Introducing Myself

I have been thinking about writing a food blog for a long time, and I finally decided to dive right in and go for it.  I have been interested in food for as long as I can remember, long before the term Foodie was popular.  I thought I would start with a little bit about myself and how my love for everything cooking came about.

 

My mother worked part time while I was growing up and we were left in the care of my father. To keep us entertained he parked us in front of the television, it was something to keep us out of his hair.  In those days there was not much on except Dark Shadows and cooking shows on PBS.  I remember sitting in front of the television watching Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet (long before they found out he abused children), and Lidia Bastianich (before she became so famous), the two of them were just starting out, and I was mesmerized with the information they were sharing. I absorbed every little bit of information as though I were a sponge.  I also remember watching a show called Master Chef (no relation to the garbage that is on today), it was a series of Master Chefs from different parts of the country, and the first one I remember is Master Chef of New Orleans.  In fact, when I got older the very first cook books I purchased were from that series. They were the very first ones I owned, I was thrilled when I bought them and I still have them today.  I consider them some of my most prized possessions.

My senior year in high school, you all know it’s the one where you are suppose to decide what you are going to do with your life? Well, I already knew so I thought I was ahead of the game.  Sitting down and discussing my future with my parents, they had their own ideas once I told them I wanted to cook.  My father’s answer was “Good, she will get married and then she will be able to cook every night”. We are not talking the sixties or the seventies; I am talking about the eighties.  My parents were not real progressive thinkers. Find a husband and you will be fine for the rest of your life, that was their motto, so, discouraged and rejected I went and got an office job and put the thoughts of cooking out of my mind.

Now here comes the good part.  I met Irwin, the man I fell in love with and eventually married, the love of my life.  The man I almost killed with the first meal I made him.  Yes, that is right, almost killed him with the first meal I made him.  We were going out, it was a Friday night, and I offered to make him dinner.  Well at that time the only food item I thought I made well enough to impress him with were hamburgers.  Was that a huge mistake!  They turned out like hockey pucks! Nevertheless, he did not say a word, just sat there and ate them smiling all the time.  It must have been true love.  The next day he called my mother and asked her what I did to the hamburgers I made for him the night before because he had been sick ever since eating them.  Side note- I never cooked for him again until we were married, and I was enrolled in cooking school.

Well, the relationship continued, I think because I never cooked for him again, and we started to talk about marriage and living together.  He wanted to know what I really wanted to do with my life besides marry him, and I said I wanted to go to cooking school and learn how to cook and become a Chef.  Well, the man practically knocked the table over jumping up and letting me know clearly he would pay me for me to attend cooking school and I should find a school immediately.

We got married and I found a cooking school in New York. At that time there were not too many to choose from as Culinary Arts was not as big in those days as it is today. I eventually decided on the Culinary Arts program at the New York Restaurant School.  Besides being married to Irwin, it was the best eighteen months of my life.  I practiced on Irwin a lot as he worked not far from the school at the time and he had to sample all the goodies.  As time progressed and I got better, he was a happy camper, because, besides loving me, my husband loved food. He saw this as a good thing for him where he would benefit.

Therefore, over the next twenty-five years or so, I cooked and I cooked, learning more and more new things about food, all the time enhancing my skills and honing my craft that I loved so much.  When I first started my career, I worked in corporate catering doing everything you could ever dream of in a kitchen. After a few years of doing that, I decided I had enough of working for someone else whose sole interest was turning a profit rather than the kind of food they put out. This was not for me so I decided I really needed to do my own food, the kind of food I could be proud of, and I proceeded to start a successful catering business.  All the time learning about the benefits of using the freshest ingredients and making them simply so they would become the shining stars of the dishes I was creating. 

However, on the home front Irwin had enough of the long hours of me being involved running my own business, so we both decided I needed some time off. Five years to be exact.  During that, time I helped raised my niece and nephew, which was also rewarding, but not what I wanted to do with my life. As time passed I realized how much I really missed being around food and people who were involved in the culinary lifestyle so I decided to take a different approach. I started my own Personal Chef Company, a service that caters to the individual needs of each client. I started to purchase produce from green markets around the city and make sure they were prepared in such a way that they stood out. I also started using organic meats and wild caught fish. Clients started to notice the difference right away, and I noticed how much more I loved doing what I knew I was meant to do all my life.  Now my long journey has brought me to where I am today, a Private Chef who not only loves what she does with all her heart and soul but also respects the products she has available to work with.

The last twenty-seven years have been some kind of wonderful for me.  Not only do I do what I love, I have had the pleasure of being loved by a man who totally supported me, believed in me, and respected my love of food.  He always used to tell me “You have a knack for putting flavors together and knowing what works well together”. He believed in me even when I was not sure I was heading in the right direction, learning to love and respect not only what I was cooking but also the ingredients I was using to create that special magic in the kitchen.

Being a Foodie is more than having a love for cooking, you have to have a passion that comes from within yourself, a fire that comes from deep within, the ability to laugh at your own mistakes when something goes wrong, jump up and down, and smile when something turns out right.   What I hope to do in writing this blog is to share some of the passion I have for what I do, and to convey that to whoever wants to be part of my wonderful journey.

I will share new ideas, tips, short cuts and ways to save you money at the grocery store, while not compromising how you and your family eat. I will try to answer questions, and give helpful hints and come up with some solutions for your every day cooking problems. Finally, I will share some outrageous recipes for dishes I have made throughout the years, and for new ones that have quickly become favorites of mine.  All while teaching you to respect the products you are using to create that wonderful dinning sensation for your family and friends. 

So let the journey begin and let us make going into that kitchen a fun experience where we will all keep learning from each other, and enhancing one another’s culinary experiences!

Scrumptiously,

Francine