the soul of a chef

I started out in the food business at a very early age. My father owned a burger joint near the high school. I was 8, and it was a fun and exciting part of my life. Picking up donuts early on weekend mornings with my brother and Dad, and off to the restaurant to "help out" on a busy Saturday. I remember being doted on by the high school girls after school, eating french fries at the counter, and spending any quarter I had from my allowance on the jukebox that played all my favorite Mo-town 33's. I bet I was the only 8 year old white girl on the south side of Chicago who could lip-sinc Diana Ross and the Supreme's, word for word!

I can't say that this was my culinary turning point, that came much later, but there was something about my Dad owning a restaurant, even if it was mostly burger and fries, that was somehow very romantic. I suppose if I really knew then, what I know now about the business, I would have fled in the other direction, and never looked back. My ideal fantasy career at 8 was becoming a nurse or a nun. (O.k, I was raised Catholic!) It was quite a circuitous route to the food business, one that has lasted close to 30 years.

When I look back on my resume from the 80's, I think to myself, "where didn't I work?" Never having the opportunity to go to chef school, I went from job to job, chef to chef, and learned as much as I could under some great teachers. And as I learned, I tried to infuse what they taught me into my own style of cooking and teaching. The wonderful gift you get back is what you end up learning from the staff that you think you are teaching. And it is not always the thing that you would expect. Often times the lessons have been in humility and trust. I have been grateful to have had extraordinary folks work side by side with me. And the folks who didn't get the lessons in respect and humility, weeded themselves out the door, sometimes with a not so gentle kick on my part!

But I digress. This story is about finding your soul; what is it that feeds you, in every sense of the word, body, mind and spirit.

Recently, I started cooking dinners again, just on Friday and Saturday nights. That is where I started out almost 30 years ago! It has been like coming home for my soul! Like finding a part of myself that I thought that I had lost, or grown too old for. It has been a creatively fulfilling challenge, and I could not have done it without Laura Forest. She is a bright spirit in the food world, who is already blazing her own trail. She spends most of Thursdays prepping most everything that we will be serving on the menu for dinner. And then on Friday & Saturday nights, she is cooking with me. On most weekend nights, after the dinner service has died down, I am usually decorating cakes for the weekend orders, while Laura is putting every thing away, breaking down the line and cleaning up. Uncomplaining, diligent, and thorough, Laura makes it possible for us to have dinners, even if it is only 2 nights a week, and she and I are putting out some delicious meals straight from our heart and soul. It is folks like Laura who make folks like me appreciate the continual process of creativity and striving for a dream. Someday Laura wants to own her own restaurant, nothing fancy, just small and funky, with really good homemade food, made with love from Laura's hands. I hope that I can help her make that dream a reality, and I hope she does not wait as long as I did!