Since my having been required to find something else to do for a living, I’ve been working to do just that. Until my efforts to find a new job are successful, my brain needs stimulation.
My wife has become bemused as she has been required to adapt to this new environment: a husband hanging around during cooking sessions and asking endless questions. It’s quite a transition to go through. Suddenly I am at home all the time and interested in cooking. My thinking was that perhaps it’s something that I could actually do well. That curiosity led me to try a recipe or two on my own and, to my big surprise, they worked our pretty well. More, I really enjoyed the cooking experience. Shiny sharp knives, ceramic pots and pans, whiz-bang kitchen help gadgets: it all took on some new meaning. Plus, because I’m a natural clean freak when it comes to kitchen cleaning, my new interest would see me making the cooking messes as a change from just cleaning them up. Our home operates as many do: He/She who cooks, doesn’t clean the kitchen afterwards. I’ve become very good at cleaning up after so many years of being married to an amazing cook.
I heard an ad one afternoon on the local FM radio in Calgary where we live. It was a commercial from Ikea. They were marketing a kitchen event. Follow this link to hear the ad: IKEA Flambe Radio Spot. Perhaps it made you laugh too. What stuck (beside the guys’ Swedish accent) was the word ‘cheffy’. I started making the joke at home anytime I was cooking about ‘Kevin going all ‘cheffy cheffy’ when I made supper. Well, the joke led to conversations with both my wife and our daughter about guys like me finding cooking as a past time later in life.
Driven by these two women in my life, I started thinking about guys like me:
- 60+ in years
- Really good at my former job
- Laid off due to economic challenges
- Trying to find my way back into a job.
Surely there’s others like me who would find a journey into cooking something fun and perhaps even educational.
My cooking adventure began in March of 2019. This first blog post marks my 1st anniversary with food prepping. Over the past year, I’ve shared my food, my thoughts and my wonder at how food chemistry works with anyone who would listen. My family and my friends all have teased me about the CheffyKevy thing but the consistent message has been that I have to write a blog. The blog could be about how cooking has helped me find a new me. That’s a bit too deep for me so I’ll stick with how cooking has definitely opened up my world. It’s also given me something very positive to focus my energy on…and that is something much-needed for folks who are in my situation.
We all have to eat, right? Being a guy who prefers action to talk, my 1st Anniversary celebration is to create this blog. Hopefully, you’ll stay with me as I share recipes, experiences and maybe some life thoughts as I warm up to the idea that this is ‘…helping me find a new me…’ as my family puts it.
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Kevin