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

Misery is Contagious

Everyone has known, and possibly loved, a miserable s.o.b. The tragedy of this is that they seldom do anything to change their outlook and prospects. The sorry sacks get addicted to complaining and having something to complain about, so their efforts are more in line with perpetuating the problems instead of fixing the issue.  They are the ones that will double down on their last bets knowing that they need to walk away before they lose the farm.Working, living, and being friends with these nabobs of negativity can really drain others around them. I had a relative who probably in this category, but I was rather young when they passed through the veil so my memory was small in comparison to the others around.

I do remember having some aversion to interacting with them because it was frustrating. I was told very divisive things and some very adult things that a child of that age should not have been told. I don't remember them having visitors or ever having pleasant conversation with anybody.

Later, as I aged, I meet others cut from this cloth and it reinforced my aversion to these attitudes. What you maybe wondering how my outlook on life is designed. I consider myself a realist, and hopefully anyone who writes about me see that to be true. I am not a Debbie Downer but I do not think that anything is going to be a 100% positive plan or experience. Having this outlook never leaves me total disappointed and when things actually work out as planned, I get left pleasantly surprised.

So, once again, I am headed to teach my class and interaction with this low functioning person, trying to not let them taint my performance.  Utilizing the same space with this individual is fought with pitfalls and sand traps. I had a good day yesterday and really want to turn it into a streak but I am not very hopeful.

These types of personality types are often most upset when you are not in the same sinking boat as they are. In other words, they want you to be just like them and when you don't act like they act, you piss them off the most, just by being true about who you are genuinely. How dare you not be upset as they are upset! Who are you to take a different outlook or hold on to your own beliefs?

Misery is contagious.  Better said, misery is forced onto others more often than happiness because a lot of the miserable go out of their way to get you on board with them so that you are just as bad off, if not worse. I am not saint but this isn't a part of my path. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even if they are wrong. I will defend your right to your opinion, no matter what, but I will also defend my right to my position. The world is not black and white for me, nor is it adversarial at every turn. 

Peace be granted unto you, especially you miserable s.o.b.'s.

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. 

Politics

I don't typically share on social media my political stance as it isn't a political blog, it's a food blog. On top of that, I have met those who will hold your beliefs against you when doing business, as if it is a legitimate reason to select a vendor or not. Best price, best customer service, best products, ah.... but what was it that you said about the candidates in this year's election?

Finding out that Trump will be at UIC soon and Sanders will be at Argo High School has me feeling spurred to action.  My eldest child is a student at UIC and my middle child goes to Agro like my eldest did before her.

I'm a liberal and if this is problematic for you, then don't finish reading this post. I'll understand. I wish that my career, my business, my educational efforts, and my personal life were not impacted by politics, but food is highly political. I define myself as a liberal, not a democrat or a republican. I am not influenced easily by conspiracies, political propaganda, or other people's opinions. I have learned from many sources in all phases in my life and it is from those experiences and knowledge base that I come to my own conclusions.  

Food strikes at the core of what it is to be human. It touches every one every day. We feed each other and transmit culture and emotions through each bite. Food cooked with love does more for the heart of man than the nutritional input could ever offer. Don't think food is political?  Try living without access to quality food outlets for a month or live without adequate food intake for just a few days, you will have fresh eyes for the issues.

Political promises of a chicken in every pot, legislation imposed on small business, school lunch programs, proposed Chicago Teacher Union strike, and slashed funding for culinary education, culinary colleges closing, food deserts, charitable food assistance program, framer's markets, and even state supplemental food programs such as WIC and Link, are all political.

Some conservatives speak of reductions to vital programs that feed our most vulnerable members of our society and advocate for a vision of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. But what if your deficiencies are the equivalent to not having feet to put boots on? The poor will always be with us, needs will always be present, but suffering malnutrition should not be so wide spread in a 1st world country.

My career as a chef has lead me to feed some well known political figures and for the most part it was an honor to do so, even when I didn't agree with their platform. Every plate filled and every month feed strengthens our society as a whole. A hungry man is a dangerous thing. That hunger will spur him to just about anything to cease the call for calories. 

I wish I could live in a world unaffected by politics, legislation that both aid one group of people while harming another, where profit isn't the sole function of a company or group of individuals. A world without the greed and adversarial warfare. I would like a Zen world where everyone only uses what they need and doesn't bother to take from the most vulnerable ones. A world where there is no issues of lack, ill educated, no sympathy for fellow man, or underpaid and overworked.

As I type this, I can see this topic is going to have to be revisited later on. There's my final thought on politics for the day. The issue of minimum wage. Too many people, that I have encountered, do not understand the legislation of a minimum wage law, why it was enacted, and why many are now advocating that the minimum needs to be raised.

