Week 1 EOC: My Voice

My interest in cooking started when I was five years old. I was considered a latch key kid. My parents left me home by myself when they went to work.  My brother and sister were old enough to go to school. Therefore, I had to cook for myself at times. I started by going through the spice rack and tasting all the spices that my mother had in the house. Later on as I would spend time with my great grandparents, I would go in the kitchen with my great grandmother and help her bake and cook. Later on as I was growing up my parents separated, my brother, sister and I ended up with my mother. We eventually moved to Northern California where my mother’s parents lived. That was when I started to get more interested in cooking. My grandmother and I had a contest between ourselves. When we would gather as a family, my grandmother and I would guess how everyone’s dishes were made and what ingredients and spices used in each dish. During my time in Jr. High School, one of the classes I got was home economics, I was in the class long enough to have my name called when I got a note sent from the office. I was to go to the wood shop class instead. As I was leaving the class room my comment to the teacher was, quote: “that’s ok, I already know how to cook and I can out cook everyone in class including the teachers”. Since then, I always went back on how my grandmother’s taught me.

As I grew up, I ended up welding in high school and upon graduating high school I worked as a fabricator. Through the years I always wanted to get into cooking again. I ended up hurting my back at work and so I had to find and new profession. I decided to go to school and learn about computers. I graduated with an AA degree in Information Technology. As I was looking for work I was unsuccessful obtaining a job in the computer field where I live. I started to do work on the side out of my home and learned that people just don’t want to spend a lot of money on computers. I just cannot compete with Dell!

After all these years, I now have support from my family to go into the culinary arts. My most enjoyable thing is to see people enjoy what they eat. My great grandfather helped create the orange fields in Southern California which is now called Orange County. My dad’s father was a butcher and owned his own butcher shop in Southern California. My great grandfather was a professional baseball player and was the warm up catcher for Babe Ruth. My great grandmother was a homemaker from Germany. My sister is into baking and cake decorating. My brother is in to eating everything, he also enjoys B.B.Qing. My brother’s youngest son is showing interest in cooking. As you can see food is a big part of my family. In the culinary arts is the only way to hone in my skill and talents and to learn new skills. Eventually, be able to open my own restaurant where I can start new traditions.