Chris Berry On The Net

Cooking is something I’ve enjoyed for as long as I can remember. My mother cooked out of a sense of maternal obligation, but it was obvious that she never got a moment of pleasure from it. I realized at a very early age that if I wanted something really good I was going to have to learn to make it on my own. I was no more than 8 or 9 when I started teaching myself to cook.

In 2004, I decided to turn my love of food into a business. Foodies started out as a cooking school, and over time we expanded our offerings to include special events, prepared foods and meal assembly. I enjoyed certain aspects of the work, but I realized early on that there is a world of difference between cooking for pleasure and preparing industrial quantities of food on a daily basis.

When I left Foodies after 4 years, I pretty much left my passion for cooking behind. For the first several months I barely set foot in the kitchen, and when I did it was to create something as quick and easy as possible. The fact that my son was still a toddler and my wife was on a severely restricted cardiac diet didn’t help, and it usually meant that we each ended up eating something completely different for every meal.

I don’t recall exactly when it happened, but sometime in the past few months I started to enjoy cooking again. I think the cooler weather has something to do with it. It also helps that Robert will turn 4 in March, and he is getting to the point where he will eat many of the same things that we enjoy. I actually look forward to preparing meals now, and Robert is an eager assistant. Teaching classes was the thing I enjoyed most at Foodies, and I look forward to teaching him.

One of the biggest challenges I face is that I grew accustomed to working in an amazing kitchen that’s bigger than my entire house, and to having people clean up after me whenever I made a mess. I also had access to a wide range of ingredients that aren’t available to the general public. Now I have to make do with what I can find in the grocery store, and work in a tiny kitchen that hasn’t been remodeled since 1971. It’s not easy, but I am having fun again.

I’m not sure if fun is the word I would use to describe the pleasure that I get from blogging, but this is definitely something that I do for my own satisfaction. Most of what I’ve written here lately has been political in nature, but I never really intended for this to become a political blog. It is simply a reflection of my personal interests at the moment. Now that I’m back in the kitchen, I’m probably going to begin writing about food and sharing some of my favorite recipes. I won’t stop writing about politics, or introversion, or any of the other subjects that interest me, but I will be adding to the mix. It might be a strange mix, but it’s mine.