The minimum wage laws were conceived and enacted to combat the injustice of  having a inadequately paid populous. When your working staff is paid too cheaply, the owners of the company earn a much larger portion of the profits than the workers. The resulting expenses of a poorly paid population effect the whole society as medical treatment can't be afforded by the individuals but then must be paid out of taxes raised by the state, the number of malnourished people increases which again effects the need for medical treatment, the children of the underpaid lots of times end up increasing the burdens of the state as the parents cannot afford the basic needs of the families to which they belong, birth control to prevent families from having too many children becomes out of reach, the education of the children of poorer families must rely upon the state to provide those kids an education, and the total health, education, and welfare of the state is greatly reduced. The legislation was written with this in mind, a family of 3 or 4 should be paid enough to be able to supply for the needs of its members; food, clothing, shelter, and education. Without this as a standard, you will increase the homeless population as they will not be paid adequately enough to be able to pay rent, you will have children unable to learn and grow adequately do to a lack of food, and you can eventually find that your society will be forced to commit crimes in order to supplement their needs. Under educated students will finish school without all the tools they need to have a proper sustainable income as adults.

Many people have expressed their negative emotions about raising the minimum wage with statements like "No one should earn that much working at the burger joint down the street, are you crazy?" "How will small business be able to hire employees at that rate of pay?" This issue isn't about the greed of the workers, to me, it is more reflective of the greed of the employers, big or small. If I can't afford to get back and forth to work, then I can't come in an toil for the betterment of your company. If I can't feed myself and my children then I will not be able to spent all my time an effort working for you because I will need to work two jobs to make ends meet. If a worker is under the stress of everyday living to an unreasonable amount, then they will not be a good worker, but rather more like an indentured servant relying upon their betters benevolence.

The trope that companies cannot afford to pay American workers at a minimum wage law of $15 an hour for 40 hours of work, or more a week, doesn't hold up as truth when you look outside of our boarders. Many well known companies have a world wide audience and a international workforce. Take a look at a company like McDonald's. They have presence in many companies and I would have been inclined to believe them when the rebuff proposed changes to the wage law if I had not looked up the rate of pay for this company in other nations and discovered that they are paying this wage, and much more, to their workers overseas. So you can see clearly that this is just propaganda at best. 

Protection of both the company and the workforce is absolutely needed as the company provides work but it is the worker that makes the company successful. When industries become unregulated in lots of different ways, then it isn't long before you start seeing natural disasters, workplace accidents, unfair worker pay issues, environmental violations that put people and wildlife in jeopardy. In my personal experiences, unions are not always successful and sometimes there is corruption within the union officials, however, without unions there would have been a much darker world that would have immersed.

Keep being informed about politics, as it only takes the righteous people to ignore corruption, and do nothing, for evil deeds to arise and flourish.

Oh goody goody...

This weekend Chicago hosts one of my favorite conventions, the International Home and Housewares Show at McCormick Place! This convention is the place to be to view all the new innovations in kitchen wares, laundry aids, pots, pans, measuring tools, shopping carts, storage solutions, packaging, cooking demonstrations, baking ideas, decorating tools, gardening new products, and just about anything that you would need to use around the house.

This annual show runs from 3/5/16 to 3/8/16 it hosts over 2,000 exhibitors with everything from Contact Paper to kitchen knives and cutting boards. I will be broadcasting from the show floor on Saturday and Sunday afternoon on our podcast: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon so tune in and hear from our C-CAP team members and students. If you can, come on down and meet us in person. Here's the ticket information: https://www.housewares.org/show/register-plan.

This event helps to support our educational culinary program, Careers through Culinary Arts Program, http://www.ccapinc.org/, we will be working the booth, along with their fabulous team at Harold Import Company, http://www.hickitchen.com/. The support that comes from Harold Import Company make our teaching efforts possible so we invite some of our students to work the show and help to feed the clients that stop-by the booth.

Also, there will be a fundraiser event on 3/6/16 where our students from several of the CPS high school's culinary programs will be serving up their unique food fare for our guests. https://www.ccapinc.org/locations/chicagobenefit2016/.

These efforts help to endow our students with the skills and knowledge that will take them into their professional chef careers. C-CAP conducts an annual student cooking competition and awards the winners with scholarship money to attend culinary school.

I can't wait to share all of this from the floor of McCormick Place. Hopefully, I won't have any signal issues and will be able to go live on the air, if not, I will tape and broadcast a bit later on. It's going to be a long week but the excitement of all that is shinny, new, and inciting to chef's everywhere will be at my fingertips to explore.

Oh boy!

Where are the Minority Chefs?

I have worked as a chef in Chicago for over 20 years and I have always worked with Hispanic, Black and Caucasian chefs, more Hispanic than Caucasian, and always mostly men. There is no shortage of Hispanics working in kitchens all over the city, cooking a wide range of food stuffs including Sushi.

