*sigh* & Thus it begins...

Yes, So...

I'm cHEF -Be-.

I've been playing with food since I was ~7.

I've been working with food since I was 12.


Now I'm ready for you & all others to play with food again!



One hot n humid Tennessee afternoon in 1989 I walked out into the backyard of the family apartment & realized I could over load wild oats with brown sugar, butter & a dash of 2% pasteurized homogenized milk & call it ?oatmeal?.
After all, My red headed Father might make me an Irish lad.
I recall being so proud that I had created this sugary buttery concoction I could now share with my playmates & we would smile while slurping the silliness down. (Thanks Jamie & Gina)
Who wouldn't smile eating foraged food, when our summers were still only playtime & brown sugar was only gonna rot our baby teeth?


Well, time passes & I now live in my urban apartment with a mere 30 square feet of cultivatable soil surrounded by manholes & asphalt 4,000 miles away from my immediate family & the fertile soils of the Mississippi Delta.
I have learned to scoff when my sugar is lacking "cane sugar" & Genetically engineered beet is the saccharin substitute.
or worse more if that sugary flavor came from the genetically modified enzyme churning out Cargill's HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup).

I now find myself not only reading ingredient labels, but wondering what this lable is missing...
if this tasty bite of $%*$# is being created as ?food? by the same folks that sell us cigarettes, if this sugary snack is a by-product of chemical warfare(aspertame), or if even my apple's skin is full of poison?

How did I get here? Where am I going with this?

A belief in an ad hoc life & serendipity is what guides me. Well, That is unless I account for my amazing luck, or a firm belief in my keen ability to manifest.

So, my story begins... (starting with what may be my latest & most reaffirming chapter)

After a few months pirating grease & ?sustenance? from dumpsters to fuel myself & a 14,000 pound short SVO (strait veggie oil) chool bus rolling on a dump truck frame, I somehow managed to break down here in Portland, OR.

I was on my way to enjoy & take up an understudy with Creole Chef Alex Patout in New Orleans, LA. when I somehow found myself taking up residence in the land of Wild berries, foragable mushrooms, old growth forest, & to my total delight, HOT SPRINGS!

How can I break down in the Pacific North West while driving to The Big Easy en route from the Music City of Nashville, TN?

I imagine it happens about the same way I quit my corporate computer gig bought a plane ticket to Zurich & six months later found myself in the midst of my first full on culinary gig taking in eternal darkness & 3AM sunshine in of all places, The Arctic Circle.

Well, I did mention serendipity right?

(next post at 12AM PST Dec.2, 2009)