My Heart & Culinary Art

I have always been interested in the culinary arts. Food is a shared experience that we all can connect with regardless of our differences since everyone eats to live for survival if not also lives to eat for enjoyment. At a very early age I simultaneously had a fascination and phobia about how my food was prepared and what exactly was in it as a “picky eater”. To this day at 50 years old that has never changed.

When other children (particularly other boys) were playing outside and subscribed to sports magazines I was watching cooking shows and running to the mailbox looking for my latest issue of “Gourmet” and/or “Bon Appetite” magazine. Those magazines were a window to a world larger than Glendale Arizona and the restaurants, foods, and ingredients I was familiar and bored with and into an alternative reality where I could dream of what the many delicacies I saw might taste like. It was also looking at another imagined lifestyle and not just another recipe.

As I got older and was allowed to cook I always was requesting some unique item from the grocery store to try a new recipe. Some dishes I’ve been perfecting since childhood! Each time I prepare something I’m always noticing how it could be improved. I have a personal rule which/witch is never to enjoy a food I don’t know how to make myself or at least try to. Comfort cuisine types of “soul foods” and foods based on cultural favorites are my specialty.

I have done everything from take cooking classes in high school to taking private chef courses and even appeared in culinary school commercials. I’ve apprenticed under chocolatiers and managed two luxury chocolate shops. However, I STILL haven’t fulfilled my culinary bucket list…

My last goal is to create a gourmet food product and actually bring it to market. I have created three products I think will work well with making my goal a reality. Each one is unique.

The first one is a vegan product called “CauliFLOUR”. Just as denoted by the name it is flour made from cauliflower! Freeze dried or dehydrated cauliflower then ground into a flour for cooking. It has many potential uses and markets.

Second, is “IceBean” a vegan frozen dessert made from bean by product and coconut oil that tastes surprisingly like ice cream. There is nothing on the market like it yet and it fills a need in the ice cream case. I’d like to fill that need. I wrote my online college nutrition course term paper on the different types of vegetarianism.

Finally, is my favorite product I’d like to try to bring to market which is “Ringerz”. Quite simply “Ringerz” are freeze dried onion rings. They are also one of, if not the the most delicious freeze dried foods that I have ever had or made. I really think “Ringerz” in three flavors like original salted, ketchup, and ranch would be extremely popular with their only competitor “Funyuns” which aren’t even real onion rings.

If my submission is selected that is how the prize funds would be directed to pursue my passion. Bringing a food product to market really would complete a life goal for me. Food is something I’ve always loved and connected with others about. I’ve always enjoyed snack foods and to see one I’ve created on store shelves would be an extremely fulfilling experience for me personally. I think as a minority and disabled person many others might find it inspiring to see as well.

I’ve done many other things in hospitality like catering management, night audit, bartender, switchboard operator, reservations agent, restaurant manager and I have been in other completely unrelated fields like social service, entertainment, and real estate but I am always drawn back to the culinary arts. As an infant I was advertised for adoption in the Newark Star Ledger. When I looked up any known information about my birth parents one was said to be a baker. Maybe it is literally in the genes/blood.