New to the forums

[Drac]

Hi,

I started cooking when I was 12. My mother went to work full time at night & when I asked who was going to cook dinner she tossed the Betty Crocker cookbook at me & told to start learning. That was 26 years ago & I’m still learning.

While I have spent some time in restaurant kitchens I am just a hobbyist in cooking. I’ve picked up a lot of different tastes & styles from travel in both the Navy & since. I ate my way across Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, & Asia, as well as America.

While I do all the cooking for my wife (hates to cook) & me, I am mostly into pastry & confections. I love the formulas & precision of both. Recently I’ve been playing with my Christmas candy sets by adding unusual flavors such as mango, habanero, dark chocolate truffles, raspberry-chipotle fudge & salted caramels. I have also started making my own molded truffles & am trying to learn how to decorate them.

I found this site while looking for information on entremets. I love spending days on making on desserts. Entremets have opened a whole new window for learning about balance of flavors & textures.

My other two main passions are knife making & a flag project I started a few years ago. I got into knives through cooking & quickly got addicted to making them.

The flag project is a list of various historical sites, ships & monuments around the country that I have/will send the flag to be flown. Several notable ones done so far are:

USS Utah & USS Arizona on Dec 7th
Fort McHenry on both days of the anniversary of the booming
Iwo Jima Park on the 50th anniversary of the battle
USS Constitution

It has flown at about 40 places & the list is just over 100. I’m always looking out for more sites to add to the list, which I share with my friends at the Reserve base for retirement flags. Recently I added & flew at the India Star, the world’s oldest active ship.

I’m really looking forward to learning through this site & meeting a bunch of new people,
Jim

[Mezzaluna]

Jim, we're happy to welcome you to Chef Talk. We have people from just about every area of interest you mentioned, including knife-makers and knife enthusiasts. You'll want to make use of our board's search tool to see our earlier conversations about them.

With your broad background in cultures and food I'm sure you'll find plenty to hold your interest here. Besides the forums, don't miss the cooking articles, cookbook reviews, recipes and the new photo gallery. When you've been a member for a little while you'll be able to post photos, links, etc.

We'll look forward to your participation in the community. Welcome!
Mezzaluna