Cook Without Fear: It is Easier Than You Think

Cooking can be very confusing at first. But with a little practice and the right attitude you will be amazed.

If you know me, you most likely know Kathy (Vassalotti) Faria too. Kathy and I were married in 2019 on September 28th, but we've been together since 2016.

Here is an Actual Un-Retouched Photo of my wife and me taken on our wedding day.

Not really!! Kathy just likes messing around with FaceApp  and other cool stuff on her iPad.

(but I really miss having hair, so I like this picture a lot)

In our domestic life, the arrangement is, that I'm the Master of the Kitchen and Basement and she is in charge of Everything Else. However, as time goes on she has slowly taken over the basement. But I'm not complaining.

In addition to proofreading most anything I write, Kathy is the VP of Quality Assurance for all the musical things that I do. You will never hear one of my songs that hasn't been completely vetted by Kathy.

She is also the one who keeps in me touch with the world through Facebook. If you follow her posts there, you have undoubtedly seen some of the meals that I have made because Kathy likes to post pictures of my cooking for all the world to see. I find it quite flattering.

What most people don't know about me is that

for most of my life... I had absolutely no idea of how to prepare food.

I Was Totally Terrified of Cooking

TRUE STORY: When I was about 15, I used to enjoy watching the Galloping Gourmet on TV. I never thought about actually cooking anything, I just liked to watch the show because Graham Kerr was a very entertaining host. He made really elegant food and he always had a glass of wine close at hand throughout the entire show.

So, feeling cocky one Sunday, I told my Mom I was going to make the dessert that night.

I spent the entire afternoon making a lemon mousse dessert. Not from scratch. Not even from a recipe... From a package. I'm pretty sure that all I had to do was open a little box and pour the ingredients together with a couple of eggs and some water following some simple directions. I was so nervous the whole time, that this process took me about 3 hours and on top of everything else, I made one hell of a mess in my Mother's kitchen.

That one afternoon really changed my life because it made me very leery of doing anything in the kitchen beyond opening the refrigerator or putting a Pop-Tart in the toaster.

Fast forwarding many years... to the early days of cable TV. Back before On Demand and before you could talk to your cable remote and go right to the thing you want, you had to actually search through an enormous list of channels looking for something interesting that was on RIGHT NOW.

One fine day I happened upon The Food Network and my life began to change again!

This was the golden era of the Food Nework before "reality shows" were invented. They didn't have stupid chef competitions then. They actually showed you how to cook.

Suddenly I had a source of information that showed me how to make delicious food, step by step. One of my favorite shows was Good Eats with Alton Brown. It was an entertaining, but educational show about all kinds of food items that we eat all the time, and you not only learned how to make them, but he also talked about the science and history behind the food... It was entertaining, informative and it was always fun.

One time he actually dedicated an entire hour-long show to SALT.  Boring..? You might think so, but it wasn't. The episode was called Eat This Rock He talked about WHERE it comes from, HOW it makes everything taste better, and HOW TO apply it in some unusual ways.

Did you know that after extensive testing at the Good Eats lab, it was determined that 209 deg Farenheit is the ideal temperature of the water used to make coffee. OK... that's a bit too far. But truthfully, it was a great show and if you can find it On Demand, let me know.

Good Eats was awesome, but the show that had the most impact on me was a series called Emeril Live  ... This was the one that I watched every day. I loved it!! It was like a variety show/talk show with cooking lessons thrown in. There was even a kick-ass band that played at the beginning and end of the show (but not nearly enough, unfortunately)... but most importantly, there was Emeril Lagassé,

This guy totally changed my outlook on cooking... By the time the show went off the air, I was well on my way to being a good cook. Not because I learned every technique that there is, but because I was no longer afraid of the kitchen.

He made me realize that if you just use your head, choose good ingredients and try like hell not to ruin them, that you can cook delicious food nearly every time.

Emeril, despite being an entertaining and "down to earth" TV host, was a classically trained chef, a restauranteur and an experienced teacher of the culinary arts. There was something about the way he talked and sounded that struck a chord with me. In fact, it turns out that I have a few things in common with Emeril.

• Although he's famous for his hugely successful Louisiana style restaurants in cities all over the country, he actually grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts just about 3 blocks from Saint Anne's Hospital where I was born in the same neighborhood as my mother's and father's family where I enjoyed many a Sunday dinner with grandparents.

• We share a common heritage as well. Lagassé is a very French last name, but like my entire family, his mother was Portuguese, and as Emeril once said, "Mom ran the house, so we grew up Portuguese." (no wonder I liked him...)

• To top it off, we both graduated from Johnson & Wales College in Providence, RI although I majored in computer science and he was in their world famous culinary arts program.

• Unfortunately for me, I'm nowhere near as financially successful as Emeril, so that's where the similarity ends. But I can't help feeling a certain kinship with him anyway.

The Secret To Fearless Cooking

Emeril's show convinced me that even someone like me can actually learn how to cook.

He accomplished this by providing simple and effective ways of avoiding the many pitfalls that can ruin a beautiful meal and drove home his points through the repetition of notable catch-phrases including...

"I don't know where you get your beef, but where I get mine ...

IT DON'T COME SEASONED ! ! "

And WHEN things occasionally go wrong at the stove, to remind us to not lose our cool, he would often repeat common sense mantras like these ...

Don't Call Food 911, just (do this...)

"Relax! If your sauce is getting too dry ...

ADD SOME LIQUID ! ! "

And my favorite ... To keep guys like me from burning everything because we always cooked on HIGH heat, he reminded us of the obvious solution which is to turn down the heat

"Use Your Knobs... !!"

I'll never be able to explain all the helpful things that I learned from him in this one blog entry. But, all these things added up, and over time I slowly lost my fear of cooking and I came to the realization that I was making delicious meals pretty much every day. Most of the time, without even using a recipe.

Believe me...That gives you a really good feeling.

I'd like for you to be able to experience that feeling too!

• I'd like to share with you the skills that I have acquired and I'd like to learn some new ones from YOU

• I want help you to Lose All Your Fear of the kitchen and I want to share some simple, delicious recipes that you can make even if you're not quite "Fearless" yet.

• From time to time, I might throw in a music video or maybe a guitar or saxophone lesson. Or maybe a story or two from my experiences over the many years that I played with some amazing musicians.

I hope you and your family can benefit from my journey as I transitioned from being a Culinary Menace to actually surprising myself with how easy Cooking Without Fear can be.

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Until the Next Time ... So Long from Bob's Diner

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