Parental Role Injustice For Next Generation

As a mother of three achieving teenagers, I have put into place a strategy that may give them a leg up in the coming years. This plan of mine isn't done just because I am a chef, but I have seen that there is a informational gap forming on many levels and types of education that our children are not receiving. I have seen this more readily now that I am a culinary educator of other's parents children.

It is no longer a pervasive standard of parental expectation that children are expected to participate in completing chores, household repairs, and cooking duties. This has established bad habits that won't be easily broken. I seldom here of the Saturday mornings filled with cleaning the house, Spring cleaning, yard work, or any other type of productive duties that a family should be doing together. It is our duty to send out into the world at large young adults who have the skills to survive. I never wanted to live in situations where my kids would drop off their laundry at my house for me to do, or having one that come and eat or pickup dinner from my house because you didn't learn these skills before moving out. And I don't want to have my adult kids return home to live rent free in my basement because they can't maintain themselves in the real world.

Do I expect any of the my kids at home to become a chef or work in my industry? No way. However, I want to see my kids having the ability to cook at home, not being dependent upon corporations to feed themselves, understand how to manage a successful household, paying bills, and raising their own children in a healthy environment. We often set our kids up for defeat, poor health, shorter life spans, and a inability to function. Those of us that do not develop our children's potentials are not the only ones that will suffer in the long-term. Our grand kids and our daughter or son-in-laws often have difficulties with a parent or mate that is ill equip to deal with the day to day of adulthood.

I am the perfect parent? Do I only eat a restrictive diet? Do I know everything about everything? NOT TRUE. But I believe that when you don't share your knowledge on any subject with your children, in a age appropriate manner, it is a cold meal of injustice you are serving up. We parents have been given a charge, these aren't just kids we are raising, but in fact, they are the next wave of leadership we are growing. We are charged with the duty of their safety, education, development, and identity, we have a huge responsibility. Almost everything that our kids grow up to be is in fact our fault, good or bad. Some people never grow up, they just become old children and others become anxiety ridden over achievers who never get the hang of intimate relationships. Yes we must take the blame as well as the credit.

School isn't were kids learn about adulthood, that happens in the home. Teachers can teach algebra or science, but it's isn't their job to raise your kids. Manners, respect, honor, and loyalty must be taught in abundance along with hard skills of paying bills, being a reliable employee, and being a fully actualized adult prepared to take a significant role in a family or their own.

Cooking your meals has many benefits. It is cheaper than restaurant food and it gives you control of what goes in your food. The savings and the versatility that cooking at home can bring is beneficial to your bottom line and your waistline. Fast food and processed foods are designed to be made as cheaply as possible while being highly addictive and while our younger folks cannot see any reason not to eat that way. Those of us who are a bit further down the road have begun to feel the effects of a American diet rich in empty calories and large amounts of fat. Diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and a host of other aliments attributed to this eating style. Since the days of Jane Fonda workout, we have become more unhealthy while spending more and more money on diets, supplements, yoga pants, and health club membership that you don't use.

Not teaching your children some survival skills is not a good option. I know that you can do it faster and better, but they need to practice, so they will be able to do and teach it to their offspring. And do I need to mention the habit fosters a greater sense of responsibility? Creating a mess and not cleaning it up is telling them that they don't need to take ownership of what they have done and it also says 'don't worry, Mom will fix everything', While they are little it should be that way, but as they age, year after year, it becomes a very bad idea. Stop coddling yours so much that they have a stunted emotional growth.  

Healthy eating starts with healthy cooking, eating at a regular schedule, and understanding the basics of nutrition. Do everything you can to equip them for the future instead of spoiling them in the presence. I see teenagers every day that have no idea why they think they don't like to eat this or that. My program is an exposure program in which they cook new dishes and eat food they may not have ever heard of before, giving a lot better toolbox of personal experience.

I have heard my students say things like 'I didn't know mashed potatoes didn't come in a box", "I always thought I didn't like coleslaw", "Chef, I really really liked the green beans." all of which I count as a victory!

I do know that giving something away that you don't posses isn't easy or nearly impossible but I want you encourage every parent, even the ones that don't know a lot about cooking. Grab the bull by the horns, and learn with your kids if necessary, and learn better habits. Live a healthier life while giving one to your next generation.

Spring Flurries

While this may sounds like a weather report, it is not, and Chicago often has snow in Spring. What I am referring to is the storm of change and work tied into our programming during the Spring sessions. The last month or more has been fantastically busy and rewarding. My last session ended near the end of May and due to all the extra work needed, it became difficult to make all of the appointments.

Scholarship competitions, fundraisers, meetings, professional development, interviews for Summer term, planning, syllabus modification, more meetings, doctor appointments, medical issues, orchestra and band concerts, field trips, and the closing of my own kids schooling for the year. Phew.

Now things can slow down a bit and leave me to do some catching up. The first thing on my list was to catch up on some missed sleep. Recharging is essential. These last weeks proved to be telling me that I am a bit more fragile than I'd like to admit.

Some hard work comes with the satisfaction of knowing that you didn't let it beat you in the end. Some hard work comes with little visible evidence of success. And some hard work doesn't pay off right away, they are the long-term gains that manifest over lots of years. I have been asked if I thought that teaching culinary at this level was harder than working in the industry, quick and without hesitation, my answer was yes.

There isn't a single parent that hasn't questioned their skill based upon the child's advancement or success despite the fact that a lot of things that happen along a child's life, especially in teenage years that may have nothing to do with parental input. Years and years later, most of the successful adults, will say that their parental influence was positive and necessary, even when the adult may have dropped out of school or had a teenage pregnancy, or any other negative impact on life that we can all agree makes life much harder to be successful.

I count it all profitable to gain even the smallest shift in a students opinion, taste, or concept of the world at large. I dance when a kid goes from "that's nasty" to "wow, I like that".  The work can take a long time, can be hard to do, requires that I trust my kids in class and that they trust me. I have to position myself somewhere between a parental role, a type of friendship, a teacher, and a wise elder in order to do what I do successfully. This work is also about how the student sees themselves and their future.

I have always began each term with asking the kids to write about their life goals. Those kids who have been in my class in multiple times, have had the answers on the page turn from "I don't know" to "I'd like to become _____". I have heard, and witnessed, kids begin to take small steps to change what they eat, how they project themselves, how they see themselves, how they expect certain reactions from me and how we interact. To have a student start off with no idea who they want to be and have no care about what they eat, change towards a new image and shoot for much higher goals, it is all worth the effort.

I have set a personal goal with this blog and related podcast, having a regular scheduled time table, so when I have to miss days, I get a bit hard on myself, but I am working on letting go of negative self-talk.

Spring is all about new growth and return of better weather, a renewal. Rebirth. Imagine, as we all post pictures about graduations, proms, and Spring weddings, that we are all just Spring flowers nestled under the cold blankets of winter, just aching for Spring rains to melt off our heaviness and allow us to bloom.

Power of Words

When you think of chefs you may not think about them as wordsmiths. Be sure that we are a group greatly entrenched in language.  We have a long history and our own lingo. This realm of terms, definitions, and understanding both describes and confines us. Chefs notoriously use language that some find offensive as a daily ritualistic release of tension.

