MY UNINTENDED EDIBLE JOURNEY-PART 1

I never intended to be a chef.

Growing up in Winthrop, Iowa, the thought of working in hot kitchens while, slicing, dicing, roasting, simmering, frying, braising, baking, and plating every food imaginable, never crossed my mind.

I had other ideas of possible professions to pursue.

When I was 9 years old, I dreamed of being a mad scientist that could operate a huge oversized laser that could shoot through steel walls and blow things up. Bit after watching w Darth Vader blow up the planet Alderaan in”Star Wars”, I began to question the use of oversized lasers, and quietly let that dream go.

By the the time that I was 11, I was completely obsessed with anything to do with Bigfoot. After watching a television documentary about Bigfoot and his cousins, Sasquatch, and Yeti, I had the idea that I could go to the Pacific Northwest to capture Bigfoot, proving to the world that Bigfoot existed and the authenticity of the Patterson Gimlin film. But when push came to shove, I really didn’t have the will to wrangle with a huge smelly creature that was way taller and larger than me.

At the age of 14, I had become very fond of my older sister’s stereo and my older brother’s growing record collection. Almost every day, I would come home from school and totally immersed inmus ic. Especially the music of the The Beatles. I practically knew every Beatle’s song forwards and backwards, and through the radio, television, books or magazines, spent as much time as I possibly could reading and learning as much as I could about the Fab Four. One day, I saw a cover on the front of People Magazine, about how John, Paul, George, and Ringo were offered a huge sum of money to reunite and to perform again. I found the idea of The Beatles reuniting very exciting and mesmerizing. My overly imaginative mind started wondering if there could ever be a 5thBeatle. Not a stand in Billy Preston, or fatherly George Martin figure, but another m musician who would could actually say, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!!! I am the 5th Beatle. Then I imagined myself as the 5th Beatle. All that I needed to do is learn some chords on a guitar and and learn some backup vocals and I would be in.

Still infatuated with my dream of being the newesdt member of The Fab Four, I was watching Monday Night Football on December 8, 1980 when Howard Cosell sadly announced to the world that John Lennon was fatally shot in New York City. The news of John Lennon’s life being violently taken was was like being hit from behind with a 2 x 4. Obviously I soon came to the realization that without John Lennon in this world, there could never ever be a true Beatles reunion or anyone ever becoming The 5th Beatle.

At 17, I was still listening to and discovering all sorts of great music of all genres and was listening to 2-3 hours of music every day. My sister who was a student at the University of Iowa, came home, talking about this musician Bruce Springsteen, ans after listening to songs like “Born To Run”, “Thunder Road” and “Backstreets” I had the thought that if I couldn’t be a member the The Beatles, then maybe I could be a solo act. Perhaps being a Midwestern version of Bruce Springsteen. But that idea was smashed when John Cougar Mellencamp released the “Scarecrow” album and started Farm Aid. concerts. My musical thunder had been stolen. I really didn’t learn to play the guitar that great anyway.

.Graduating from East Buchanan High School in May of 1984, I decided to attend Kirkwood Community College, and after two years I could not determine a four year school to transfer to or a college major that I wanted to complete.

So in the summer of 1986, still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I went to Alaska to work with my uncle and cousins on Kalgin Island where we gill netted for salmon.

.In September of 1986, I came back to Iowa, unable to find any work (at least any work that I was interested in). My brother, had recently moved to North Carolina, so I decided to pack a suitcase, my stereo and my collection of 200 albums into my 1978 Subaru and moved to the Tar Heel state.

I only lived in North Carolina for about 8 months, and during that time, I worked in a furniture rental store, delivered newspapers, and worked an extremely fun job as the buffet attendant at the lounge of the Marriott Hotel in Greensboro. While I was working as the buffet attendant, I also ended up having to cook a few various dishes on the buffet line; mainly chicken stir fries and shrimp scampi. The original plan was to have the cooks and chefs actually be out preparing the dishes while I managed the rest of the buffet line. But what would always happen is that the kitchen manager or one of the chefs would come out to the lounge about 30 minutes before serving time, informing that I would have to do the cooking on the buffet myself. And after giving a 10 minute cooking demo on how to prepare the required dishes, I would everything myself. While preparing those few dishes on the buffet line was only one aspect of my job, I would eventually find that that the little bit of cooking knowledge that I gained from that position would reap big benefits for me in the future. While I was enjoying being a buffet attendant at the Marriott Hotel, I was still struggling to make ends meet and still had no intentions of ever being a chef. Like a drifter, I was looking for a some other opportunity. I just didn’t know what that opportunity was.

One day, while driving around Greensboro, I noticed a U.S. Coast Guard recruiting office. Walking into the recruiting office and having a conversation with a Coast Guard recruiter, my head was soon filled with romantic ideas of saving helpless people from sinking boats, and making big drug busts. Now if that wasn’t a great way to earn a paycheck, then I didn’t know what was. In November of 1987, I signed my name the line and took the oath, enlisting myself for four years as a coast guardsman.

After a couple of months of basic training in Cape May, New Jersey, I reported to the US Coast Guard Cutter Rambler, in Charleston, South Carolina. Built in 1943 in my home state of Iowa, the Coast Guard Cutter Rambler was a ship designed to build and maintain Coast Guard Aids To Navigation. Reporting as a seaman apprentice onboard The Rambler, I soon found out that I was primarily going to be scraping and painting buoys, and helping to build and maintain Coast Guard aids to navigation i.e. lights and signs, etc. This was a far cry from saving helpless boaters in daring rescues and stopping drug smugglers. It wasn’t that I disliked scraping buoys or fixing nautical aids to navigation. Aids to navigation are really important. It is just that I had no experience with pneumatic tools, wasn’t that great at painting, and when I hammer nails, I have a tendency to miss and hit my thumb instead. And to be honest, I really didn’t have too much motivation to learn any of those construction skills.

My first morning onboard the Rambler, while getting to know Todd, one of my shipmates, I had briefly talked about my tiny bit of cooking while working at the Marriott Hotel. About an hour before lunch, our ship’s cook shouted to us from ship’s aft that he needed an assistant to help cook lunch.

In response, my new friend shouted back at our cook, “The new boot is a gourmet cook!” And with that response, I immediately reported to the galley, tied on an apron, picked up a spatula. For lunch that day, I made the most perfectly prepared grilled cheese sandwiches ever made. I wasn’t aware of it at that moment, but in making some grilled cheese sandwiches, I had taken my very first step in what I like to call “My Unintentional Edible Journey”.