I got a really interesting email today. Someone asked why I didn’t have a bio on my site. To tell you the truth it never occurred to me that someone would go looking for one. But someone did go looking, so I guess it’s only fair that I put one up here.
Early days
If you watched the clip of my appearance on That’s Life with Robin Swoboda …
… you already know that I didn’t learn to cook from my own grandmothers. One of them passed away when I was really little, and the other didn’t think men belonged in the kitchen. As for my mother, she’s more of an “eat to live” than a “live to eat” type of person.
That’s why, when I went off to college, my mother was worried that I wouldn’t be able to feed myself. She gave me a copy of Tough Guys Don’t Dice: A Cookbook for Men Who Can’t Cook
It’s out of print now, but if you can get a copy it’s great. What I love about it is that it doesn’t just list a bunch of recipes, but rather teaches how to think about cooking. The author, a college professor, says he got the idea to write it when several of his contemporaries were divorced or widowed. They had gone from their mother’s cooking to their wife’s cooking, and never had to learn their way around the kitchen for themselves.
I don’t think I kept any of the recipes from this book, but one lesson has always stuck with me:
Why shouldn’t men like cooking? The kitchen is the only room in the house where you’re allowed to play with power tools.
That attitude — that cooking isn’t some complicated thing that you have to go to school and wear a funny hat to do — has served me well ever since.
First cooking job
While in college, I ended up getting a job as a short order cook at a restaurant/bar. Once again, it wasn’t about the recipes I learned there but the attitude. I learned to cook quickly, with multiple dishes going at once, and time it so everything comes out together. More important, I learned to “work clean” so that when the last dish hits the table that’s the only dish that still needs to be washed.
(Oh wait, one recipe I kept from those days: Chili. It took me several years to figure out how to cut my recipe down from “20 pounds of ground beef and four gallons of crushed tomatoes,” but I finally got it.)
I ran out of money and discovered half a college degree didn’t qualify me for much beyond what I was already doing. And that sure wasn’t going to keep paying tuition. That’s when I enlisted in the Marines.
Life without a kitchen
I spent the first three years playing drums in the Marine Band at Twentynine Palms, CA. (If you’ve ever been there you know the name is false advertising, just like Greenland.) I lived in the barracks, where you weren’t allowed to have anything for cooking except a microwave. Yet somehow on Saturday evenings you could walk past my door and smell marinated London Broil. Not sure how that could have happened.
Two more years in California writing and editing the base newspaper, then I got sent to Cleveland to do PR for the recruiting station.
Back to the “real world”
One year after arriving here I met my wife. Two years later I returned to civilian life and got married. For the last 10 years I’ve been doing more and more of the cooking for my wife and our two girls.
About two years ago, I was in a rut. I didn’t have the time or money to take cooking classes, but watched a lot of Food Network. Finally I decided to follow the saying that you can really learn a subject by teaching it. So I put together the first edition of the book, and started writing this blog. And it’s worked.
I pay so much more attention to what I’m doing when I’m thinking about writing it up. I’m forced to clean up the kitchen and get everything together before I start. I notice how things look and concentrate on plating and presentation. I’m a better cook for doing this, so I’m getting as much out of it as you guys.
What now?
I’ve had my first taste of TV and I’m ready for more. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t nervous at all and had an absolute blast doing it. I’ve got a few ideas about how to get back in front of the camera, so stay tuned for an update. Oh, and if you are a producer or booker for a station in the midwest, I’d love to hear from you. Seriously: drew@cooklikeyourgrandmother.com
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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20 Comments
Useless trivia: I knew a drummer in the MC Band who broke his thumb in a humvee accident (if I remember correctly) and is on 100% disability. 100%. THAT I remember.
Because he DRUMS for a living I guess.
That is some good sh*t.
I worked with a guy who was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. At 22. Couldn’t play the drums any more and yeah, he got disability. But there were mornings he couldn’t tie his own shoes, so he had a serious problem.
It’s nice to see the face behind this amazing blog and read a little bit about you. Thanks for sharing this with us!
Hi Drew,
I learned to cook from my mother and grandmother. One of the best recipes my mother ever mad was chicken and dumplings. The dumplings were made from scratch and left covered with flour while she got the chicken and broth ready. The remaining flour on the dumpling thickens up the broth to a velvety feeling in the mouth. No matter how many times I make it, I never can get my version to taste like hers. I can’t call her and ask what she put in it because I lost her on Dec 31, 2003. Prior to that, when ever I asked her what she put in it, she always said the secret was poultry seasoning.
Ben, I’d have posted a picture long ago but I don’t like any of the “posed” ones. This frame grab from the video camera is really my favorite picture of myself.
Julia, that’s not much of a secret.
Hmm, I wonder what’s in poultry seasoning. They can’t all be the same. I’ll bet the stuff she had is not the same as what you’re using.