The language of food is important and chefs rely upon it to convey clarity when speaking about a food request. Having said that, I am a chef who is rubbed the wrong way when people misuse a culinary term but expect to receive exactly what they have envisioned instead of what they have asked for to eat. If you asked for the Tomato Florentine soup, you can't be upset by the presence of spinach, for example, as Florentine means spinach in the kitchen.

Recently, I was on a mini-vacation and was looking for food fair. I called the near-by Cracker Barrel and asked if their were gluten-free options on the menu. They said yes, but when I arrived the menu did not have gluten-free pancakes or waffles nor biscuits, they brought an alternative menu that gave both nutritional information and pointed to some menu items as safe for my consumption. Offering me a bowl of oatmeal, fresh fruit, or steak and eggs, is not offering me options. I found it insulting that this was all that was offered and I didn't need them to tell me the fruit was gluten-free. By the way, the oatmeal was amazing and I had an order for dinner later on that weekend, but that is not the point. When I think of Cracker Barrel, IHOP, Original Pancake House, or any other breakfast spot it should not be difficult to make adjustment for alternative eaters, and shame on those who have the boldness to offer me fresh fruit as if I don't understand what gluten-free means.

Re-branding food items under new labeling is a funny thing these days. Every trip to the grocer has me laughing as the things that should be relied upon to be gluten-free have redesigned packaging to inform us of this new revelation of food category. I don't need anyone to tell me that unpopped whole popcorn is gluten-free, what's next, gluten-free water?

Language can bind us together with a common ground of understanding and communication but also can divide us with a loss of clarity or misunderstanding. For many consumers who purchase gluten-free items, not all of us must buy these items for health reasons like I do, but rather buy these items because the term is trendy and new-ish. I'd even bet there are some who couldn't accurately define the term but swears that it is bad for your health. No, no, no... It isn't good for my digestion, not everyone's. 

It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go on

In this industry, lots of us dream of having our own outlet, some place as unique as we are talented. What is seldom taught, is what an individual must do to make their business ownership dreams come true. Culinary school focuses you for production work, and sometimes for artistic work, with food. It can take you down the nutritional information highway, the chemical action, the application of different heat sources, all the applied science of food.

Colleges will teach accounting but not often teach entrepreneurship, how to get licensed, deal with inspections, picking a great location, managing all the in's and out's of a business, how to find startup funding, and the like. So many many times, there are business partners needed for a chef to have a good place to launch their restaurant. Often times, family members will steak their savings or collateral to have funding enough to open a business, and it doesn't always work out.
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No one person is a master of all the disciplines needed for a successful operation. It can take two, or three, or more to help steer the ship and avoid the icebergs. A startup business can take a lot of capitol to get started and with the 60% failure rate of all food related business within the first year, it can be very difficult to accrue capitol to work with when starting out. And besides, no chef really wants to be tied to a desk, dealing only with orders and payroll, and typically that is a waste of talent that could be working on the plates instead of the books.

If you grew up like I did, from a middle class working home, then you may have a similar experience of having few relatives that understand your goals of business ownership. It isn't that they don't want you to succeed, it often is just not a path they understand or they would rather see you on a 'safe' path to wealth. Unfortunately, there are no safe paths anymore. So I am of the mind that, if you are going to work, you can either work and make someone else rich or you can take the risk to make yourself rich.

Funding is a interesting topic that many people are nervous to speak about, I think it's because not enough of us understand it. Macro and micro economics can be hard to manage, and those who have figured out how to use it productively are not giving their secrets away. "Just buy my new book" or "Sign up for my new seminar". People are willing to pay for advise with money and can often take differing approaches much like a fad diet habit.

Here's the real scoop. Any successful organization is created by putting the best person in charge of one or more aspects of the business. Even the President of the U.S. has a trusted cabinet to support his efforts. A good chef should both know their strengths and weaknesses. Our industry is filled with managers who have never been a chef and chefs who have never run an office. If you don't fully understand what the people you are managing do, need to do, and what it takes to do what you are requesting, is a no-win situation. The reverse is also true, if a chef doesn't understand how to manage a kitchen, invoicing, purchasing, P&L, and human resources issues.

Dream big but understand even the best of us cannot go it alone. Knowing where in the organization you contribute the best can save you effort, time, and money. Find a great business partner before opening or even planning to open a food business. Team work, a realistic budget, designing phases of growth, adopting to the customer needs, i.e. sound business practices makes all the difference in the world.

Entrepreneurship Isn't for Everyone: Part #2

Not everyone is able to become their own boss. Not everyone has the skills needed to make your own company efforts successful. It dose take some fearlessness and definitely takes skills. I have always wanted to be an owner of my own business, not just a paid employee. Therefore, when I would be offered some new position or opportunity, I looked at it as a chance to learn more about the working positions that I hoped to one day hire and manage. Not understanding how a job works when you are managing the workers who hold that position can be very costly. Making demands of your workers needs to be done with knowledge of how the position works. If you are a manager and demand an item be prepared and restocked in a half hour, but what you are asking for takes an hour to bake, let alone prep and packaged, you will be disappointed and/or a conflict will arise between you and the employee because you are asking for the impossible.

Not understanding the type of work and/or the skills needed for this or that position is very costly. Some find themselves hiring the wrong people over an over again because they don't fully understand what is needed. This effort to advertise and recruit staff can end up dragging your whole staff down, as they are working harder and harder to take up the slack left by being too short staffed. This effort to get new people takes manpower away from other activities, especially if you have to do it again and again. An employee that is underpaid, overworked, or see no chance at advancing, will eventually disappear and you will have to hire someone else to do the job.

It takes two to make a thing go right... Sometimes it takes a village. Opening your own food spot, from greasy spoon to fine dinning, takes not only culinary genius, it also take a vast amount of support. A good chef knows that they will need investors, workers, bookkeepers, lawyers, customers, market research, advertising, networking, licensing, insurance, and location support. Offering the wanted products in a area that is willing to buy from you regularly is key to your location efforts. If you are not at a good area for your business, your customers are less likely to go out of their way to give you their business.

On top of all that, there are no guarantee that success will come. You can offer the best products at reasonable pricing in a area that doesn't have a lot of food business and still fail. It's sad but true. Sometimes you capture lightening in a bottle, other times, closing your doors and perhaps trying again is the best solution.

O.A.N.: Let's discuss money, both inside and outside of your business. There are a couple of money issues faced by all companies, how much is this item worth, and what are my customers willing to pay for it? Both of these answers are quantifiable but the best of calculations can still end on a sour note. There will always be competition in the market place. For example, I create custom cakes and cookies, and sometimes potential customers get sticker shocked when they ask me for a quote. The most commonly heard complaint is "I can just buy a Walmart cake". Often this reaction comes from a customer who hasn't ever ordered a custom cake and does not understand the difference or the reason that the cost has been set. Many customers may wish to buy a cake that looks like it is right out of a magazine but don't have the budget to order such items. Therefore, a business that is concerned with longevity needs to take the temperature of the marketplace from time to time to see if they are pricing themselves out of the market or if they are not charging enough and losing potential profits.

