… and you may ask yourself, “Well … How did I get here?”

With apologies to David Byrne and the Talking Heads, of course.

I think I’m going to take a moment here and ruminate out loud for a while, chewing the cud with myself in a very lengthy post. You’re welcome to come along if you’d like. Of course you are, or I wouldn’t have even thought about writing all this down.

The question is, however, what am I writing down? Or up, as it were, as that’s where the monitor is?

I got to thinking about this because of Mike. Yup, it’s his fault. Back last week he asked about topic matter for his own blog. For some reason, I was the only one who replied to him. But it did get me thinking about how I got here and what I’m doing here.

What I’m doing here, of course, is writing about food.

I try to post at least once each day. On occasion, when I’m writing a second post in a single day and intend it for the following day, I’ll get an itchy “Publish Button” finger, and before I know it, I have two entries out for that day.

It’s annoying, I know. I try not to do that, but somehow, it just doesn’t work. If I had more time, if this were actually my full-time job, Lord only knows how much I’d write, post, enter into the database, throw up on your screen.

I know, that didn’t come out right …

What’s probably odd to you, dear reader, is that I really don’t consider myself to be that good a cook.

It’s other people, people who eat what I’ve made, who seem to think I know what I’m doing.

It’s people who call me “Chef”, when I’m honestly nowhere near having that title.

I write for these people, I cook for them, as I did at the omelet buffet this past Saturday morning … and I get weirded out and embarrassed when they swoon over the things on their plates … and even more weirded out when I find out they hope I can do another event in the not-so-distant future.

What’s even stranger to me is that the one guy I’m spending the most time with, talking shop with and hanging out with, isn’t the two guys I thought I’d be hanging out with.

Instead, it’s a Chef. And not just any Chef, but a darn good one.

“Well … How did I get here?”

Good question, Mr. Byrne, good question.

Now, my mom’s a most excellent cook, as is my seester. Mom still bakes like crazy with little kids, making cinnamon rolls, iced sugar cookies, and then for dinner, that curiously-wonderful meatloaf with the sweet pickle juice in it. My seester Barb’s been a pro for over 30 years, and tops me in many areas by a long shot. And not only can my other two seesters also whip up some great stuff, but family reunions/potlucks on my mom’s side of the family can bust a happy belt buckle or two.

Me? I’ve dabbled in breakfast a lot, and got really good at making omelets early on. In the summer of 1978 on a week-long trip in the Youth Conservation Corp, I did my first omelet buffet for the other kids at the old cabin at the Ligon Learning Center east of Flint. Wow, that was almost 30 years ago, too. Time flies …

In the summer of 1979 I got my first taste of professional cooking near Irons, Michigan, at Camp Martin Johnson during its last year of operation. Helping plan menus, learning the three-sink dishwashing process, learning how to cook the best pasta, using that multi-bladed high-speed bread slicer with the 8′ slide for the loaves, making birthday cakes on full-size sheet pans in a stack oven … three months of assisting in cooking two meals each day? Ok, I probably learned a few things there.

Except for cooking at home, I didn’t enter a restaurant kitchen until April of 1983. Frisch’s Big Boy on the western edge of Columbus just outside the freeway somehow decided I was the right person to open their first breakfast bar and operate it five days each week. We tested everything for longevity in a steam table on wheels. Grits didn’t hold out too well, nor did pancakes, or the fruit pie filling we set out as toppings. Of course, scrambled eggs, sausages, freshly-grilled shredded potatoes, and other decent things survived the hours on that table under the warming lights.

Gus Pappas was the first cook I knew who taught me real skills. A tall, skinny Greek at least 50 years old, he taught me to steam whole eggs instead of hard-boiling them to make them easy to peel. He was the first to show me halfway-decent knifing skills, how to prep a whole pineapple to make it a snackable food, and how to really taste a dish, and then make adjustments to it.

When Gus was eased out of the management of that Big Boy in 1984 in favor of young MBA types, the real skills in that kitchen also went away. I also left that June, knowing I would never cook in a pro kitchen again.

I dabbled in a few things in Flint while waiting for a life to roll around. I ended up in the convenience store sandwich industry, and even made pizzas for a while. An ex-Navy cook I knew made a honey-based BBQ sauce that he’d baste on massive pork ribs for over a day. I loved that stuff. Too bad I never thought to snag the recipe, which would now be worth its weight in gold.

