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Pim Techamuanvivit of the blog Chez Pim made a resonant point on her facebook page recently. She said:

“It annoys me every time I hear someone say “I’m a self-taught cook/chef/whatever”. There is no such thing. You learn from SOMEONE, via books or eating or other experiences. Be grateful to those who came before you and acknowledge that lineage.”

Often I hear that cooks, food-lovers, even food-writers are “self-taught”. In fact, I am guilty of claiming autodidacticism in my own culinary trajectory. I have come to realize that it is important to acknowledge what made me who I am so that I can build a better future-me. This is the age-old dilemma with history repeating itself. If we don’t look back and appreciate what made us learn, leap and fail, we’ll never succeed to our fullest.

Here are some of my decisive kitchen moments in the early years.

with mom and dad

It starts with one story that some of you have heard before. It involves me, my best friend Slobber, and his untimely demise. As you may know, when I was little, my father moved our biracial family to an extremely small town in Idaho from the suburb of LA, California where we had been living. My dad is white, but my mom and her two children from a previous marriage are black. I am not adopted, in case you were wondering, I just happened to get most of my dad’s coloring. I like to think that I inherited nice lips and supple nipples from my mom’s side, but that’s about it. Read more

*this is not a sponsored post- I’m just in luuuuurrrrvvvve.

It is extremely rare that I endorse products on this blog, much less single-use kitchen gadgets. Generally speaking, things like pizza scissors, corn de-silkers and kiwi fruit de-bruisers are meant more for candidates of the Darwin Awards than the James Beard Awards. So when I say that if you like to make filled pasta at all you MUST go to ebay right now and bid on one of these strange little (really inexpensive) contraptions that will ship to you directly from the Ukraine, you really ought to consider this a game of Salty Seattle Says.  And I say do it, so hop to it. Here are some reasons why: Read more

The common hamburger. It’s an Americana staple, and probably the most iconic sandwich known around the world. It’s permeated the hearts of food-lovers across the globe much the same way as pizza or sushi. And yet, there are a million different variations on the classic, with additions like foie gras, peanut butter, bacon and beyond. The greatest chefs in the world have tackled the hamburger with amazing and/or amusing results, and yet, many of us still prefer to head down to the nearest greasy spoon for a $2.99 special that hits the spot like a bullet vibrator with new batteries. Read more