Well i’m BUMMED the link no longer lets you see the video 8(…….Finally found the pic recipe in the archives….hopeing that might link to the video but alas no luck. Figured i’d actually plug my nose and make that for my husband for V-day (as its the only time of the year I’ll make something chocolate, can you tell i’m not a chocoholic hehehe) Thanks for the bio. N—-
Thanks for the bio! I wondered what you did “in real life” (Meaning outside the kitchen.) I thought you might be a cook professionally. Are you still doing PR?
Hi Drew – I saw your photo on Recipe Muncher and had to come check out your site. This is a neat post about yourself, and I look forward to further exploring your blog.
Lori Lynn
Swede, ARRRRRGGGG! Well, thanks for pointing it out anyway.
Trixie, the day job has nothing to do with cooking. Not trying to be coy, I just keep the two things separate.
Lori Lynn, I had forgotten about that site. Hah! I just went and saw my mug in the middle of a page full of food. That’s hilarious.
I enjoyed reading your bio, so I’m glad you wrote it up!
Drew, my husband calls Twenty-Nine Palms, Twenty-Nine Stumps.
I didn’t learn to cook from my mom, she was too busy working at a nurse and had the same “eat to live” mentality. Her mom tried to teach me, but only a few things stuck, like her squash casserole and macaroni salad. I rally learned to cook when I moved to Texas and was living with my husband (fiance at the time) and his 2 teenage sons.
Love your blog (tried the pizza crust last night-your right, it needs a different flour than AP), keep it coming!
Jodi, glad to do it.
Stephanie, yup, it’s been “the Stumps” since before I went there.
I read and reread… what do you actually do for a living? Everytime your blog comes out with another recipe, all I can think is, “How do you have time to do all this?!” Just glad that you do!
HOW DO I UNSIBSCRIBE..??..I accidentally hit the button and now am being bombaed with emails…HELP!!!!
Barb, it’s easy: I just don’t sleep.
Anon, you must have subscribed to the comments instead of the main feed. If you had an email subscription you could send me an email and I could unsubscribe you. But the comment feed is via RSS, so you’re going to have to do it from your feed reader. Sorry I can’t be more helpful than that.
If you can’t figure it out, send me an email and I’ll see if I can walk you through it. (Keep in mind I only know the Google feed reader really well, so I’d be guessing at how the others work.)
Drew, I want to thank you for your response to my comment on Jenni “OnlinePastryChef”‘s blog. Your perspective on the difference between confidence and fearlessness flipped a switch in my head! Between you and Jenni, I now realize that I’ve approached cooking as a zero-sum game – if I (or my dish) fell short, then the whole experience was erased. Instead, whether if was a failure or a success, I need to take what went right and – as you said -build a foundation of knowledge that will be strong and broad enough to support my next kitchen endeavor.
This is my first visit to your site and I look forward to following it!
Noodle, if you look back through my archives you’ll see plenty of places where I point out that something didn’t work right. Like Edison said about those 900+ lightbulbs he made before it finally worked, each one taught him one more thing that didn’t work.
Just saying that I stumbled upon your blog the other day and have absolutely loved reading through it. I had the same experience with learning to cook with my family. I grew up with my mom and grandma, but I never got to really experience my grandma’s cooking because my mom liked to cook so she wouldn’t let her. And by liking to cook, I mean mix up a piece of meat with some cream of chicken soup or Italian dressing and cook that with a side of Rice a Roni and canned veggies. And it was healthy according to her because she’d use the lower fat and lower sodium versions of all of those. I cooked like that through college and now that I’m in med school with a place to myself with a better (but definitely smaller than I want) kitchen, I’ve started cooking real food. It’s so funny whenever I see my parents because my mom thinks I eat all these “weird foods” now. I prefer my cooking so much to hers now that whenever I go home for the holidays I make all the sides to accompany the turkey or roast, which is my stepdad’s job. It’s gotten such rave reviews that my uncle will leave with large amounts of leftovers and make me send him all the recipes so that he can make them for dinner too.
Keep up the good work! With med school getting busy I’m definitely going with the cook once for the week mentality, which works great when you live alone as long as you don’t get sick of the same food a few days in a row. I invested in a canner and hope that I can make quick sauces with the fresh veggies in the markets now to can and throw meals together during the winter when my schedule is really crazy. I’d love if you have more quick canning things that you’d be willing to share in future posts.
Dear Drew,
I am originally from Cleveland, Ohio and worked for the Bell Telephone Co. back in the 60′s. Did you have any relative whose name was Marion Kime? I worked with dear older lady by that name.
Enjoying reading your blog. I am going to try the banana cake. It looks like the one my mom-in-law made. Carol
Since I’m originally from Philadelphia, the odds that we’re related are pretty slim.