And then, it happened.

For the next, oh, seventeen years, it was a rare occasion that anything I cooked was good enough. For anyone who’s been through this, you know how heart-breaking the situation can be, especially for such a long period of time. The frustration is huge, you just keep trying, but there’s almost always a comment, almost always a sideways remark, almost always an, “it’s ok, but just not how I like it …”

Ok, so I didn’t know how to cook. I don’t know how to cook, and obviously never have. I was convinced, by the only person I’d apparently listen to in this.

It was devastating to what few skills I actually had.

After all that time, living once more by myself, in 2002, a strange thing happened on my way back to reality. It was called Food Network. I became enamored with meals made in 30 minutes, buying Bam! at the grocery store, and a pair of Italians, one with way too much … forehead (it’s the camera lens they use, really it is), and the other in orange clogs and shorts, who hawks for Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor at every opportunity.

I bought some cheap pans that looked like the ones in the Food Network kitchens and kinda played around in a tiny apartment kitchen in Tecumseh. I made the kitchen look cool and, when my kids could come over, tried to have some fun at mealtime.

After a while, one of my kids said something was really good. I guffawed at whoever that was. And in return, I got, “Dad, you’ve always been a good cook”, with the other three agreeing.

As a weatherman would say when caught sipping coffee when the Director switches cameras too quickly, “uh oh … what??” Who were these people, and how’d they get into my apartment??

Other visitors, my parents and seesters down from the Flint area, friends who’d stop by, they’d basically say the same thing. When I ended up moving back in with my parents and seesters, this whole thing continued. I’d cook … and people would actually like it.

Weird. Just too weird. Really, I don’t know how to cook, so …. y’all are just weird.

In the past almost three years now, I’ve come to the conclusion that honest reality doesn’t happen in this plane of existence unless you have someone in your life who cares about you simply because you’re you, who nurtures that you in you to make the you in you grow into a better you, you know? I know you know, and if you don’t know, you should … know …

Kids are that way. Their unconditional love validates you for who you really are. Unfortunately, too many people break them of that. For some most excellent reason, my kids are not broken of that. So, since 2002, these four wonderful beings of my own genes have helped me become who I could have been decades ago.

Then Mary came along. How Mary and I met is well-documented on our Wedding Webpage over at TheKnot.com. What’s really interesting to me is that, what my four kids were doing for me without knowing it, was amplified to a huge extent by this woman who just wanted to be with me for who I am. And who also like my cooking. Seriously liked my cooking.

She basically stopped cooking so I could cook instead. This woman who was an amazing cook herself did this. For me. Her kitchen became my kitchen, and I enjoy working in there. For her, for my kids, and anyone else who enjoys what I make.

Wow. “Well … How did I get here?”

The first dinner Mary and I had at the Frog Leg Inn is documented in a previous blog entry, a review of the restaurant. No point in rewriting it here.

So, I’ve always dabbled in video as well. From video-taping our high school basketball games back in the late 1970’s (and really, I don’t like basketball), to rebuilding the video studio at DeVry, Columbus (after the Frisch’s gig) and working with a “state-of-the-art” VHS editing system, to editing tapes while at Toyota in Ann Arbor, I’ve always seemed to have a hand on a camera. Now, as a Studio Coordinator at the School of Art & Design, I manage a couple video editing studios with a total of 12 Apple Final Cut Pro systems. As part of a church technical gathering at Crossroads when it was in Temperance, I taught a session on editing with Final Cut Pro, and using LiveType to make animated titles.

Wouldn’t you know it, but Chef Tad of the Frog Leg Inn was at that session. And he had a few things on his mind.

I know Tad’s going to read this, and it’s going to hit a nerve with him … and rightly so. Frankly, I’m embarrassed every time I think about the fact that, even though we spent six hours one evening shooting a cooking show at Tad & Catherine’s home almost two years ago … it’s still not done. I never completed the edit. The thing is still in virtual pieces on my external hard drive.

Why isn’t it done? I honestly have no clue. I used to have a t-shirt that read, “King of Unfinished Projects”. That’s the only excuse I have.

Other things happened because of Tad as well. I used to write and edit computer programming books for Wrox Press, and ended up with some fairly decent technical writing skills. Tad mentioned the fact that Michigan Cuisine isn’t documented, so I started to document it. This is a massive project, one I hope someday to have time to complete. The resulting cookbook will be huge, complete with history, culture, tourism, etc. … with over 50 recipes from Tad himself. We also have other things we’re talking about now. He and I simply need to find the time to get together more often.

