What the Kitchen Told Me: Powerful Lessons from the Kitchen for Life!

By David Thoreau

YOU DON’T HAVE TO SETTLE WHERE YOU ARE NOW OR BE DESTINED FOR A LIFE OF STRUGGLE

But you do have to recognize right here, right now, that you are the sum of what you consume. So if you want to change the world around you, it’s going to start by changing the world within you.

Powerful and practical, What the Kitchen Told Me shares strategic insights designed to:

-Motivate -Create -Inspire

So whether you just need a little seasoning or your dish needs an entire overhaul, What the Kitchen Told Me absolutely delivers on time-tested truths learned straight from the kitchen. For those who are ready to create the life they’ve imagined, put on your apron, get into this kitchen, and let’s cook us something special!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jun 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483448718

Book preview

WHAT THE

KITCHEN

TOLD ME

titlepage2.psd

Copyright © 2016 David (Thoreau) Jones.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4870-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4871-8 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 12/29/2016

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Not Small after All

Chapter 2 Get over Here, Boy! The Food Don’t Cook Itself!

Chapter 3 Have a Recipe

Chapter 4 Jungle Cook

Chapter 5 Integrated Pest Control Management

Chapter 6 Pot Lucky

Chapter 7 The Secret Ingredient

About the Author

CHAPTER 1

Not Small after All

The Lord has blessed this young man with a spirit of service, and his gift of cooking will make room for him.

What? I thought to myself, doing my very best to put on a poker face as Pastor Michael Small shared his sentiments with the congregation. It wasn’t like I could run away because that would look really awkward. Imagine me making a beeline for the exit while one of the mothers of the church leans over to her friend in the pew and whispers, See, I told you that boy was demon possessed. So I stood there, limbs frozen; the only thing moving was my thoughts.

There were a lot of blessings I’d rather have than the gift of cooking and spirit of service. Why couldn’t he say athlete or rapper? The gift of making money—I don’t know, something cooler. Maybe he should have asked me before he called me to the front of the church what my motivation for going to culinary school was in the first place. He probably would have changed his mind if he had known my only real reason for attending Pennsylvania Culinary was because I was tired of eating TV dinners, so as a result I wanted to do the following:

a) Find out what real food tasted like and

b) See if maybe a C student from the ghetto could actually make something of himself and get the hell out of here.

I wasn’t like them, the smart kids. Toward the end of my senior year, these wannabe members of the clerisy would go around school bragging about their full-ride scholarship offers to various institutions of higher learning, waving their papers as they skipped down the hallways like Michael Jackson’s scarecrow character in The Wiz. Wannabe gangsters would make fun of these kids, always mentioning how they were trying to act white, but even the gangsters knew that none of their comments would matter anymore as they would post up against their lockers, face scrunched and arms crossed like toddlers when you tell them they can’t get a snack or a juice box. The smart kids knew it was over. They were moving out of the hood. They knew that in a few short months, they would be with the members of their tribe: other smart kids from across the country, never to see the broke wannabe gangster, music mogul, or other TV personality they were giving their most superlative effort to emulate, anymore. They knew in a few months they would be easing on down the road.

And there I was in the middle, not bad enough for the gangsters and cool kids, yet not smart enough to be received as a member of the intelligentsia. In a few months, school would be over, and I wouldn’t have a place to go. I started wondering what I was good at, taking an inventory of my skills as one would in a restaurant prior to placing a food order and then it hit me.

I can do this cooking thing!

I can do this, I said aloud.

Everyone told me I was good at it, from the high school cafeteria ladies, to my supervisors at KFC and the Ground Round restaurant, heck, even the people at the local church. A short time ago, a representative from Pennsylvania Culinary came to my school, touting the benefits of their program. Near the end of the presentation, she waved these flip cards, which on the front had the role of a person working in a restaurant and on the back had how much money they would make. My eyes lit up as she mentioned that when I graduated I could start as a sous chef making $26,000 per year. The thugs in my class squawked, That ain’t no money. Maybe not, but I envisioned graduating at nineteen with my degree in culinary arts and making $26,000 to start as not being too bad. In June of 1998, I left for the place that no matter where I’ve been or where I’ve gone, I’ve always considered to be home: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania…with the Pastor’s blessing, of course.

Fast Forward

Pastor Small was right, my gift of cooking and spirit of service have taken me around the world. They have opened more doors for me than I could have ever imagined as an eighteen-year-old boy. I’ve been to Tokyo, Amsterdam, France, Germany, Thailand, Mexico, London, Uzbekistan, Dubai (like thirty times—I love this place, y’all), Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other places. At present, I find myself no longer working in kitchens but still providing that same spirit of service working for a major company in Atlanta, Georgia, as a project manager. Will I return