Welcome ChefE

Welcome @ChefE

Please join me in welcoming our newest member, ChefE. We are happy to have you as part of our community.
Why not start by telling us something about yourself!

 

Greetings all.
I am here to join everyone in all things kitchen knife related. Read stories, tell stories. Cultivation of knowledge and sharing of wisdom, experience, opinion, and most importantly to preserve and maintain the symbiotic relationship between a chef and their knives.

About me: I live in California, USA. I'm a only child from a only child. Growing up I preferred to watch TV shows that taugh something. Bob Ross painting. The great chefs of America cooking. Historical programs about Coka-Cola. Nearby was a old military helicopter base which had the worlds largest hangers, for blimps back in those days. No one fights with swords anymore. People use knives every day and don't even know what they are.

My first job was in the food industry as a bagger at a large supermarket. Paper or plastic! I couldn't wait to get off work so I could go skateboarding. After all it was the 80's. I quit the market job so I could be employed at a newly opened mom-n-pop NY style pizza & pasta restaurant that I discovered while skating at that strip mall parking lot. They had the best garlic bread I ever had and I had to have more. I got a job there and the owner taught me how to make pizza dough from scratch, stretch and toss it, bake it, make all sauces from scratch, work sauté, cashier, etc. But in the beginning years I was the pizza guy. And I ate a lot of garlic bread! I ate so much garlic bread and drank so much cherry coke that I eventually had to cease those habits because I would be out skating or doing it with my girlfriend and I'd stink like garlic. Not good. And addicted to cherry coke. I was a fiend. So I stopped.
But....soon came the thing that changed my life. Snowboarding. Snow surfing as many used to call it when I started in 1989. Through high school my plan was after graduation was to go to college; culinary college? Meanwhile I enrolled in after school culinary programs. Did internships at hotels and 5 star restaurants. Every so often a guy came in through the the back letting the crew know. He was the sharpener and had a custom van as his shop to sell and sharpen knives. The Chef recommended him as a good place to acquire some tools. (Instead of borrowing) That's when I bought my first knives.
Now it's official. I got knives. A 12" chef knife from Victorinox and a off-set bread knife from Wusthoff. With the 12'er I could slash more and faster. So I did. Talk while cutting. I remember the kitchen crew always had crazy and wild stories. Some of these dudes were nuts! Freaks. Weirdos.
But professional.
I liked it. My kind of people.

Went to Jr. College. Then my girlfriend from all through high school and first college semester broke up with me a week before finals. GPA 1.7 I think. Yikes!!!!!
******** that. Next year I busted my ass in school. GPA 3.6 During the snow season I also busted my ass. Double time my learning curve.
Next was submitting applications to the universities. (I used a map to:1. plot the best ski resorts in the United States 2. Plot the culinary schools and universities. 3. Where is the best school near the best ski resort?) But I knew I needed to get out of where I was and go far. Far away. Down side was there was no culinary schools anywhere near a place to go skiing/ snowboarding. Per says the family, I had to go to college. In the back of my mind I still wanted to play with knives.

My first choice college was actually the first letter I got back. And accecped!!!!!! Good bye California!!!
College life- good times. Turned out that at that time my college town had the most microbreweries in the United States. I worked at the best jazz and blues club in the kitchen. Then one night a guy shows up in a custom van. Yea, the same guy. He too felt the need to get out of California. Odd he chose there to go. Small world.
After graduation I just wanted to be a ski bum and let my brain relax from the non stop preschool straight through college education.

From college to the present moment, I could go on and on for weeks worth of writing. But to make a already long post, short, here's it in a nutshell. ....
I changed back into the restaurant industry and attended culinary school as planned since I was a kid. I made Dean's and Honor's List. I was known as 'the beer guy'. My employeer allowed me to create a menu item to serve once a week.
So every week I originated a gourmet pizza and paired it with a craft beer. These nights got really popular and made good money. But while in school and at work I noticed no one treated their knife or knives the way I did. I'd talk to my knife. My knife was not only my friend, it was the tip of my arm. One day in school someone stole my knife. ******!!!?
Does a person steel a pen from a writer?
Does a person steel a sword from knight?

I started thinking people have no respect for the knife. The more I looked the evident that was true. I began soaking up knife knowledge. Metallurgy, cultural traditions, shapes, styles, uses, etc. Education borderline obsession and knife collection.

I turned into a knife nerd.

 

Wonderful! Thanks for sharing with us and welcome to the KKFora!

 

Welcome. Nerds is good

 

Welcome to the Fora, ChefE! Loved your story! :cool1

 

Good read. Thanks for taking the time to introduce yourself.

 

Welcome!

 

Welcome to the KKFora

 

Welcome along, nice intro!

 

Wecome! Great and funny intro! :cool1

 

Enjoyed the read! So where you at now with food and knives?