About Me

What another damn food blog?
Yeah, I guess so. I like eating too much not to share the things I've eaten and the things I try to make at home. Growing up in southern California has made some strange childhood memories for food, from sushi, to fish tacos on the beach, to In and Out burgers to spicy tripe and that doesn't include the things made at home!

Having a family that had a number of adventurous eaters and people who like to cook also certainly influenced what I liked to eat and cook.  Although some of it took me a while to really get an appreciation for, like I used to hate mushrooms, what the hell was I thinking?  Now I think I'll eat just about anything, well maybe not wort hog or road kill.

During high school and college I worked in a couple of restaurants.  The first was Chinese.  The owners were from Hong Kong and were trying to move to the states before the change over from the Brits to mainland China.  I was front of the house there but man the staff dinners were either amazing or so boring you could put an eye out.  But I got to try some very good food while working there.  Plus they pulled "lets see what the white kid will eat", which I ended up loving.  Lots of great food was experienced there.  The second place was just a mom and pop pizza and pasta joint.  But I cooked.  Started out prepping and ended up doing every job but dishwasher while working during college.  I finally got a feel for when things are cooked properly at this job and I was off and started trying to cook interesting things at home.

One thing I have to add here, I don't measure much when I'm cooking.  At least not in the traditional sense.   It is very much a qualitative thing for me.  I wait for the food to sound or smell or taste the way I want.  And I add or play with ingredients until it does.  Which is sort of funny, as my education and career has been about being a quantitative scientist.  I guess I do enough measuring at the lab, lets use other skills while cooking!  So when I go through how to make things on this blog it will be estimations on what I'm doing and I know this will be hard for some followers (if anyone besides my family starts reading this) but give it a try.  You might lose some food to too much salt or too much fish sauce but you'll get a better feel for the food in time.

ps.  Still can't decided if I should write as Mr. Choppy in the third person or just me!