Part #3 is upcoming..... stay tuned

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Entrepreneurship Isn't for Everyone: Part #1

I was born into two families, as we all are, my elders had long work records that highlighted a dedication to a blue collar workforce and style of life. Therefore, I was taught the ladder to success was in working for a company or the government for 40 plus years, put your kids in school, get the gold watch, and retire in peacefully.

Entrepreneurship wasn't what they understood or felt that it also could lead to success. Elders with that type of mindset cannot teach a child that starting their own business is a good thing. Most think it is too risky to attempt. They see that a stead job with benefits is the way up the ladder and business ownership is a ladder with missing rungs.

It takes a different mind to attempt such risk and you have to be somewhat fearless do to it. Business is always risky, no matter where you stand with the company, owner or employee.  The same company that pays you from payroll is taking a risk that the company will survive and taking you with them. It is just as easy to get laid off or fired from a company than it is to own a business and make it successful. So why don't you take a hold of the course your ship is headed?

With high risk comes high rewards, taking no risk leaves you with very little rewards and tied to other's fates. While you are working hard for another person or company, you are making them rich and taking a small percentage of the benefits. As an employee your labor belongs to another. Lots of people have used the innovation that employee #37 created while working for a company. Work in that mode is the "work product" of the company. If you invent the next big time comic book character, for example, while working for Marvel or D.C. the company owns it, not the one who created it. You have traded your rights to the innovation you created for a paycheck and nothing more than that. No royalties, no copyrights, nothing but a small check.

When you are working for yourself, it isn't easy, you must be knowledgeable, skilled, and dedicated to the company. But isn't that the same expectation that your boss has for you everyday? Owning a company means that it's your reputation on the line. You have to rely on your staff, manage your budgets, inventory, and everything else.

It takes much more than the efforts of one person to run a successful food business, it can take a whole village. Good chefs know their weaknesses and hire experts to lend a hand at those things they are not adapt with handling. Tons of people, every year, decide to try their hand at running a food outlet. They take their savings or take out a loan and jump into the deep end of food operations with little experience and training. The failure rate of independent food operations is very high, and opening can be very risky even when you have the skill and training needed. http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/03/infographic-failed-small-businesses.html

Business is much like the food chain, the big fish can swallow the little fish whole. Who is your big fish? Are you at the top of the food chain, swimming, and making decisions, or are you following the school of fish that you help to create? Have you researched the demographics of the area? Do you know what your customers want or are you selling what you like? Can you differentiate your business from all the others? Have you acquired the needed capitol, equipment, staff, and décor that drives customers to you or away from you?

There are so much to discuss on this topic that I am splitting it up over a few posts for ease of reading....

Nourishing More Than Just the Body

There are lots of components to this realm of food. We point to Southern cooking as Soul Food, rightfully so. Food traditions all are about nourishing the body and the soul. Food gifts are all about wishing you a prolonged life. This is the tradition of offering guests something to eat or drink, a hospitality.

 

Dietary laws and alternative diets are formed by either the rejection of,  restriction of, protection of, or the embracing some food source or holy day. For example, many religions reject pork as a food source, many speculate that this law has roots back before safe cooking and storage of pork was possible. Outlawing the consumption of pork could easily had been as a protective measure to prevent illness among their tribes. 

Food, or more accurately, culinary is the art of food, the place where beauty meets nutrition. This special place touches so much of your life, from business to social, from medicine and health, from marking special events with color, life, beauty, warmth, and love, from the everyday need of fuel to the communal activities of everyone's life.

Every time we gather together we take a communion, small or large, ritualistic or not, that binds us all as one union. The history of food dates all the way back to the earliest of mankind. With out the changes from hunter-gather to agriculture, there would still be no society, no government, no libraries, and no localized written knowledge base. It wasn't until we began to farm for our food and work with animal care for livestock did we stay centralized and formed villages, towns, and cities. A vast amount of time was spent following and finding food stuffs before we learned to farm. Food has always been at the heart of our culture and cultures around the globe. 

All food is soul food essentially. We share and begin to understand aspects of other's daily lives by way of their food. The popular dishes of any country or city, tells the dinner a lot about the people who created it. What types of food are available in that region? If there is a lot of cows versus a lot of lamb can tell you is there are grasslands or rocky hills. How is the climate, hot or cold? Cold climates do not have any tropical fruits and hot peppers. Is there good farming land? If a region has abundance of vegetables types available then chances are that farming is important and available. Do their dishes take a long time to cook or a short time? Asian cultures learned to cook foods quickly because there are not a lot of trees like we have in America so things needed to be done with as little fire as possible.

All good food has one essential ingredient, shared by all sources, and implied by the givers, love. You do not feed an enemy with the hard labors that were spent to grow and cultivate your sources of food. I know that our society is becoming more and more distant from our food sources. We have generations of kids that only know that chicken comes from the grocery store, for example. I spend a good deal of my time educating the young about the real facts of food sources so that they may make food selections based upon reality, informed decisions, instead of marketing brainwashing on the televisions and mass media.   

I'm Okay if You Say No.

Everyone that knows me understands that I don't like missing out on opportunities and I especially don't like leaving money on the table. I keep multiple streams of income going and I have always had a high octane can of energy.

It took me a while to get into the place where I am comfortable when potential clients pass me over and chose another vendor for their events. I admit that I once would be sad when friends, relatives, and associates would have an event and I wasn't even asked if I would like to be their supplier for the evening.

I am a dedicated person who works hard in my field and I strive for excellence in everything I do. I say this to what end? I no longer let being passed over upset me. There are tons of reasons that people may want a different vendor or service and those reasons may not actually have anything to do with me personally, my pricing, or other such reason.

I have had clients who wanted me to cut my pricing, given them the 'hook up', questioned why my prices are what they are, tried to guilt trip me into lowering my price, or just wasn't a good client to have at that time.  Just as clients have a choice of who they want to work with, I too have the same choices about what customers I want to work with or not.

Just recently, I did a tasting for a clients in short notice. The party planner that booked me is one in which I have worked with for several years, and she was confident that this event would be one that the client would have loved to have my service. Alas, this was not the case and I suspected so once I had met them at my door. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The party planner emailed me with a list of concerns that the client expressed to her after our meeting. I simply responded that I didn't wish to prove or disprove the issues expressed in the email because I felt that it would be a waste of my valuable time. They declined and that's okay.

Most of the 'issues' expressed were not fair, not understandable, and not relevant to the question of weather or not I was able to satisfy their needs for the event. The biggest issue, and the only one I will cite here, was that I have a pet and she was lose in the house. After having asked if they had any aversion to my cat and/or wanted her to be in her kennel, they said no. Therefore, how was this on their list of reasons to decline.

I provide excellence at every turn possible, and when I don't think that I can provide it, I have no issues expressing my concerns. Getting to this mental and professional state only came to me with my growing maturity. Beforehand, I often would kick myself about someone passing me over, or I would feel the tug and pull to give price concessions just to secure that I would win the order. Every time I  stuck my neck out for someone else's event, without a doubt, I regretted it. I once worked up a menu for a so-called friend's birthday and I didn't earn a dime for my efforts, only to have her make a list of complaints afterwards. She knew there was no where else, and nobody else, that would have done such things for that small amount of money.