Food television is not as full with minority chefs as the kitchens happen to be, there is a sprinkling of Black chefs, and not much more in way for Hispanic. Why is this?  We are doing the heavy lifting and earning the skills to make things pop, fry, and sizzle, so I know having the skill isn't the problem. Yet in still, the Italian chef, the White Southern chef, the French chef, are all the standard image of what a chef is, and most of the time they are male as well.

While we may not be able to lift as much weight as the fellow, we do hold up our share of the work in a production kitchen and I would like to see more representation of our efforts. There is no shortage of food outlets that are black run and often black owned in a city like Chicago. I have served dignitaries that were surprised at the amount of minority representation at the venue, and expressed as much.

While the average black population in this country is about 13% of the overall population, we do make up a much higher number of working chefs in this city and our Hispanic compadres may actually make up a bigger percentage of the kitchen staff. It would be nice to see more of us in the media as chefs. Whenever there is a cooking show, television series, or movie about chefs, there is a whitewashing of the kitchen, unless they are in the kitchen of an Asian restaurant, then the whole staff is Asian and does not speak English.

Am I asking too much? I don't think so. And while waiting for the media to catch up to our reality, I won't be holding my breath. And I am not the only one asking the question.... http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/black-chefs/

In this article, they mention not only that there is a rise in minority enrollment into culinary schools but that there is a lack of managing or executive minority chefs. So in outlets where a multitude of different people work together, few of them are in lead positions.

Are we Jim Crow kitchens? Are we continuing prejudices in our industry? Or am I expecting to much? Isn't it accurate to expect to see a shift in the kitchen management and media representation reflect the populous? We are graduating and training up fantastic chefs of all races and genders so how long, or when, will we see a superstar minority female chef? I am not saying that their isn't any to use as inspiration, Carla Hall comes to mind, but I ask who else?

Michelin Star Rating System

Most people in the food business has at least heard of the Michelin star rating system, however, most probably don't know its purpose or history. From time to time, I will hear culinary students wish to make the attainment of owning a Michelin star rated restaurant one of their career goals, but often they don't fully understand what it is that they are setting their sites upon. To wit, I always ask them what it means and how they plan on achieving this goal.

I personally never set my sites on this benchmark. My career goals are smaller in scope but never too small to be significant. I have always thought of myself as a work in progress, I strive to achieve progress everyday, to be better tomorrow than today, while hoping to become a owner of a nice bakery. I love food exploration and education. I love to occasionally expand my talent and knowledge while keeping up to date on the industry and in touch with colleagues who have helped me along the way. I had to teach myself how to work with fondant as it was not a medium that was available while I was studying my craft. I took to television and online tutorials to figure out how the medium work and some tricks and tips.

Chicago is a very fabulous city to work in food as we mid-Westerners have always taken pride in our food scene. This city is among the most segregated cities in the world as most folks cluster up in neighborhoods by ethnicity, but at the same time we have such a wide list of diverse groups that you can find all sorts of food offerings to satisfy your cravings. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Chilean, Brazilian, Thai, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Chinese, Polish, Irish, Italian, Egyptian, Palestinian, Indian, Middle Eastern, Japanese, Russian, Ethiopian, and I am sure I have not named them all. Chicago has its issues but we here often commune with each other plate by plate.

If you think you have heard the Michelin name before but it didn't have anything to do with food, you are right. Michelin stars rating system began with the Michelin tire company. The owners of the tire company wanted a way to encourage long road trips because the more worn out tires, the more sales the tire company could earn, makes sense. So they thought about what people would need in order to drive longer and longer distances. They concluded that a traveler would need to know two very important pieces of information, where they could sleep comfortably and where they could eat. So around 1900, they began issuing star ratings for restaurants to highlight excellent locations to visit.

In American history there have been 173 stars awarded, a small number over the last 116 years, and in that list of American stars, Chicago has only been awarded 22. Earning a Michelin Star can dramatically change the way the world looks upon your restaurant and its chefs. These ratings can literally push your efforts into the stratosphere and adds your name to the list of the most accomplished in your craft.

Is having this as a goal as a student a good idea? I will never ever discourage anyone from striving to be their absolute best, however, I do tell students to get a plan in place to make this dream a reality. 'How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.' Do your research, find out how the chefs before you have earned their stars, figure out where you should study to give you the best odds of earning one, find a great place to intern in order to get some hands on experience with a great chef, look into who invests in restaurants and may want to help you open your own doors after a long period of study, figure out new ways to reach the gourmet audience, understand your skills well, be honest with yourself about where you are is light of where the heavy hitters are, know your audience, seek answers about what your limitations are. Every chef must, not only figure out what others can teach them, also understand what tasks they do best and what work they should leave for other chefs to do as no one chef can do everything perfectly.

