I was recently discussing my goals and aspirations for this food blog with a friend and expressed that I wasn't sure how or where to start it off, so they offered some advice. Like a lot of creative endeavors, the hardest part of making something is always starting off and journeying into the unknown. That friend suggested I start by writing my origin story and how I got to where I am today when it comes to my interests in food and cooking (something I somehow hadn't thought of yet). As cliché as it sounded at the time, here we are. I hope I someday make it to Serious Eats with this food writing business!

At the risk of sounding even more cliché, I believe it all began with my mother. When I was young, I looked up to her a lot more than I sometimes realized. I now credit her for my addiction and early introduction to coffee and my love of cooking shows, because those were the things she's always enjoyed as long as I can remember. To this day, we frequently talk about both when we're together or chatting over the phone. We both ogle over kitchen tools and food photos or recipes and ramble on about the characteristics of our dream kitchens full of bamboo, granite, and stainless steel. She and I are very alike when it comes to food and she's one of my biggest fans, even though she rarely gets to eat the food I cook.

As a single parent who raised four rambunctious boys mostly on her own, coffee and food shows (or Judge Judy, or Law & Order, or whatever was on) were the things that always stood by her as everyday comforts. They offered her the rejuvenation and relaxation that her challenging life as a mom never afforded her otherwise. I think that's why we both share these interests, for calm from life’s stresses and culinary inspiration for whenever we find the time to cook.

My mother used to cook at home a lot more before my brothers and I all came along, but now she's always too burned-out and achy from work to spend as much time doing what I know she loves. Just the other day however, she did send me a Facebook chat that read, "Making chocolate chip cookies". Coincidentally, we both planned to bake chocolate chip cookies that day, but I ended up putting my cookie baking on hold until the following day. She was jealous when I finally made them though, as she said mine came out looking better than hers. Sorry, Mom! ❤️

My favorite sea salt and dark chocolate chip cookies

I think I initially taught myself how to cook (with pointers from my mom, obviously) to make home cooked meals a reality for us again and to feel as cool as the celebrity chefs I watched on TV. As a kid, I consumed way too many packets of instant ramen (sometimes with plain potato chips sprinkled in), bottles of soda, bologna and cheese with yellow mustard on white bread sandwiches, Hot Pockets, chicken patties, and countless other probably horrible processed foods (remember purple ketchup?). Honestly, I'm surprised I survived to adulthood without major health issues. The cost of those foods alone must have been a tremendous detriment to our finances, not to mention our health, but it was what we asked for and what my mom could provide while trying to work multiple jobs and keep us all alive. The inspiration I gained from cooking shows and the desire to distance myself from those processed foods, as I grew older, led me to become much more interested in learning to cook and to more throughly venture on into the world of good food.

I remember starting off by occasionally sautéing mushrooms for my older brother, even though I was strictly against eating fungi back then. I apparently enjoyed the aroma of the mushrooms, salt, and pepper heating up together in oil, regardless of my personal stance. I know I crowded the pan too much for the mushrooms to actually brown properly, but my brother seemed to be fine with that and hey, he got sautéed mushrooms for his steaks and burgers (the historical accuracy of this was questioned by my brother upon inquiry). From there, I moved on to cooking ground beef for “Mexican”-American hardshell or flour tortilla "tacos", scrambling eggs for breakfast, and pan frying thin "little kid-friendly" steaks purely for practice and experimentation (these also never properly browned well before overcooking, likely due to low heat application by moi).

I have had more than my fair share of failures and hurdles along my home cooking journey (like nearly destroying a microwave with a raw potato, a black TV dinner tray, and fifteen minutes of cook time), but I look back on all of them as lessons learned. Hell, I still make countless mistakes in the kitchen to this day and likely always will (just the other day, I way over-broiled a London broil while multitasking a bit too much in the kitchen). I think that's what makes a good chef, someone who can make good food and terrible food in the same space and be able to admit it. Gordon Ramsay, you may disagree if you like. Although I'm no MasterChef, I like to think I know my way around the home kitchen.

What really got me obsessed with food and cooking was my heavy biology background in school, which opened my eyes to the incredible world of food science. My final semester of college at ESF, I convinced my advisor to allow me to take an introductory food science course that our next-door sister school, Syracuse University, offered to their hospitality students. I told my advisor that the class would holistically benefit my interests and studies in plant and animal science, agriculture, and ethnobotany and without too much delay, I had his blessing to take one of the most valuable and memorable classes of undergrad and of my life. There were lectures a few times a week, but the three hour lab (cooking food and eating the results) that took place every Friday at 8:00am was the real kicker. We cooked successful recipes, recipes designed to fail, and everything in between in a professionally equipped kitchen for the sake of SCIENCE. My final for lab that semester required me to make a simple batch of blueberry muffins while being closely watched. My muffins were inspected and sampled by one of the head chefs who exclaimed, "These are some of the most beautifully domed blueberry muffins I've ever seen". I thought they just looked pretty standard, but apparently they were flawless. That was a huge morale boost for my kitchen confidence and that moment has obviously stuck with me ever since.

I've cooked a lot more even since then, trying to make sure to cook at least 75% of my meals and flexing in various ingredients, techniques, and cuisines to keep things interesting. I draw a ton of inspiration from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of The Food Lab and Serious Eats, Dan Pashman and his podcast, The Sporkful, which I regularly listen to during my work commutes, and great food writers like Harold McGee, Michael Ruhlman, Jeff Potter, and Michael Pollan who go to great depths to bring real hard-nosed science, philosophy, and chemistry into the everyday kitchen. I hope to be as cool as these guys someday.

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at the Museum of Food and Drink in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Stay tuned for the second portion of my origin story all about coffee, coming real soon. It's too big a part of my life to cram into this post, so let all this digest until next time!