Such is life, you live long enough, you will learn to value your work and time as a precious commodity worthy of honorarium. Cash talks and b.s. walks.

Gluten-Free Pain In the Gut

If you are not already aware, there is a lot of buzz over the term Gluten-Free. As with many culinary or food fads, most people that are jumping on this bandwagon, often times do not understand what they are actively participating.

Just for your information, gluten is a protein that develops when wheat flour gets wet. Gluten can also be developed in a few other instances, but the vast majority of items that contain gluten, contain wheat flour. Wheat-germ, barley, and other foods that are manufactured with wheat, or in places where flour is also present, can contain gluten. Those of us who are gluten-sensitive or gluten intolerant, the consumption of this protein can create a large allergic reaction that can be very unpleasant all the way up to life-threatening.

I have fibromyalgia. When we began attempting to test for the source of my medical problems, the first test that my PCP ran was a food and respiratory blood allergy panel. I have known since high school that I have respiratory allergies, about 12 of them, so Spring usually finds me taking lots of antihistamines. Last year, before the Spring weather arrived, I had two emergency room trips for unusual swelling of my hands, feet, and facial features. I woke one morning and looked in the mirror and I resembled someone who had been in a prize fight the night before.

My doctors changed my medicines for my hypertensive condition, hoping that it had caused my symptoms. Then another trip to the hospital was required, and we changed to a third medication. At that point my PCP, ordered the blood panel. I had previously been diagnosed with my respiratory allergies by way of a pin prick test sub-dermal test, which at the time was the most accurate test available, but at no time did anyone test me for food allergies.

The results came back with interesting results, moderate reactions to shrimp and sesame, but the big surprise was that I had a large reaction to gluten. It wasn't life threatening, but it was something that was causing great distressed my system. So the next step was to test me for Celiac disease, a complete intolerance to the consumption of gluten. I do not have that condition, which is a immune disease, my testing revealed that of the 18 known symptoms that make up a fibromyalgia diagnosis, I had a large number of them. Not consuming gluten helps to lessen the severity of some of my symptoms but keeping away from this food product isn't easy.

The American diet is largely made up of lots of wheat products, especially fast foods, so eating from the vast array of restaurants available can be tricky when you can't eat wheat. No fried items because most have a flour batter, no sandwiches, no burgers, some instant oatmeal contain wheat flour as a binder, no baked goods primarily, nothing on a bun, many breakfast cereals have gluten, lots of sauces and soups are thickened with flour, see the problem?

As a chef, I have always cooked the majority of the foods eaten in my house, but on those occasions when ordering out is considered, I often am out of options. Since the testing, I watch what I eat so I can be more comfortable, but even being careful isn't always enough. I ate some McDonald's fries with my daughter and had a negative reaction, I am sure it had nothing to do with the 19 ingredient formula they use to make the fries.

Fibromyalgia is hard to diagnosis and the chronic pain associated with the condition can often be misunderstood by doctors. I was, at several different points in my life, given diagnosis that only spoke to one symptom or another, for example, I was told that I have irritable bowl syndrome, which could not be treated in 1990's, but it was only a part of what was going on. Gynecological pain, knee pain, headaches, swelling hands and feet, sciatica, dizziness, memory issues, muscle aches, and a few more, all were treated as a separate issue that would come and go from time to time. I knew it was bigger that this day's issues or the next. I suspected that there had to be a connection to all that I experiencing.

Day by day, I have to deal with this and be mindful of everything I eat and drink. I have had dreams of good toast and jam, a smothered pork chop in gravy, or my favorite type of cookie that has no gluten free alternative. There is a sea change happening on our grocery store shelves and more and more items have options for us who suffer. That's great but even that has a down side. In order to make thing gluten-free, a substitution of the wheat flour for others such as a rice flour is required, naturally. These flours do not act in the same way that wheat flour does, and additives are included to give a natural stretch when bread is rising, for example. They also are not produced as readily as other types of flour, so the associated costs are much higher. The same loaf of sandwich bread that can range from $0.99 to $1.79, for example, can cost you up to 6 or 7 times the price of the original. This is not only a pain in the gut, medically, but also it can hit your pocket very hard. I am glad to find some substitutions that do a great job both in taste and availability, while some alternatives are expensive and horrible tasting. I'd rather not eat a sandwich, as much as I miss them, than to eat one on horrible bread that tastes like an old kitchen spounge.

If you too are a sufferer that has to avoid gluten, like me, and has found a great substitute for wheat flour, please let me, and other readers know, as I haven't found one my self yet.

Going Live

Just like with live television, broadcasting a live podcast can run into problems. Last week, and a couple other time as well, we planned a live broadcast on Blogtalkradio.com only to run into problems. As I have had the opportunity to mess around with my options, I had a plan B. Since it is a program with very little visuals, I quickly went to a taped conversation that I uploaded after the conclusion of the conversation.

There are a few ways that you can create content for your podcast if the server is too busy or something interrupts your scheduled show. I often tape my shows from Freeconferencecall.com. This service allows callers to chat and record the conversation easily. All participants call into a common phone number and the host can use its tools to make a mp3 of the meeting. Most laptops and PC's have options for recording voice recordings. Sometimes the feature may not have options to change the format of the recording, so please check. If you record a conversation in a format not recognized by your broadcast service, you may need a converter software to get the recording in a format the you can use.

I enjoy podcasting. The conversations heard on my show are very similar to conversations I have offline and in real life. The food news, food culture, chef conversations, and the culinary industry are apart of my everyday. And I hope my audience agrees....

We set the goal of one podcast a week, and I hope to always go live on Saturday afternoons, however if we run into issues, we got to tape and upload later. The other reason that may force us to go tape is the availability of our guest. I'd rather tape a podcast with a dynamic guest whenever is best for them than not to get the conversation with the guest.

I got one scheduled for today, so catch us if you can:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon/2016/04/24/episode-16-maurice-miles-wy-dolphin-and-foodie

Master chefs, Exec. Chef training, and other advanced training...

Long ago, when Jesus was a boy, there were only a few culinary educations that a student could attain without going overseas to Paris or London therefore I, like many others, took the routes that were available at the time. As I worked in the industry, longer and longer, I began to come across chefs who held titles that I had never heard of, Certified Executive Chef.  An organization called the American Culinary Foundation seemed to be at the heart of this accreditation.

ACF was founded by three chefs in New York to help promote culinary education, offer certifications and training, networking and the like. Here in Chicago, the ACF is getting more popular but as a hospitality industry worker for the last 20 plus years, it has only been within the last few years that I have noticed chefs using and working within this organization.

No matter where or when you receive your educational background that is focused in our industry, what you come away with is really determined by you as the student. I can take three kids to train and mentor, and after we are done, I will see three different skill levels within the students. Our industry is very skill based, and no matter who you are taught by, your skill level is truly your own. I say this, to many students, don't base your selection of schools based upon the price, famous chef instructors, or any other tangible matrix, but do so based upon your motivation and drive, and what you want to do with your career. What do I mean? It can get very expensive, well it has gotten in the last few years, seeking a culinary education. The popularity boom of chefs and the creation of the celebrity chef has opened many new schools who offer courses, certificates, and degrees in culinary.