Just getting in to a culinary program and graduating can be hard to do for some students. I have seen some who were cocky going into a culinary training program and washed out before completion. I have also seen chefs graduate from a study course with enormous egos and confidence in their skills but got a wake up call at their first real job in the industry as others chefs ended up deflating that ego because they didn't know what they didn't know.

In the last few years, we have witnessed a enormous boon in the number of colleges that a chef can study. The popularization of food related television has made our jobs more attractive to the common watcher. And while thousands of kids, instead of a few hundred in years before, actively seek a place to start their food careers, not all programs of study are equal. Some interns that I have had the pleasure to work with don't all finish their education with the same amount of skill, ability, knowledge, and experience as all the others.  Hell, some do not possess the right personality traits to survive in a professional kitchen.

No matter if you want to swing your bat in the big leagues or if you want to be a small business owner, DO YOUR RESEARCH. These careers do not materialize over night nor are the dropped in your lap because you have a culinary education. The restaurant business is VERY competitive and the amount of time you need to put in at work to become the best chef you can be is HUGE. This industry seldom allows you to have a good work/life balance, especially in the beginning, and a chef never stops learning. Once a chef becomes proficient with producing the master sauces, they still don't have mastery of the yeast bread, for example. Customer demands change all the time and the food outlet that is the hottest ticket in town today can have a empty reservation book tomorrow because the food or diet fad has changed course.

Work hard, study hard, never stop learning, and dream big. BUT, do your research, write a plan, rewrite it often, make it plain, and plan, plan, plan. Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. It is a fool that doesn't do their homework before jumping into the pool. Is it shallow or deep? Is it clean water or contaminated? Are there rocks at the bottom? Be deliberate and sure of what you are shaping before the sculpture collapses.

Here are some links that may help you investigate the Michelin star ratings: http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-the-michelin-guide-2014-10

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Michelin_starred_restaurants#United_States

Whole Foods, good?

Here in Chicago, we have about 20 Whole Foods outlets. They have expanded their reach and audience rather rapidly over the last few years and are currently building a new one in the infamous Englewood neighborhood. So the question comes to mind, is this a good thing?

The Englewood neighborhood has been historically black and under-served for generations. The area is infamous for having some of the poorest residents of Chicago and a legacy of violence. These recent years, the city has been dedicated to improving the infrastructure in this area. There was a extremely dilapidated shopping district at the heart of the area which has been demolished and is being replaced. Abandoned properties have been knocked down after sitting idle for years and the available public housing has been revamped and repurposed. Kennedy King College, a long standing city college, has built a new campus in the neighborhood which was well over due.

Right near one of the busiest intersections of this area, Whole Foods is rapidly building a shopping center and their store is slatted to be the anchor. This outlet is across the street from the new college campus. Many residents are curious to find out if this will a profitable venture. I would agree that the area needs a grocery store of better quality than the other available offerings nearby, made up of mostly liquor stores with some groceries and a few low cost store chains. But is this the right move for the area?

Englewood is one of a few food deserts present in Chicago, and it has been that way for a while now. Residents have had to go outside of the neighborhood to buy groceries of quality for as least as I have been a resident, I am 45 and lived here all my life. The difficulty of living in a food dessert is two fold, the residents that can travel outside the neighborhood quickly, mostly by car, are spending their economic power in another neighborhood which keeps the other area vital and their area continues to degrade. Secondly, the residents that can't travel by car regularly to do their shopping are left with little option that to buy substandard food offerings which will degrade their health and leaves little economic improvement in their own area.

It is wonderful that there is an effort to make a course correction in this matter. However, Whole Foods has been among the priciest offerings available in this city, and the organic and other high priced food offerings are not familiar to the population of the area. I support the revamping efforts to bring that location back to being a vital and strong location. What no one knows yet, is if this will be successful. Many people are questioning if this is a signal that the city is not just improving the area that has been in such need or are we seeing the first signs of gentrification? Will the current residents embrace and be able to afford to support the store? Or is the store building there ahead of a change in the racial and economic shift in the residents? In Chicago, when a neighborhood makes changes like these, it usually means that the minority residents who have lived in that section for generations, will be pushed out and replaced with non-minority residents with much higher incomes.

The stroller crowd has been rapidly moving into a area of Chicago that is known as Boy's Town, it was a heaven of activity and housing for our LGBT people. With that shift in population, the area is being forced to close some long standing business and the lots of its residents can no longer afford the increasing property values since the area became popular and desirable.

Will the same shift happen in Englewood? Or will Whole Foods fail to improve the health and options of the residents? If the neighborhood is gentrified, where will poorest of the residents be push into next? If Whole Foods fails, will any other chain store be willing to build in the area and keep from having yet another closed store sit idle? I think, everyone wants the area to be improved, but how do you do this successfully??