More importantly, Tad provided the momentum I needed to start developing recipes of my own, and to modify recipes I knew so they’d be better, even repeatable.

There’s a curse on my family, on my own mother. The Potato Salad Rain Dance curse. Every time that woman makes potato salad, it either rains when she’s making it or it rains when she serves it. It got to the point where she stopped making potato salad for a number of years. Really, it’s that bad.

I like potato salad. I’ve had many different varieties over the years. So when it came time for me to figure out a first dish to create on my own, potato salad was it. But how to make it differently? That was the real trick. This was something I’d had in the back of my mind with nowhere to go with it.

Mary makes a wonderful Polish wedding dinner of sautéed pierogies and onions, served with Polish sausage that’s been boiled in beer. Then one day, she tossed some potato cubes in some olive oil and herbs, and roasted them in the oven.

Wait … do that again, please.

After playing around a bit, I had a first batch of what I call a German-Polish Oven Roasted Potato Salad. Oven-roasted cubes of potatoes, fresh sausage boiled in beer, roasted potatoes and bell peppers … but unfortunately, I have apparently inherited the Potato Salad Rain Dance curse. Not only did it rain the first time the potatoes were roasted for this dish, but it also rained considerably harder while my (then) 12-year-old son Adam and I took a sample of the first batch of this potato salad to the staff of the Frog Leg Inn for their opinions. If it rains when you make it yourself … well, you’ve been warned!

Chef Tad made a couple suggestions for this potato salad, which I gladly incorporated into the recipe. It was good stuff. Really good. My Briahna, 10 at that time, who rarely liked potato salad, wolfed the stuff down and headed for more. One day I took one of the more advanced batches to the Frog Leg Inn so Chef Tad could have another taste, maybe make more suggestions. I gave it to Lady Catherine to give to Tad.

Sorry, my mistake. He never saw it, never even knew I’d delivered it. It was gone. I’m not even sure what she did with the container.

Other stuff started showing up. My omelet tutorial. My best recipe for a five-bean salad, from when I was a kid. Mom’s peach cobbler recipe, which Mary prefers instead of birthday cakes. I documented Mary’s own bean stew with a couple minor twists. A dish I didn’t like at a local restaurant became a whitefish-stuffed salmon, and a happy lunchtime accident at work became a baked apple macaroni & cheese, which the kids simply devoured.

A couple weekends ago in his home kitchen, Chef Tad showed me how to really sharpen a knife. An expert in kitchen knifing skills, he taught me the right way, not that mid-air flailing of metal you see on TV, but a down-and-dirty method with some meat to it. Practicing at home, I was instantly able to take the edge off my best ten-dollar knife, turning it into an eight-inch butter knife in no time. But trying again, with a little more care, and I suddenly had the edge of Zorro’s sword. Or … at least the edge of Zorro’s brand new apprentice … er … twice removed …

Quite simply, I’ve ended up having more fun with all this than I thought I would.

Through it all, Mary has been more than supportive. She bought me a deep-fryer for Christmas 2005 so I could make corn dogs from “scratch”. I then made 50 corndogs a few at a time to order at our part of Luna Pier’s City-Wide Yard Sale in July 2006. She also seems to like the fact that, when I’m finishing the development or documentation of a particular recipe, she gets the “photo version”. And she eats seafood now, something she never really liked before.

Did I do that? I seem to have.

Is my food any good? People tell me it is.

I love my wife, simply adore her, and the fact that she appreciates my cooking is a definite plus. Couple this with Briahna liking my potato salad and Mary now eating some seafood …

When he can get his hands on some, a certain reporter in the Toledo area takes my potato salad to the studio early in the morning and has it for breakfast. And I don’t mean a half-cup of the stuff. He can easily put away a pound of it.

I still have a hard time believing all this most of the time.

It was probably a year or so ago when I first started simmering about the Monroe News needing a food writer. When these blogs got started, I figured doing a cooking blog for them would be the next-best thing to writing on food subjects for the paper itself. Fortunately, Dan Shaw took me up on it.

So … here I am.

“Well … How did I get here?”

You know, now that I think about it, I’m really not sure …