The Curvy Chef and her legacy...

I have 3 siblings. All 4 of us can cook (2 of us can bake, and right now, it isn't me as I am trying to get my baking nack back), even my brother has found a love and affinity for Itlalian Fare. It's amazing to me how we each developed our own way of cooking, and yet we all find the same comfort and joy in it. We are at home in our kitchens, preparing meals for those we love whether we are together at Christmas or apart the rest of the year. When we are together in a family members kicthen, it is like a symphony, a play, a circus if you will of skill and nothing short of mind reading. My baby sister for example can come over to my house and I can begin preparing a meal, she can step in and take over anything I am doing and not even have to ask how, when or why. She just knows and I find a beauty and comfort in that. I feel blessed in that comfort.

We love to eat and eat well. Groceries are the first thing we buy when we get paid...bills come second. Food after all gives us and our partners the energy to continue on. Plus, food and the meals we make reinforces the bond that breaking bead with soemone develops. There is a comfort in it, and I can only describe it as love. A love for family, a love for eating, a love of sharing our souls and creative energy with those who share in the meals we work hard to plan and prepare. It is HOME. and a meal shared can make Home out of any place where one or more people are gathered.

I learned to cook from my Great-grandmother, Granny and Mother. At 13 I was preparing meals to feed 6 people, and though not all of the meals were a success in the beginning my family recognized as I did, that I had an instinct for cooking.

In my Blog, I have quoted the word CHEF. I know, by watching enough Gordon Ramsey and Anthony Bourdain (two men I admire and dream of meeting one day), that I am by no means a professional chef. I have never been to school, so no, I do not know the correct way to dice an onion, however, I have met many said Chefs and tasted the product of their education and well...Chef is just a word. and a subjective word at that..kind of like Artist, or Novelist. No offense to those of you who did pay to go to school, obviosuly you have a passion and I admire that. I have a passion too, I just can't afford to go to a school to tweak my methods, or I would have by now. So I decided it would be ok to put quotations around the word "Chef" so as not to offend anyone who thas their dimploma and to make it clear to those who do not and are curious as to what type of cooking I do; 95% from scratch, handmade food.

Instead I go on instinct. I go on the inspirations I find in magazines such as Cooking Ligh and Real Simple. Food Network and the Travel Channel were my drug of choice when zoning out in form of the televsion. I have watched Guy, Rachel, Martha, Alton, Mario, Michael, Paula, and the Neely's, and so on...do what they do best, and I take them with me into my kicthen when I make meals, when I create, when I cook. 

I hope that if nothing else comes from me sharing my recipes, that someone, somewhere stumbles across my little page here and tries to make what I have, and that they develop and Love for it, as I have, and that they pass it along to those who come after them.