Food
The preparing of food is where I find my calm. I love how onions go from being crisp and spicy, to soft and sweet. The idea of transforming something from a raw state to something “wow” is amazing to me. Maybe it’s not even cooking the item. It is how it enhances the dish that it is in. There are so many ways to enjoy food. My wife will ask me, “What do you call this dish?”, and usually there is no title. Roasted chicken with blistered onions, don’t forget about the chimichuri, and the grilled mushrooms, oh yeah and the herb roasted potatoes smashed and covered with fontina cheese. That is a mouthful. Funny though, I want to eat that right now. Get in my belly! So much fun. I think this is also where I have some faults. I can tend to take over a situation and make people feel uncomfortable. Sometimes I mean to, and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I just don’t pay attention to what I say (bad Ivan). It’s weird. I love when someone cooks for me. Even when it is bad (I would never say that out loud, well maybe...). There is something about enjoying food that makes me forget about the bad things in the world. I think we need a lot more of that right now, more than anything else. Think about it. That first bite of cake, a simple pistachio, or that first drink of wine...
Booze
I have always been a huge fan of everything fermented. Wine, beer, whisky, vodka, gin, grappa, cider... love it all. A while back I interviewed with a restaurant for a sous chef position. I had several interviews. It ended with a conversation between myself and the chef. He let me know that I was not going to get the job. Of course I asked him what I needed to do to put myself in a position to be better equipped to get the job. He told me that I needed more knowledge about wine. What?!? I’m a cook, why do I need to know more about wine? It was one of the best conversations I have had in my career. It helped me to understand that everything in the restaurant world is intertwined. The front of the house with the back of the house, the event specialists and the chefs, and of course the food and the wine. Needless to say I started devouring all of the information about wine that I could. I quit my cooking job, and went to work at a wine store. I would never allow that to be the reason I did not get a job again. I was tasting between 80 and 100 wines a week. Learning everything I could. What grapes were grown where, and why. Acidity levels, and how that worked with food. What foods went with what kinds of wine. I loved all of it. I would even take bad wines, and figure out how to make them taste better by pairing them with certain types of food. It was so exciting!
Friends
I have been very lucky in my life. I have always been able to be around people that are truly kind. Granted, everyone is different. We have friends that insist on being the center of attention, then we have friends that like to hide on the side lines. Ones that work so hard to just be good, and others that don’t work at all who excel at their jobs. When I was in college I used to work twice as hard as the guy sitting right next to me to be half as good as him at the trumpet. Then I would leave school and go to work. At work I would work half as hard to be twice as good as the cook standing next to me. At work we were a team, and if one person failed then the whole team failed. I think that is the big difference in those two worlds, and why I paid more attention to one and not enough to the other. I have always been in a position to help the team in any restaurant I worked for. At the end of the day it didn’t matter if I failed, it mattered if the team succeeded. Being in the music world was so much fun, but I never felt that team aspect like I do in the restaurant business.
Every person I have had the pleasure to be acquainted with has helped me to become who I am today. So many wonderful people. I couldn’t even begin to thank all of them. Wife, cook, carpet walker, brother, to name a few. We surround ourselves with the people we want to be like. I will forever be in debt to all of them.
I am blessed with the life that I have.