Food v "Food", Part 1

One of the major themes in my teaching to our young folks is that I constantly challenge their idea as to what is food and what is "food". I began this after watching them eat all sorts of garbage, listening to them talk about what they like to eat, and then seeing the deficits of understanding about nutrition. When you talk to kids that cannot identify that margarine is not butter, don't eat vegetables, drown their food in hot sauce, and never ever ask what is in this food... there is trouble brewing. A very large portion of the population that I teach just eat what they like and they never give a second thought to what they are consuming, while childhood obesity rates raise.

 

I teach them how to read a nutrition label, show them that vegetables aren't scary and can be very tasty depending on how it is prepared. I challenge their tastes by making them at minimum sample the dishes we prepare, make them look at what they are eating and why. It isn't easy work especially since the come to my class believing all that we are going to do is cook. If it were up to them, they would work in my class as if it was a cooking club, but its not, it's a culinary class. If it were up to them, we would only cook those things in which they are already eating regularly. The difference between a cooking class and a culinary class is very similar to the difference between food and "food".

 

I am fully aware that lots of food choices that are made in the households, in which my kids live, are done so with economy and convenience in mind. We Americans have totally bought into the idea that food must be cooked quickly and if you are in a lower economic rung the cheaper products tend to win the race to the shopping cart. Lots of our citizens are quick to spend a lot of money on clothes but not a lot on food. This is backward thinking, as clothes wear out quickly and go out of style, but your health is critical. I too have to consider my economy when purchasing, I buy some convenience foods, very few, mainly because I am not home for dinner 3 to 4 nights a week so the cooking duties fall upon my kids at least a couple nights a week. However, understanding what you are exposing your health to buy the constant consumption of these are risks most of us cannot afford. All of my children cook, nothing too fancy, for my middle school and high school kids, but my college kid does quite well, as she has had much more training.

 

Kids don't think about health and nutrition often as they have those perfect metabolisms and digestion that keeps up with the junk they consume. I often ask them what if the aging process begins to break down your body at a young age because of what they eat?

 

The populations that I teach are made up of inner city minority kids who's families are dealing with members that are impacted by cancer, hypertension, diabetes, glaucoma, drug abuse,  immobility, and early death. What they are more concerned with are the drug overdoses and deaths from gun violence that they face daily. I have talked to my kids and heard about the reasons they skipped attending class due to being in the hospital visiting their siblings and loved ones. They tell me of how many funerals they have had to attend and when asked questions about life longevity they tell me that they are not concerned with living to 100 because they are expecting to die before they are 30. It's easy to not think about your  health when you don't think you will survive very long, so why not eat and do whatever you enjoy today because tomorrow may never come.

 

So, there I go into the breach attempting to change their view of not only what is food and what really isn't food but also trying to change their world view through cooking and teaching. I speak to them about their life goals and dreams as well as their diet. I convey to them the impacts of poor diet don't just show up on the inside, but these things affect their appearance and their future. Basic nutritional information and health are done every week along with recipe comprehension. I am a firm believer that it isn't their fault that they don't know these things. I am a firm believer that you cannot give someone else something that you don't have. A great number of their parents either don't have time to teach them these things or don't know enough about the subject to teach them to their children. The notion of eating whatever is cheap and accessible is costly to your health. Anytime that you can go to the store and buy a 2-liter of soda pop for 99 cents but the same amount of juice or water is 4 to 5 times the price.... something is off.

 

I tell everyone if you cannot read all of the ingredients on the label then you might not want to eat that product. Whenever you leave control of your health and nutrition up to a corporation, you are already in trouble. The one and only purpose of a corporation is to make money. They make decisions not based upon what is best for the consumer, they make decisions based upon profit. If a natural item cost five cents per unit and a artificial substitute costs 3 cents per unit, the corporation will used the chemical substitute to gain a bigger profit margin.

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These artificial things do not create the same reactions in the body as real food does, and if you are around enough, you will see how the FDA and researchers will prove them to be harmful in the long run and it's use will then be stopped. But what about all the people that consumed these chemicals for years and are possibly suffering the after effects? Wouldn't be easier to select the natural food options and not suffer any side effects? I want to see my kids live long long lives full of joy and not short lives filled with discomfort and disease.

 

Any food that has multiple multi-syllables  chemical names and are high-up on the ingredient list should make you take pause. If you don't know what it is, then maybe you shouldn't be eating it. Can you find those items in your kitchen? Why are they in your food? Corporations make it difficult to make good choices. Their marketing campaigns, packaging, confusing labeling, hidden sugars, cheap ingredients, market saturation, are pervasive and target your kids.

