Doug's Kitchen

How I started cooking...As a child, I would spend a few weeks every summer with my grandfather.  My grandmother, who had taught my mother how to cook, had passed away when I was very young, so my grandfather had to learn how to cook on his own. 

One summer at the age of eleven, I realized that I liked how my grandfather made some things better than how my mom did.  Lacking any tact what so every, I mentioned this fact to my mom and asked her if she could make spaghetti like her dad. For some reason my mother didn't appreciate my asking her this and told me that if I wanted meals like my grandfather made that next summer I should have him show me how and I could just make it myself.  It sounded like a plan to me (hey, I was eleven, I thought she meant it). 

So next summer, when I went to my grandfather's I asked him to teach me to how to make all the dishes that he made that I really liked (for a long time I only learned to cook things that I liked, since I mainly cook for myself and my family why would I want to learn to cook something I won't want to eat).  Shortly after I returned home my mom was starting to make spaghetti for dinner.  My mom is really a good cook, but her mother was German-Irish and spaghetti was not one of the meals she cooked well. I reminded my mom of how she told me to have my grandfather teach me how to cook spaghetti and that's just what I had done, so would she mine if I cooked dinner? 

She just looked at me and said go ahead and left me alone in the kitchen (looking back on this I'm not sure what my mom's back up plan was, I guess she figured my dad would just take us out to dinner).  Luckily, the spaghetti was a hit and after dinner my mother asked me "so what else can you cook?"  My mom started to plan a lot of meals around what I could make after that and I've been in the kitchen ever since.

Over the years I have increased my culinary knowledge and experience through travel, cooking classes and courses at the local community college.  With the encouragement of friends and family I have been able to turn my passion for food and cooking into a career.