No matter what is taught, and by who, the student's ability will grow with time and coaching.  If a student enrolls with no cooking experience,  they are somewhat behind than other students, but their raw ability can propel them to the top of the class. I entered into a culinary college with a very small population and without a huge reputation, 90% of what I do well, I learned from repetitive practice on-the-job.

The only advice I can give the aspiring chefs out there, study, practice, practice, practice. A school can teach technique and a foundation of skills. It is up to the chef to take off and sore. No two chefs have the skill or styles even after the same training. It takes time to realize what it is that makes you special and the only way to find it is to listen to customer and management critiques. I say this because if you are anything like me, most chefs only focus on the mistakes of a project, while other eyes see the glory. I am my own worse critic. I spend, literally, hours on a cake project and when I have stopped I can only see those things that could have been done better or those aspects that I would have liked to change, so often I am pleasantly surprised at the positive reactions of my clients. Go figure.

I am a huge supporter of higher educations. In my family, there was never any language of doubt about attending a college. It was always "when you go to college" not "if you go". I also know that not every person is suited to pursuing a PhD in philosophy. Trade skill are still needed and teaching programs are still required even with our nation's trending towards a intellectual model. Handcrafts will always be in demand.  

The best chef that I have worked for was one without any higher education. This titan of pastry had 40 plus years at the Palmer House. He began as a dishwasher and worked his way up to Exec. Pastry Chef. My chef was hardworking and hard on his staff, not in a mean fashion or abusive, he had one standard for us all, "Good work that is Palmer House good." We worked everything from butter, sugar, flour. We didn't use pre-made or mixes ever. The best days in that kitchen were days were we all worked in symphony and chef had nothing to complain about or correct. I learned a lot while there, including my passion for real scratch baking.

Chefs are broken before they are made, and the best instructors, will help students to build upon what they know as they teach them new tools in their toolboxes. Pursue your passion vigorously and wisely. Practice is the best teachers in this business and whenever you get to practice, especially with someone above your skill level, take it.

A chef has a lot of plates to spin, human resources issues, financial duties, order management, licencing, insurance, schedules, transportation, delivery, receiving, inventory management, vendors, networking, client requests, billing and invoicing, and all of this before the creation of sale items. We love what we do, no one would do this if they didn't, and we all take on much more work than can be done in a 8 hour workday. 

Fake Foods and Fraud

If you were a teenager in one of my culinary arts classes, you may well already be tired hearing my rants, for a lack of better wording, about corporate food offerings. I say often, when you are relying upon a corporation to feed you, you are already in trouble. A corporation, ultimately, has only one goal, to make profit. When your family farmed, their one and only goal, was to nourish people. We have traditions of offering guest something to eat or drink for the same reason. A gift of food implies that you care if the receiver lives a healthy long life.
 
I am willing to come and bare the bad news about these edible non-foods on our health and longevity. My teens have been known to say "Chef, you make me want to stop eating everything". In fact, that is not my goal. I want them to do a couple of things, make intelligent choices about what they eat, I want them to question how and what they eat, and hopefully they will make nutrition decisions based on facts and not on marketing.

These kids have a steady diet of Kruncy Kurls, Hot Pockets, Hot n Flaming Everything, Pop Tarts, McDonald, Wendy's , and Burger King. There are more greasy spoon restaurants in their neighborhood than grocery stores. They never read a nutrition label or even question what they are eating. Is this butter or margarine? Is these long long named ingredients chemicals or food? Just because it can be eaten, should it be eaten? What is natural and what is not?

To this, I bring up a legal case currently in the headlines. A cheese company is under indictment for selling wood shavings as parmesan cheese.  This fraud was perpetrated over many years by a particular company. Naturally, this brings up many questions. Who knew about this? Why didn't anyone report it? How did the consumers not know what they were eating? And I wanted to know how the legal suit is progressing. The totality is that one individual is charged with a misdemeanor crime under one count of crime. This is not something I can understand fully. Why is this a misdemeanor and not a felony? What is there only one name on the indictment? And why hasn't the company been charged with each and every count of sales that were contaminated and sold to consumers?

The other article in recent news are the results of a study that found industrial chemicals in the bodies of fast food consumers. All the preservative and chemical additives are taking a toll on our health and, I believe, is costing us financially by causing disease and needing additional medical expense. Last year was the first time on record that American's spent more money in restaurants than at grocery stores. We are trading nutrition for convenience and suffering a high cost. If you can't read everything on the label, why are you eating it?



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-16/the-parmesan-cheese-you-sprinkle-on-your-penne-could-be-wood

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-13/fast-food-eaters-have-more-industrial-chemicals-in-their-bodies

Quitting your boss

You may already know that 75% of workers who quit their jobs, voluntarily, said they decided to do so because of having a bad boss. Unfortunately, many of us are familiar with this bad trend. In food service, this still applies, as many of us don't walk in to the industry as seasoned chefs, food and beverage directors, management, and the like, a lot of us working in my industry have studied in other professions, worked unrelated positions, and came to us with some knowledge of order or management, but not of the style needed for my industry. We are all works-in-progress, but the learning curve is a lot steeper for those who have not been trained to our industry verses the ones that have had training.

No matter the industry, or company, you can find yourself working for a bad boss. I never wanted to be one of the bad bosses who, either feel that the title means that you can push your weight around, bugging everyone and ruling with an iron fist, or a boss who knew nothing about the work or workers they were in charge of managing. I have always wanted to own a company and therefore I took opportunities to learn different positions instead of just working as a chef in the back of the house.

I have worked for people in lots of different situations and not all of them were good or made any sense. I have been required to answer manager's requests from people who had very little knowledge of what I do or how long things take. This is critical, that you as a boss, or as a employee under a boss, work with a knowledge base as requests can be irrational or impossible to create. If you ask me for more cinnamon rolls be baked for the sales table, you need to know that it can not be done in less than an hour, for example.

The worst bosses that you can encounter are those who are promoted or became owners without understanding who and what management is all about. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and knowing which are yours will create the best environment possible. Too often people who are good cooks think that they can spend some money and open a food outlet and be successful. Food business is, without a doubt, a business first and foremost, but then you add food production, receiving, P&L, ROI, labor costs, personnel, shrinkage, edible portions versus actual portions, food safety, sanitation, injuries, liability, talent recruitment, menu and recipe development, marketing, cost controls, alcohol licenses, storage, payroll, and insurances. Many business do not have nearly as many perishable products nor the amount of personnel needed to run a successful operation in food.

I once met a bakery owner that left the confines of being a pastry chef in order to step into the ownership role. She is a horrible boss because she isn't good with customers or management of staff. The company did, of course, need a front of the house manager but she was not a good person to do this. I suspect that she has control issues and doesn't want a manager, someone that she could have hired with a good track record and a mind for innovation, but instead stopped doing the thing that she was excellent at in order to exhort control of the whole company. Too many people make this type of mistake when forming their businesses. She took her best cake designer, herself, out of the kitchen and made herself the management face without expertise in the customer service and/or management areas. In other words, if she was working for another organization as an employee, it is my opinion that, she would never have been promoted up the ladder to a management position due to her lack of expertise and poor disposition, but since she is the owner, few people can tell her what she should do to run her business efficiently.

