Feeding My Passion

This evening, I’m going to be teaching a cooking class at the St. Joseph Public Library, Cooking with Herbs. It’s another thing Chef Tom has asked me to do since he’s going to be very, very busy today with a wedding rehearsal dinner and a charity event both at Port 412 tonight. He was actually asked to do the class by the chef at the The Pump House, also in downtown St. Joe, which is just a block away from us, but their chef is going to be super busy as well, so he asked Tom. And now I have this hot potato. Just kidding.

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Servers and cooks have difficult jobs. I’ve hosted at Brewster’s in New Buffalo, Mich., which is a very busy restaurant, so I’ve dealt with the public and the servers a lot. But I haven’t really ever been a server, so I won’t pretend to know and understand more than I do. I’ve spent much more time in the kitchen, and I know that one of the things that drives me and every other cook I know nuts is when hot food sits dying in the “window,” ready to be picked up but cooling off, or just sitting there under the lamp.

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Chef Tom is very busy these days, over committed actually, so he’s asked me to do some of his things, mainly the public-appearance sort of things. He usually teaches a cooking segment for 98.3 The Coast, which is based in Benton Harbor. Every Tuesday, DJ Robin Van Dyke does a live broadcast from Perennial Accents in downtown St. Joe, just a couple blocks from Port 412. It’s a beautiful kitchen and homewares store, and they have a nice demonstration kitchen where Tom and Robin do the cooking segment from.

While I taught cooking classes before, about 4 so far I think, being live on air, and with someone making a video recording, made me a bit nervous. Read more »