Beginnings

Well, I've been playing around with the idea of doing a food blog for a while now. I'm hoping this will be a great creative outlet for me, both in the kitchen and here on this blog. I don't have any food reviews or kitchen experiments to write about this time around. Instead I thought I'd give a little insight into what my food history.

When I was in middle school, I discovered the Food Channel. Whenever I got the chance, I was watching some sort of cooking show. At the time, my favorite show was Iron Chef. I loved how those chefs made entire meals based off of one extremely unusual ingredient. It was just amazing what they could do in the kitchen. Seeing that I was so involved in these shows, my Dad suggested that I look into the new culinary program that had started at one of the local high schools. A year and a half later, I was enrolled in the prep course as a freshmen.

I spent my freshmen through junior years of high school in that culinary program. It was a sanctuary from all things high school. I learned so many things in my time there. It's where I learned my knife skills and attempted to conquer baking. I first learned to network at the luncheons and dinners we catered. I competed in regional and than state VICA (Vocational Industrial Clubs of America) competitions for culinary arts my junior year. There I learned the importance of trusting in yourself and persevering when faced with difficult challenges.

That high school program taught me a lot, but in that time I was also injured multiple times ending in 3 knee surgeries. The surgeries resulted in me having a very hard time stand for long periods of time. In the end, I switched my focus to getting an Associates degree in business that I could use to as a bridge into the Hospitality Industry. Seven years, three states and one Bachelor's degree later I find my love for food and cooking has not lessened. If anything, I think I'm more adventurous in my food choices than I ever been.

If you ask my friends, they would probably say I'm willing to try anything once as long it won't kill me. So hopefully, through this blog, we will all discover what's behind the fork.

~MLS~