Find Your Farmer

     In honor of food day, I want to ask everyone to make a concerted effort to find and utilize your local farmers and ranchers.  This is a movement that is similar to the going green movement where groups are trying to encourage the world to reduce, reuse, and recycle.  Going green will definitely cut down on the extremely high amount of resources that are used but so will buying local.
     We all know that gasoline prices are out of control and we've all heard about resourceful ways to decrease the use of gasoline but what I think that most people forget about is the gasoline that's used to transport and supply all of the food that we find in the stores.  Going local will not eliminate the usage of gasoline but it will decrease it considerably.  For example, my wife and I went to a wedding in Crested Butte, Coloardo a few months ago and while there, we decided to visit a local farmers market.  We bought local honey, goat cheese, and lemon cucumbers.  These items were not only cheap, they were delicious.
     What's also exciting is that you can typically purchase items from local suppliers, farmers markets, or artisan markets that you wouldn't readily find in the local grocery store.  How often do you see lemon cucumbers in the local grocery store?  On top of that, the items in the grocery store only wish to have the same flavor.  Take apples for example, when going to your local grocery store, these apples look great.  They're large and plump and they have this great shine to them.  Did you know that naturally, or organically grown apples generally are not supposed to be that big?  Did you also know that the shine of those apples is wax?  None of this will harm you but why eat something like that if you have the option of getting something local thats much more delicious. 
     While not all produce is locally available, there will be plenty of options to choose from.  Consider the season and try and make the effort to use something local and support the locals that work so hard to bring something delicious to your table.

Life on the Line

     It's been nearly a year since I've left the restaurant business and it didn't feel real until recently.  After fifteen years in the food & beverage business, I started to believe that my work life would only be defined by what I did everyday in those kitchens.  It controls almost every aspect of who you are and it starts to become difficult to have a life outside of it.  For some, this lifestyle works and they live and breathe restaurants, I just can't anymore. 
     While I absolutely love everything about the food & beverage business, enough to write this blog, I really needed a life instead.  I know that some of my chef friends that read this will criticize my decision but to each his own.  October 5th, 2010 is when I started to work for Whole Foods.  I was definitely anxious, nervous, and basically unsure when I started with this company on whether or not it was for me.  It was so ingrained in my head that if I call myself a chef, I would have to work in the nicest restaurants and build my reputation up so that I could one day open my own restaurant.  While I believe that I could definitely have a successful restaurant, I would never be happy with the lack of time that I could spend with my wife and future kids.
     Having the job I have now, and having the free time in my life that I have, it has inspired something inside of me to speak of my Life on the Line.  This will be a series of blog entries that will talk about the typical day that we would have and some of the fires that come up (not literally) that we have to be creative enough to put out.  It's a stressful, chaotic, intense, and addictive career choice if you find that it's in your blood.  To those that are contemplating this lifestyle, choose wisely.  While it can be a very rewarding side of the Food & Beverage business, it can also make you miss some important milestones in one's life.  Here we go.