I wish not to make mistakes like that, mainly because I fully understand what it feels like to be in that position, attempting to work underneath a bad boss. I know quite a bit about both the back of the house and front of the house. If I get blessed to own my own outlet, I will make the hard decisions needed to run the business smoothly instead of the choice to make myself some type of local celebrity. The front of the house and back of the house must depend upon each other for proper functioning but the work done between the two is vastly different skill types.

No matter the industry or line of work, a good boss is vital. What a lot of people do not understand about leadership is that it is not about being a bully, being in total control of operations, or not having anyone to answer to about your decisions, in fact a good leader must be cool and level headed knowing that the leader has more 'bosses' than they did as just a worker. A leader must respond to the demands of upper management, customers, AND the employees. A bad boss is one who doesn't take the needs of employees into consideration and feels autonomous to make unilateral decisions that effect everyone one involved without any giving anyone needs into account.

Check your ego at the door, and get to work. The culinary world isn't at all easy to be successful at what we do and no amount of kissing up will keep you employed when your work doesn't live up to expectations.  

Argh.... what a weekend!

I make no excuses as to why I have slipped off of my daily post routine and I will get back on schedule very soon. Writing this regularly is not a habit of mine, I have tried time and again, but never really succeeded.

My fibromyalgia and my work schedule nearly put me back in the emergency room. It seems that when I attempt to feel better AND get some work done, like I once could, I end up in a flair up. In my case, the piece of me that is most effected is my digestion system. I avoid gluten, which helps a lot, and I try to always have a snack handy when I am away from home, but not all plans work to my good.

I am discovering what is referred as "fribro fog" where the memory is effected either by the condition or by the medications taken to treat the condition, which includes opiates. I made a mistake that I never ever do, I forgot to write down a client's order. Luckily, everything worked out but it isn't like me to handle things this way.

I, once again, am experiencing sleepless nights battling my aches and pains. Having gaps in memory isn't good at all. It's hard to keep your word, when you can't remember what was discussed.

In the realm of my teaching career, last week went very well. We had a successful site visitation, the high school kids did very well on their Cajun meal of blackened catfish, dirty rice, king cake and banana foster.

There was no podcast scheduled for this weekend and despite wanting to put one together, I did not push for someone to interview. I though about just posting solo but resting seems to be the order of today. Strength, courage, and wisdom. New levels to be yet achieved.

Robotic innovations

Lots of robots have been, and will continue to be developed, for the purpose of making cakes, icing them, and some simple decorations. You have probably bought one of these cakes and taken it home from a local grocer. While there isn't anything wrong with these types of products, on the whole, they are not made with any human hands or artistry,

I was once a bakery department manager for a large local grocer, and my experience working there gave me fresh eyes for the manufacturing of these take-n-go cakes. These products are mass produced with a lot of preservatives and cheap ingredients. When I was working in the bakery department, we used frozen cakes from a factory and icings that came in a bucket. While these products can be called 'cake' by definition, they are very different that any cake made at any bakery any place else. In fact, I will claim that the box of cake mix is down the baking aisle is better.

The icing is called buttercream but has no butter involved, just butter flavoring, another chemical. This icing has 1 lb of fat to every 7 lbs of powdered sugar, real buttercream has a ratio of 2 lb of fat for every 4 lbs of sugar. The commercial icing is basicly wet sugar. The difference in taste and mouth feel is very large and often times it has customers saying that they don't like buttercream. I have often done tastings prior to ordering my cakes and even those who make the claim about their dislike to buttercream are often very surprised when they taste mine.

Another icing used at many retail bakeries are called whip cream but it is usually a product called "bettercream". This product is very much like cool whip from the frozen aisle. This, just like the last item, this product has none of the ingredients they are replacing, no cream involved. Both "bettercream" and Cool Whip are non-dairy products made from chemicals and preservatives.

The frozen cake layers bought from factories are using as many preservatives and chemicals they can shove into the mix as they can in order to prolong shelf life and make the highest profit possible. If I am not mistaken, the sell-by date is about a year long frozen, and during my time in grocery stores, I have never seen any of these cakes 'go bad' unless they were damaged or the freezer was broken.

Automation and innovation is inventing new ways to work and turn profits. The problem with this, in my realm of cakes, comes in with a lack of love, creativity, artistry, customization, and a reliance upon chemicals instead of real food.

Real foods are essential for the proper operation of the body, even if most people don't want to account for the calories that pastry supplies. Dessert isn't a bad word when speaking of nutrition, it is however, bad when you forgo eating them in moderation. A good meal should be highlighted by a perfect sweet finish, be it cake, custard, or fresh fruit.

Manufactured food, preserve laden, chemical combinations that are readily available in stores is not the way to eat.  Our bodies, oftentimes, don't even recognize them as food. Our digestion is taking hits all day. We are stuffing all sorts of chemicals into our daily intake without any sign of ceasing. Live long enough and you too will see the news reports that explain why the list of ingredients, that we sold to you as food, is banned due to the risk of another disease or aliment. Big pharma and food additive companies produce formulas and use mass media and sales staff to push the new hot product only to be sued years later by consumers due to the harm it cause.

I'm not against all shortcuts found in the neighborhood grocery store, but I am not in favor of reliance upon the corporate overlords for ingestion of foods. The goal of any corporation is, first and foremost, profit. The thinking at a corporation is if it won't cause harm and be profitable then it is okay to sell. The goal of doctors, nutritionist, and chefs must be a positive viewpoint about the value of the item, what the consumer will gain from eating this item. I want to know how important is this to consume. Price shouldn't be the only measurement used to judge a food.  The question shouldn't be why is this food expensive, but it should be why is this other item so cheap?

Chefs need to be health conscious and have a environmental outlook for their craft.  Industrialized foods were an effective tool for preserving and transporting food during WWII, but once the war ended the machines didn't stop running.  The love and care taken by mothers and grandmothers to produce and preserve jellies and jams, for example, was replaced by the unstoppable soulless steel.

Of course, it is more expensive to order a handcrafted item compared to factory made. Yes, it can be created by machines in the shortest times possible but the losses that are created can't be worth the effort.

Squeaky Wheels

There is a saying that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. In the kitchen, as well as other aspects of life, the squeakiest is typically the messiest. I learned long ago that it is better to just get it done, or corrected, than running in and out of the office complaining. Often times, those who are always complaining, are actually trying to use a tactic of painting the others as such a bad worker or person, in an attempt to sack the other's position. Often times this can work to the complainer's favor but usually just once. Eventually, the complainer's agenda can easily be seen through like plastic wrap, and instead of a devaluation of the other's position, the complaining party can find themselves in the hot seat. A pattern develops that changes the viewpoint of management.

The last thing any chef wants to spend their time on is interpersonal issues within the staff. There is so much more going on that can stress the kitchen, late deliveries, mistakes needing fix, equipment failure, heat waves or winter storms, theft, accidents, a whole list of things that need addressing or controlled. While the list of complaints may have validity, picking your battles is the best thing to do. If the mistake is small, it maybe best to just make correction than complaint.

