Some more about me!!

Well what can say about me, I am a foodie and I have been since I was a small.  Growing up firstly in a small fife town, Tayport, next to the River Tay, this was a laid back place to live.  We had a large garden which my grandfather tended to; we would help him or hinder whatever the case maybe, we moved to Dundee, a huge city that was fast paced compared to the little town over the water, but even in the middle of a housing scheme, my grandfather still had a huge garden and produced our vegetables and fruits, he was very popular with our neighbours’ as not many of them had seen a proper vegetable garden.   So I have grown up surrounded by good food and someone in the kitchen producing good wholesome meals, being subjected to weird and wonderful concoctions’, for example once when I was about 5 or 6, there was a very strange smell coming from the kitchen, but it was wafting through the whole house, but believe me the smell was not a pleasant one, in fact it was quite revolting, like some old vegetables, with trepidation I entered the kitchen, usually, with comforting smells, and asked “what is that horrible smell”, to which the answer was , don’t be so cheeky “mac” that’s my lunch I’m cooking, and for your information it’s a delicacy called tripe, tripe I said what is that, to which my grandfather informed me that it was a sheep’s stomach, yuk was my response, but because my family wanted us all to have a good knowledge of food we had to try all sorts of things, so that day with the revolting smell was my day to try that awful offal tripe, to this day I can still remember the texture and that disgusting taste, but this has given me the insight to always try new and different foods and ingredients, on the flip side some of the foods brought into my house were amazing, driving to Arbroath buying fresh crabs bringing them home and putting them in the bath so we could have dressed crab, now that for me was amazing, seeing these live crustaceans, helping  prepare them for this wonderful dish, the meat soft and fluffy, the taste fresh and clean a slight hint of fish, wonderful.  So it just seemed the obvious career choice, a chef, to cook and bake and make people happy with the creations I made, I enrolled in college and my journey began.  I have as you can probably tell had a lot of influence from my grandfather who was a huge inspiration to me and I believe I became so involved in food and cooking because of him, I want to share with my family and yourselves, the passion I have for food and cooking, for them and you to appreciate what goes into the food and to use the freshest ingredients, produced locally if possible, if not locally our own country’s produce or better still from your own garden.