 

A large percentage of your average citizens do not fully understand how to read nutrition labels.  The first thing that everyone should know is that the list of ingredients is listed in order of amount from the highest quantity to the least. In other words, if you are reading the label and the first ingredient listed is sugar then you know right away that is isn't a healthy item to eat. Secondly, look at the serving size on the package. This is one way the corporation tries to fool the consumer into believing that the item isn't too bad for you. A small package of potato chips is commonly consumed by one person, but the manufacturer may use the serving size as 4, for example, that way, if you aren't paying close attention you can believe that the bag is only 100 calories when it actually is 400 calories, deceiving. I also encourage folks to Google the chemical names listed to see their purpose, possible health issues, and perhaps why they are used. Knowledge is power.

 

Last year was the first year in American history that consumers spent more money in restaurants than in grocery stores. That is huge news to both the culinary industry, retail food store, and the medical community. Our families are not growing, harvesting, cooking, hunting, or controlling the most important aspect of their health, food!

 

Food Education and the Minority Chef

Everyone should learn to cook. I say this not because I am a chef, but because every life spent on this rock has the need to eat often and most of us will have a part of their lives in which they may not live with others.

Lots of food educations began in the kitchen with a parental unit. Stir the pot, roll the dough, bang the pots and pans, it all starts in a home kitchen. Many of us get to advance as we age, and some go on to cook for others. Culinary colleges have, in recent years, sprung up all over the place. Back in the Stone Age, when I went to culinary school, there were just a few American schools in which you could gain formal training in the arts. In fact, my alma matter, Lexington College, shuttered its doors.

Washburn Culinary College was a long standing institutional trade school of differing skills in the Chicago area. It has a rich history and the culinary college training program grew to be the best of its program offerings. In order to uphold that excellence, the culinary program is now apart of the City Colleges network residing in the Kennedy King College in Englewood neighborhood. It's original location was on the West side of Chicago and during the years after 1940, the West side changed its racial identity when Chicago's African American population began to take up residence in the area. Therefore, the student entering the trade school began to shift with the neighborhood residents.
http://forgottenchicago.com/articles/the-last-days-of-washburne/

During the years before the racial unrest of the civil rights movement, white flight, a trend of white people selling their homes once black faces became their neighbors, further changed the racial complexion of the area, and greater numbers of blacks began training at Washburn. Some of Chicago's best trained chefs were graduates of the Wasburn Culinary program. Since then a great number of colleges either added a culinary program or opened doors as only a culinary program.

It has been my experience that there is no shortage of minority representation in professional kitchens around Chicago, but the question is, how many of the top chefs, executive chefs, are from a minority background? We have always been in the fight for excellent food offerings in this city, and in many cities around the globe, Blacks and Hispanic workers are often more numerous than the non-minority workers. Hard working people with excellent food skills and dedication to the art are not limited to one group exclusively. But does the leadership of these fine outlets reflect the racial identity of the whole body of workers in the industry?

Add to this discussion, the lack of professional organizations such as fraternities, networking groups, and social societies for chefs, let alone minority culinarians. I am not saying that there aren't any but their aren't many, that's for sure. But why? Why is the default image of a chef the cartoon pizza chef with the chubby cheeks? I recently did a search online for clip art and logos of chefs, and very few were female and even fewer were minority females. I had to create my own version for my logo as none that I had found were in no way suitable.Why is it not uncommon to have a white male executive chef in charge of large numbers of chefs who do not look like them? Is the only female chef images limited to the Aunt Jemima pancake icon?

The recent boom in culinary schools opening, and now beginning to close, infused a large number of new graduates hungry for a position in a professional kitchen, and as those numbers of trained personnel grew, one must ask the question, where did all the black chefs go? Did the number of minority students increase with the advent of all the new outlets available to gain training? I am sure it did, even if just slightly. http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/black-chefs/

I live in one of the most segregated cities in the world, Chicago. We still have homogeneous neighborhoods all over this city. However, this city does have a wide wide range of differing ethic groups from around the globe. So, I ask, where is the great executive level chefs who's parents hail from India, Micronesia, South America, Mexico, and who are descended from our American Native groups or from the descendants of African slaves?

During the colonial years of this nation, a very large percentage of the meals cooked for the slave owners, and the Yankees too, were made by dark hands in servant quarters all over this nation. The traditional servitude positions were most often filled by dark or mixed members of society and this was one of the most readily available work for minorities after slavery, during the reconstruction, all throughout the civil rights movement, and many of us remain in these type of service oriented positions. I am not ashamed of what I do, but a large number of the upwardly mobile young professionals are quick to be dismissive once they ask you the $1,000,000 question "and what do you do for a living".

Here's the thing that most misunderstand about the civil rights movement and the feminist movement, in my opinion, the original goal of both of these movements was to expand the opportunities for women and minorities. The version of this in practice, done by a majority of people today, look down upon our profession as if we are just hired help with little dignity or professionalism. This is no different than a ERA movement member shaming her adult daughter's choice to have kids and a traditional marriage instead of becoming a CEO of a fortune 500 company. When attempting to gain equality, balance, just social order, stop thinking of us as less than for choosing a different path than yours. We chefs are highly skilled, and keep on gaining knowledge to keep up to the ever changing demands of our customers, diverse group of exacting professionals willing and able to make your events special and memorable.