The squeaky wheel may need replacement instead of support. I have been a part of a crew, and middle management, and I have often been told that I don't brother my up-line or upper management unless it is something that I can't correct on my own. I have always taken my positions seriously and when the issues are mine, or under my control, I take care of the issue. The way I figure it, I am being paid to control this portion of the company and bugging my boss with the trivial, like a tattle tail sibling, is counter productive. Anyone can miss something or run out of time to get something done, etc. Instead of wasting time having a meeting or complaining in the office, I'd much rather help out or make corrections.

A manager that cannot control their staff is often viewed as ineffectual. Complaining about the smallest of things, or the easily fixed, only serve to make the noisiest of us look bad. Problems are problems, the chef life is all about solving problems for our customers and each other. If I make a mistake, just tell me, and I will make changes to eliminate the problem from reoccurring. There is never a perfect situation for everyone involved, but the customer should never be impacted by the issues that arise as they have paid us chefs to handle whatever it takes to get the job done. The last thing that a customer should ever ask themselves is "what did I pay them for?".

Chefs don't always get along, and some, for whatever reason, try and make the day harder for other workers in an attempt to get rid of them. This is not a good look to have. Being messy over this or that is just petty. I have worked with people that I wanted to run them over with my car, but I did my work and didn't complain until it was appropriate. Pick your battles wisely. Be the one that helps out the rest of the crew, instead of the one that is always snitching. Stay in your lane and watch the road ahead instead of focusing on someone else's journey before you run into a ditch.

Conflict in the workplace

No matter the industry or setting, conflict of opinion, hostility, jealousy, and any other reason, can rise up and slow down progress. There is always a lot of effort to satisfy customers demands so often their really isn't time or energy left to settle interpersonal conflicts between employees. 

When I was a newbie in the industry, and barely able to drink, I experienced some prejudice at the workplace probably because some of the adults I was working with, and supervising, didn't take me serious, and some thought that I was just there to be cute.... nope. Then, of course, the minority girl issues, the chef life is dominated by white males, and when you are not reflective of the group, you can see or feel them test you or minimize you. There is a time frame in which chefs attempt to find out what you are made of, if you can take a joke, keep up with them on the bench, or be apart of the team both in and out of the kitchen. 

Once you have been tried and proven worthy/capable, often times you are knee deep with your crew bailing each other out until the race is won, only to be back at it again tomorrow. Even the best of brigades can have spurs up against each other from time to time. Bold personalities and workloads can force chefs to bit at each other about the little things and the bigger things. Most of the time individual production levels can bushel features because one or more on the team feel as if they are making up for someone's lack of accurate and usable work.

When tempers flare up in the kitchen, and they do, the big chef ego can get in the way of productive conversations about the problem. Small things become skyscrapers and tempers can fly very quickly. What shouldn't ever happen is that chefs are allowed to make their issue personal. When there are tactical issues, production issues, work overloads, painting a fellow chef as a villain only makes corrections harder, sometimes near impossible. No one is a saint, or even perfect, and serving customers and the community isn't a easy thing to do in the best of circumstances.

Chefs are not one dimensional cartoon cutouts who only exist in the kitchen, they have families, love affairs, some within the kitchen, economical demands, health issues, bills, and in the worst cases, chemical dependencies and alcohol problems. It is a harder life than working at a office, physically, but mentally its no punk either. We chefs are problem solvers drawn towards the chaos, sounds, smells, and noise of a commercial kitchen. We live for the oohs and ahhs of our clients, we get to be apart of the best moments of other's lives. The special night out, the anniversary dinner, the communion lunch or Sunday lunch after church is when we are on-duty and striving to make a nice day into a great one. 

Chefs often sweat, bleed, and get burned to please the customer. We block out of our minds lots of things like tired, hungry, hurting, and sleepy, chasing our high of choice, happy customers. In my new phase of my career, chef instructor, I consider it a victory when I show the kids a new vegetable that they like or get them to change even the smallest amount of their diet for the better. I teach in two neighborhoods that have a lot of challenges, but while I am their, I am working with them, creating a safe place, new exciting food, nutrition knowledge, and a hot meal. My students even earn a small stipend. It has never been easy but rewarding.

I have had to settle their drama, help their understanding, and redirect them to positive outlets. I can not afford to allow dissent in my class as it will deteriorate quickly, destroy our nurturing environment, and impede learning. The conflicts in my classroom are just the same as in the workplace, they often arise when egos get bruised.  Most of all conflicts, at the heart, are about folks' feelings, they don't feel respected, appreciated, or feel they are being taken advantage of them by others. The work is the work. It never goes away and you don't want it to go because then your paycheck goes away too. 

I have worked next to some that I literally thought about running them down with my car, but I still did my job. I love my job but I have not loved everyone I did it with nor every circumstances that I have had to my job. You can plan your butt off in the kitchen and dinning areas but it means nothing once the doors are open and the guest come in and get seated. I have had to deal with persons without much love for their fellow people, I have been spoken to totally disrespectfully, I have with the sweetest of persons, I have dealt with kids who were out of control, kitchen disasters, missing workers, injuries, the need to call the police to have people removed, I even had a wedding banquet happen that made to seating chart totally worthless and the guest count become so large that we had more people than glasses for drinking. 

Anything can happen and it usually does. The last thing anyone needs getting in the way of successful event is a coworker making it harder to accomplish than the customers did that day. A good leader can straighten things out so that no one gets hurt, most people just need to be heard, but there can be only a few environments more dangerous than a kitchen to have a conflict boil over. 

Culinary and Chemistry

As I sit in the school library, it becomes painfully obvious that cooking and chemistry is one and the same.  Cooking is more applied science than others courses of study, add in a bit of alchemy and you are square in the middle of chef life.

 

The same skills of formulations, testing, observation, and trail and error, ever present in the kitchens all over the universe.  Even in cases where the chef or cook is cooking from a recipe, all of the steps apply, as good cooks never rely on an untested source when feeding their audience.  Some of us can review a written recipe and spot of it is accurate or not. Others must try it to discover the faults or the accuracy. In either case, mistakes can teach you more than your triumphs in the kitchen.   

The ability to test, modify, mix and remix, ingredients and turn the simple into the worthiest of dishes, let alone into art, is what chefs strive to achieve. Science and art culminate into a type of jazz, painting, sculpture, and architecture. The best of us climb to towering heights and can earn a type of immortality that gives lasting effects on the culinary world. Julia Child will always be with us through her teachings, books, and television broadcasts. The ladders she built will be scaled for generations to come.

We whisk up acids and bases, apply heat or cold, emulsify, extract, concentrate, dilute, expand, divide, and blend, all to achieve the awe inspiring creations. We live for the oohs and awwws that are created by our work. We lose sleep, forgo stopping to tend to our own needs, work odd hours, long hours, and miss out on the simple things, like events we are invited to attend, and even daylight. We arrive in the dark hours of the night and leave again after the sun has gone for the day. We talk more with our co-workers then our families and friends, some times. We can share our story with our loved ones but often they can't really understand who and what we have endured during our work. 

