Gastronomically Inspired

I like each meal to be a culinary adventure. When I was growing up in the Bay Area, my parents loved good food. It was not unusual for us to go to Chez Panisse in Berkeley and check out what Alice Waters was up to in her kitchen. Alice Waters is my second Mom’s culinary inspiration (I have two moms, my biological mother and my step-mom, but since I have known my step-mom since I was eight and we have such a great connection, she is my other mom, so I often will refer to her as Mom). Alice Waters pioneered California Cuisine, or as they call it in France, Nouvelle Cuisine, meaning it was light on sauces and consisted of the very freshest food which comes from a fusions of different types of cooking techniques with the freshest locally available ingredients. Often on the weekends our adventures would take us to the latest restaurant that had opened so we could sample their food and see if it was worthy of our patronage. Now don’t mistake me for a food snob, my culinary adventures often take me to a Wendy’s drive through for a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger and a Biggie Fry. I like everything on the culinary spectrum.

Now growing up with my second mom, who is a genius in the kitchen, you would think cooking would have rubbed off on me, but it didn't. My talent lies in knowing where the best place is to go to get what has gastronomically inspired us for that day. On any give weekend we go for Indian, to Sushi. Then the next day it would be burritos then Mediterranean. My talent really lies in dialing the phone, giving them my credit card number and picking it up or driving us to the best restaurant for what we are craving. It is not unusual for us to drive 45 minutes away from our house for a burrito. It’s because the burritos are just that good, and they know us on the phone when we call now.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy cooking, it’s okay. I love baking and doing deserts. I also love selecting the menu, if we are entertaining. The problem is that I am prep challenged. As my husband who used be a chef, I am mise en place challenged. Yes, we call cutting and dicing mise en place (everything in its place) in our house since my husband used to be a chef, we use the "correct" term. The issue is doing the cutting, and dicing takes me a long time, and since we love really fresh ingredients, we often don’t used canned anything, because fresh ingredients are always available to us. So that means that all the chopping is up to me, and the assembly, and it takes me a frustrating amount of time. That and my husband gets frustrated with my interpretive version of dicing. Since my husband does not like the way I mangle the ingredients, I often defer the cooking to him, because he is good at it.

Now the tricky thing has been trying to indoctrinate our young son into our love of food. He is expected be the third generation foodie, and we don’t want him to let us down. So far the only things I can get him to eat are cheese, veggies (which is fabulous), Tyson’s Dinosaur Nuggets (they are Trans fat free), macaroni and cheese, and fruit. Although, I will have to say does anything breakfast or desert. However, I can’t even get this kid to eat Spaghetti O’s (Annie’s Organic Pasta O’s) or anything savory. He completely rejects anything meat other than chicken nuggets. I know he is young and therefore a picky eater, and I am thankful I can get him to eat what I can, but I hope he knows that he was born into a family of meat eaters and it’s going to be a challenge if he goes vegetarian on us. In the meantime, we keep pushing meat and all different kinds of food in hopes that his foodie genes will kick in and he can enjoy all the culinary adventures we go on.