Debate, Competition, Adversaries, and Allies

The topic of competition often comes up in dialogues about the food industry, any line of work actually, and more times than not, the dialogues can get heated. The art of debate seems to be fading away like a dream of an infant, quickly forgotten and hardly ever understood. I blame the years we, as a nation, spent under "mission accomplished" Bush as President, as he created the whole binary speak about patriotism. He helped the nation buy-in to the idea of "you are either with us or against us" type of confrontational speak that lead to this type of rational in many other areas.

Debate has a purpose that is not adversarial but rather designed to explore the topic at hand, amicably. A proper debate leaves the participating parties and the audience with a greater understanding of the subject explored. Nothing is black or white, all good or all evil, the world is a wash in tons of shades and colors. We more often learn more from our mistakes than our successes and allowing your opinions to change with additional information is an invaluable situation be to placed.

Sometimes this type of scenario can be present in personal relationships. I have witnessed groups of ladies where one member feels the need to compete with her peers, often to the destruction of the friendships, but the reality is the only competition that one truly has is against themselves. I strive to be better today than I was yesterday. I am one that will uplift my peers instead of tear them down. I have been known to go out of my way to lend a helping hand and would like to think that others who can will do the same for me when needed.

Within the food industry you may find yourself in the employ of owners that are overly protective of their customers, contacts, marketing schemes, or recipes, as if an employee is seeking out to steal them. This type of thinking is not healthy. It takes nothing to give others information or answers that will set them up to succeed even after they have exhausted the relationship with you or your organization. Instead we see the crabs in the barrel mentality when the reality is that there is more work out here in the marketplace that no one will ever be out of work for long if they have the skills. I can tell you how to to something or point you in the right direction but that doesn't guarantee that you will be able to get the same results that I have gotten.

Everything is situational....   (yes, I do know that this isn't really a word). I don't mind sharing recipes with people online or in person because many people that request the information will not make the efforts to produce the item, and they usually ask me to make it for them. I mentor and teach kids who like to cook and perhaps I will be able to start the next successful chef-in-training on the right path to excellence.

I have worked for folks who were victims of this mentality and they are usually toxic to everyone around them. It's easy to spot them in a employment situation as they are constantly seeking to horde all the information and control everything the employees do. This type of person tries to never fully explain the situation or decisions and is always very guarded. The rationale behind this behavior is to make themselves feel important by force, so to speak. No one can do any work unless they go through so-and-so, can't make a single decision, can't move on to the next thing, or use their own ideas, unless you get approval.  Too often this creates a false dependence upon another person and can be a fear reaction of the person who is exhorting control, afraid that the employee will run away with their business, do a better job than they could do, or get promoted ahead of them.

Most people can mistake their allies as adversaries due to a lack of vision. It's like the cheating spouse who constantly knows they are being cheated on, even without evidence, because they believe everyone is just as dishonest as their actions. I'm not one who adopts this thinking. If we are colleagues or friends, I am sure that there is something that makes you special and usually it is different than what makes me special.

Allies share, trade, and support each others efforts especially when the goals of both are the same. Two nations will become allies because they have mutual needs. They trade materials such as nation 1 is a great producer of wheat but nation 2 doesn't have the land type to grow wheat, so a pact is made to trade the wheat for nation 2's spices. The same can happen between to companies, two people, or two families. As a pastry chef, I have a few caterers that will call me to produce the sweets the client is asking to be made for their event, for example. The caterer has an expanded list of options that the client can chose from, the client doesn't have to search for these options with an additional company, and both the caterer and I will profit from the clients order, mutually beneficial.

Confidence in one's ability, self-confidence, honesty about you own knowledge and skills, understanding the limit of your own ability and where it can be improved, and having a centered humble spirit can be more valuable than all the money or influence in the world. It takes a certain type of humility that allows you to be in a position to both help others and be helped at the same time. No matter how much I learn or how advanced my skills become I remain humble because I have worked with and met some giants in my industry and I fully understand that there are some with skills that make mine look like a crayon coloring book drawings next to a museum quality painting.

In my opinion, seeing everyone else as your competition or adversary is a big red flag that this person is struggling with some deep identity issues. The need to always be in the spotlight, to control every thing and everyone, to dismiss people willing to help you or support you because you can't imagine that they are being honestly genuine, and always thinking of your needs as more important than anyone else's, are personality flaws that are not uncommon within the chef world. I also believe that the idea of celebrity chef is drawing more and more of people with these personas, who feel the need to prove their self-importance plate by plate.

