent the past 13 years working in the information technology arena. I am married and a father. I leave the house around 6:00 AM, fight traffic for 40 miles and work an eight-hour day with an hour for lunch. This puts be back on the road around 4:00 PM, which if I’m lucky gets me home at about 5:00 PM. Just in time to start dinner so that we can eat at a sane hour.
That’s right, I come home after 12 hours away from the house and cook dinner, almost every night. No this does not make me super human. I realize there a lots of other people out there who do the same thing every day, the difference is I am a husband. I believe firmly that its time for more men to get off their seats and into the kitchen.
I’ve been on a quest of sorts, to figure out what I really want to do with my life. It has become clear to me that one of the things that I truly love is food and sharing food. For me, cooking is inspirational. I truly love to cook and have been doing so since I was old enough to boil water and not burn the house down. I started cooking with my mom who cooked dinner every night for the family. At first it was simply opening a can or two, maybe filling a pan with water to boil. Then I learned how to use a knife and cut up vegetables. Eventually I started lighting the charcoal grill, and finally I was grilling the meat while Mom finished the sides.
In college, I hated living in the dorms primarily because I didn’t have a stove. I was stuck eating either the food at the dining halls, or with what could be produced in a microwave or with a hot-shot (a water boiling contraption). I longed to go home so that I could actually cook. In my second year, I moved off campus and into my Fraternity house. We were a small house (less than 20 members) and everyone had at least one job. One of mine was cooking dinner three nights a week on a budget of $2.00 a plate. My buddy and I put out dinner five nights a week for 14 guys on that budget and they were “square” meals. During college I also worked in several restaurants where I learned a lot about cooking under pressure.
You might be asking yourself, how did a guy who loves cooking so much end up in IT? That is a long story, but the important part of it is that my experiences working in restaurants in college taught me a number of things. First and foremost, restaurant work is grueling hard work. Secondly, the hours suck. I did not want to be working nights and weekends for the rest of my life. So, I never considered restaurant work as a potential career choice.
My soul-searching has led me to a few other conclusions. It is very important to me that I somehow have an impact on society. Somehow I need to improve people’s lives. I am also driven to be creative. Cooking provides me with a natural outlet for creativity.
So, as I sat here tonight and watched Jamie Oliver prepare a wonderful meal that I knew I could have conjured up on my own, it occurred to me that I might just be able to accomplish three goals in one place with this blog.
Hopefully, I can explore my creativity, inspire others and transmit useful information about my primary passion in life. That passion is food.
Enjoy.
Fantastic Dame. Can’t wait to read more. Let’s cook together soon.
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Sounds like a plan to me!
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