Barry
Ever since I was a young boy, my Mom did all the cooking. Breakfast, lunch and dinner was Mom’s responsibility as well as the cleaning since she was staying home while my Dad was working from 8 to 5.
But as my Brother and I began to have dreams of going to college, UCLA was our dream school as we grew up, my parents realized they wanted to have Mom go back to work and that meant some times I would be home alone and needed to prepare meals for myself from time to time. So right around 12, I started preparing cheeseburgers, pancakes, waffles, nachos, you know, dishes that are not very complicated to cook. I found that I enjoyed cooking enough that I took a cooking class at my school in the 7th grade.
It was during that time that when I would cook, I would pretend I was cooking in my own restaurant telling people that they wanted mayonnaise on their cheeseburger and to trust me that the burger tasted better that way. I remember seasoning our frozen patties with celery salt, pepper and Lawry’s Seasoned Salt believing that the seasoning I used made the best possible flat grill burger. Ah, good times.
Many more adventure would happen, like learning some lazy dishes from my Brother that he made for himself when he was in college, like the lazy man’s nachos, tasting my Uncle Furman’s special tri-tip marinade which he gave to me so that I could make wonderful tasting tri-tip, watchin the Frugal Gourmet on his PBS show to learn some cooking techniques, hearing a friend relate a story about how he made chili burritos that dribbled down his friends arms since they didn’t know how to properly wrap a burrito all of which would continue to shape my cooking journey.
But one the the most important steps in my journey to becoming the main cook for my family was when a friend in college gave me some advice on how to get recipes – go to a local bookstore, look at a few recipe books, and write down the recipes that you would like to try. This tactic I am still using to this day, but instead of going to a bookstore, I am now using Google and YouTube to search for recipes for dishes that I am interested in learning how to cook.
And now here I am, bringing my same philosophy to this website so that you can learn recipes that I have learned from others, including the tips and tricks I employ from extensive practice making these recipes. All the recipes in the website that you see have been tested and have been cooked in my kitchen at least 4 times before they find themselves here. Sometimes you will get stories about where the recipe came from, sometimes you will get stories about who enjoys the dish.
If you are genuinely interested in the recipes that I have been using that have been tailored to my family and friends palates, then stay a while on this website and enjoy the recipes that we have to offer. You can also purchase my book, which was created by our community revolving around the Fullstar Vegetable Chopper where I incorporated my experience along with the suggestions from the comments of the first video review we made of the chopper and included the recipes where I find using the chopper convenient and fun.