The chef personality type is large and crazy but the real stars are those among us that are firmly rooted in reality while constantly reaching skyward to shine among the stars. You can shine as bright as the sun without trying to diminish someone else's light, in fact, lending your light to others doesn't reduce yours but in fact increases the light from you both.  

NAACP ACT-SO

Today is the day of our NAACP ACT-SO Image Awards Viewing party. This is a new fundraiser for the branch. We decided to host this viewing party after the lack of African Americans nominated for the Oscar's this year. The racial divide doesn't appear to be closing. 

As the board Secretary, for the Chicago South side branch, I have been lending a hand, preparing and grooming our competitors for regional and national competition. Our esteemed journalist, Vernon Jarrett presented his concept for an Olympics of the mind in 1976 and in 1977 the NAACP Board of Directors adopted his resolution and became the national sponsor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Jarrett 

ACT-SO sustains approximately 200 programs nationally. Over the past thirty years, over 300,000 have participated in the program. Our mission is to reward and recognize African American young men and woman for their scholastic and artistic excellence. We strive to honor, prepare, recognize, and develop the talents in our under-served community. http://www.naacpconnect.org/pages/act-so-history

Every year we do a lot of fundraising because this is a golden opportunity for our young people that they may never get to experience otherwise and we do not charge the participants, or their families, the expense of travel and accommodations to compete nationally. All of our efforts throughout the year is focused upon getting our kids ready to win prizes and scholarships and usher them into a illustrious college career. Thirty two categories covering categories of STEM, Business, Visual Arts, Humanities, Performing arts, Dance, and my personal favorite, Culinary Arts.

I began my involvement two years ago when my oldest child, Jacqueline Alexander, competed in the photography category. She worked during her Junior and Senior years in high school and went to national competition both years. The work we did with her did prepare her very well, not only for ACT-SO but for the other work she did in school and for the other avenues she explored for scholarships. This year my other daughter, Victoria Alexander, is competing in a music performance category, a visual arts category and a short story category.

Eligible students are 9th - 12th grade, they can compete in up to 3 categories and can compete every year until they have graduated high school. Jacqueline is still involved with the program as an alumni, mentor, and youth ambassador in her Freshman year of college. 

I am proud to sit on the board, and I am a proud parent as well. If you are interested in supporting our good cause, our young upcoming leaders, please come join us tonight and/or send a donation by way of purchasing a ticket to our event: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/naacp-chicago-southside-act-so-presentsimage-awards-viewing-party-tickets-20877805077

We do lots of events, both online and in real life, to raise the funding needed to take our gold medalists on the South side of Chicago, to our national conference. We hope to send a larger contingency this year than last year, we hope to recruit more and more of our young people into competition, and we hope to be the lightening rod that electrifies their futures.

  

For-Profit College Collaspe

In the recent past, there have been a lot of colleges and universities that have sprung up all over the country and also online. Some of these were a simple extension of an existing program but many of them were, in fact, a for-profit organization model. Colleges and universities traditionally do and can make money but are mostly under a not-for-profit classification due to the social benefits to the students and the community at large, they are similar to charities around the world, in this manner.

Higher education began within churches in the middle ages where students could enter a monastery, for example, to learn printmaking, languages, transcription, medicine, evangelism, or law to name a few. The educational edict then were expanded to educate more than just the people pledged to a lifetime commitment to the church and most of the early educators were those who had been apprenticed under the teachings of elders in the church.

For-profit schools sprang up all over the country in a recent boom and often filled in a gap that was left after many trade school closings.  These schools often were easy to enroll into and the registration process was more centered upon a student being approved for financial aid loans instead of having qualifications for the course type.  The end results left some students with a large amount of debt and not a lot of opportunities to use the training received.

The advent of for-profit higher educations began to unravel under scrutiny due to unfulfilled promises made to the students via job placement outcomes and educational credit transfer issues. Since these particular organizations were not in a charity classification, the organization could charge students tuition amounts in rages that weren't always equivalent to other programs.  However, they could be challenged to prove their outcomes just like other companies, and that is what has been bursting the bubble and many of these educational centers are closing.

If Kraft sells a cheese and claims that it improves your eyesight then the government has the right to make them prove their claim or be fined and sued for flause advertising. These types of action has been taken with the for-profit colleges resulting in school closures.

Le Cordon Blue is closing their US locations. As of January 2016, they have stopped enrollment and will close the doors completely by September 2017. In 2013, the schools, 50 locations globally,  settled a class-action law suit by former students who claimed that the diplomas they received didn't hold up to the promises of leading them to high-paying restaurant industry jobs and transferable college credits. This trend happened in many industries like automotive, nursing, medical billing and coding, beauty and cosmology, and paralegal programs.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-cordon-bleu-closing-1218-biz-20151217-story.html