From a very early age, I have loved cooking and food. It was never a conscious decision but I was a very picky eater as a child and was sometimes left to my own devises because only I knew what I wanted. Or, at least I thought I did. I rarely took a packed lunch to school because I thought I didn't like sandwiches. Sandwiches, people. What normal child doesn’t like sandwiches, I ask you? I mean, give me a peanut butter sandwich and it wouldn't last for long, but those got soggy and gross while waiting to be eaten, and what normal child likes a soggy sandwich? What I did love, however, was cooking. It started out small, obviously I was a child and wasn’t capable of much more than nipping at some one’s heels in the kitchen, but even having a say on what I wanted to eat for dinner or how exactly I wanted my apple prepared (peeled, thinly sliced, and with the peel on the side, please and thank you. Hey, my parents were just happy that I ate fruits and vegetables.) Baking, too, was something that I loved at an early age. By middle school, I was cooking dinner for my family several times a week, planning menus and making the grocery list. Mostly making things that I was used to eating as a kid and things that my father and his mother normally made. By high school, I was making pot roast, pork chops, dabbling in the oh so fickle world of bread making, and being much more successful with other baking. I almost even went to culinary school, but then decided that it wasn't for me. Instead, I worked with a well-known Oklahoma caterer for a couple of months, and then worked in a couple of restaurants and learned from the chefs and cooks there. Not to mention that anytime I came in contact with the television, it was turned, immediately, to the Food Network. I was so immersed in it that soon, my list of recipes that I wanted to try was so teeteringly tall that the only possible way of whittling it down seemed to be to just cook, eat, and repeat for the rest of my life. It’s a shame that isn’t possible.