Sometimes I have encountered people who either don't understand what it is we do, or they act as if our work isn't important or not a profession like their's. The amounts of learning and training needed to work at my level can be greater than many other profession and less than others. It is often hard to adequately describe what we do, and how we do it, as many who cook think that they can do my job, or that it can't be that hard, or couldn't possibly take the amount of  hours that it really does. Sometimes my commitment to my work can require me to miss some events in my own children's life for the sake of other celebrations or needs. I don't like that aspect but my food magic show is what puts a roof over their heads.

Mixing magic with nutrition, art with taste, building constructs and designs for the eye, enticements for the nose, and specialties of taste can be very demanding. I love my work and I love teaching kids to think about and improve their options within the kitchen, that can improve their lives and the lives of others around them. 

Culinary and Mathematics

In my travels, I have learned a lot of different things. One of the hurdles that my students struggle with is mathematics in the kitchen. There are others equally difficult and important that I will confront later.

Kitchen math is relatively simple but it is painfully obvious that there are deficits when training young folks. It's the fractions that trip them up. It's frustrating to them and to me that they are in high school and stumble over this stuff. My 6th - 8th grade group are better at it than my older kids and I believe that the quality of their education is a bit better.

Multiplying and dividing fractions, and dealing with 3 tsp equal 1 Tbsp, the rules of non-metric calculations are able to confuse the best of us. I hit them consistently with kitchen math, both on paper and in practical usage.  I am disappointed that the movement to change to the metric system has been extremely slow. Metric system is much simpler to calculate as the entire system is base 10.

With metric system calculations, a quick glance is typically all you need to do in order to scale a recipe, however, America has been very resistant to a change over. Many of our citizens that use the metric system know how to use it because of our drug culture. Believe it or not, grams and kilos are predominate measurement in drug trafficking but when cooking you have to deal with 1/3, 2/3, 128 oz equal 1 gallon, and 16 oz or 2 cups equal 1 pint.


I have been an advocate for conversion to the metric system since high school chemistry class, a thousand years ago, because of its simplicity. Unfortunately, we have not converted and all of cookbooks use the old system so we cannot get accustom to use of metric. We buy 2 liters of soda pop but not 100 grams of sugar, for example.

Our system is the one we inherited from the British Empire where 1 foot was the measurement based upon the length of the King's foot. Americans do not use the weight measurement of stones but rather pounds. Horses are still measured in hands tall and we do still use peck, bushels, yards, and acres. All are old British royal family measurements. I could understand the use of this system when there wasn't an alternative, but metric is far superior and simplistic, so why not adopt the better system?

Environmental Chef

Every body, and every chef, relies upon quality ingredients to make a meal go from hum drum to zing pop. Without honorable farming practices, from soup to nuts, the chef cannot do what we do best.

Organic, non GMO, pasteurized, and fortified, all influence what our plates contain. Should chefs have a voice in the movement away from Monsanto tainted food, processed and persevered, items with more chemicals than food? Yes. 2015 was the first year on record that Americans spent more money on restaurants then at the grocery store. One can extrapolate that chefs are having a greater and grater impact on the health of the American citizen. Will it be left up to the corporations or to the craftsmanship of skilled chefs?

How we grow and treat food, or manufacture it, should be very important to everyone, but especially to us chefs. Life happens, change is the only constant, but preservation of the food sources we rely upon, not only for our trade, but for our very lives, must be a concern.

There is a farm to table movement in the culinary scene. I am not directly apart of that movement per se, as pastry doesn't rely as heavily upon farmed items as does the savory chef. However, as a fibromyaliga patient, I am rewriting my common eating practice to be gluten-free because the ingestion of gluten reeks havoc on my system.

Gardening, farm to table, diets, vegetarian and vegan, no matter your eating style how your food is treated before you purchase it is a huge consideration to be mindful of when purchasing. Environmentalist point to climate changes that are signaling some drastic shifts to our planetary harvest of edible products. We need to listen and learn before it is too late. We must take some responsibility for feeding ourselves. We have hired corporations to provide our nutritional needs by way of prepacked and process foods. We are confusing good for you and good tasting, they are not mutually exclusive. Many things that are good for us nutrition-wise can be very good tasting as well, however, if you are accustom to eating process food almost exclusively then your have trained your tasting ability to like those types of things, and therefore, being unaccustomed to the flavors of this items.
macrobiotics

Lots of kids in this new generation are trained to eat so many processed food items, microwave entrees, microwave popcorn, chips, dips, salsa, and super sticky sweet pastries that are just spun sugars. Sugar is a very addictive item with levels of dependencies very similar to heroine addiction. Frequently this diet is tied to the income of the parents. The lower the annual income of the household has a direct connection to the types of foods consumed. Often the families chose food stuffs with the primary focus on getting the cheapest and the most abundant items. While this type of consideration can be understood, it is the worst reaction or action that the shopper can do. I once was listening to a radio show and the host hit the nail on the head. He stated many things about budgeting, the most import of them was 'It is most important to understand when to spend and where to save. You should save on items that depreciate over time, like a car or clothing, but you should never buy food totally based on saving money. You should spend on food with the mindset of health benefit. The quality food stuffs you buy today will help to prevent you from being sick tomorrow and spending a high percentage of your money on medical bills.' I totally agree.

The environmental impacts of toxic waste, oil spills, water contamination, polluted air, are easy to understand in terms of their effects upon food resources. The global warming issues of storm changes, floods, drought, shifts in tides, changes in streams and rivers, will devastate our farming lands and methods. These issues are looming on the horizon but the current threats to our food supply are in the methodology of how we currently grow our food. The debates are all over the place, and the two loudest sides of the discussion are the organic food movement against the Goliath chemical companies, like Monsanto, who produce pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics for livestock. Add to that the factory farming practices that have changed how our dairy, eggs, and meat production/slaughter. The corporations like Monsanto, have always contended that the use of their products has increased yields and improved quality, and they maybe right, however, anyone that has ever had a garden of their own can tell you, the taste, variety, quality, of their harvest far exceeds anything offered in the grocery store.

Many chefs have established relationships with local farmers and livestock growers. This way the chef has the opportunity to understand, share, and ask for items that they would love to buy. Farm to table is more than a catchphrase, it is becoming a movement. Factory farming kills any uniqueness in preference of the most shelf stable and consistent items. We have breed, cross pollinated, and forced ripened foods to the point that they have the highest profit margins and ability to transport these items long distances. I find it to be much like corporate cooking. The corporate chef is often forced to produce the highest amount of items as quickly and consistently as possible which erodes the creative artistic aspects of the chef. Cookie cutter concepts in grocery stores, kitchens, and manufacturing, stomp out the uniqueness that happens when a chef is able to use their imagination. Can a chef create and repeat highly crafted items? Of course, we can, but when the total issue is all about designing in the most cost effective methods, the major ways to achieve this is with lesser quality items, machines, and factory items instead of handmade items. Kill the chef?

Revolutions have been fought over food issues over and over again. "Let them eat cake!" When the body of citizens examine their nutrition substandard, it becomes a big part of how they view their poverty or wealth. Can you afford to eat or feed your family? Can you afford to have quality foods on your table? Are you needlessly suffering from malnutrition and diseases? And what are you able to about it?