Laura

I have many passions, food being a main one. I love eating, drinking, baking, making cheeses, occasionally cooking and did i mention eating?

I never anticipated being this passionate about sustainable living, ethical treatment of animals and general food know how however i think that the more you discover about food and what it is truly meant to be like the more you want to have access to food that is like that.

On the rare occasion we ate steak, i grew up eating it cooked well done. Red/pink meat meant it was not cooked properly, it was distasteful and therefore not good. And i didn’t question it. However when i started work at the restaurant where i met Kel, it being fine dine, i learned a couple of things. The more you cook a steak, the tougher it becomes. It also shrinks in size because all the juices are being cooked out. As a waitress i had to try everything on the menu, and i had to try it at it’s best. So no trying well done steak for me. I wasn’t forced to have it blue or anything however from memory it was medium. I’d never tasted a steak so tasty in all my life! It wasn’t ‘bloody’ like so many people complain. It wasn’t tough, it was juicy and full of flavour. I’d never really been a fan of steak before but i was now! It made me realise how uneducated i actually was and instead of actually knowing what i was talking about, i was just reiterating what my parents had done (apart from my Stepdad – he ate “pink” meat but i was already set in my ways). I’m not having a go at my parents at all, parents do the best job they can, but it’s up to YOU to research and find out for yourself the truth of things. In all aspects of your life, not just food. I think this is what bugs me so much, people eat a dish at a restaurant and they complain about how awful it was. Sometimes yes, it is awful, however there is also that it’s simply not to their taste. People need to learn the difference between what is not good and what is simply just not to their taste! And it’s okay not to like it, but instead of being rude, pulling a face and saying it’s disgusting, you can politely acknowledge that you’re not really a fan of it but that you’re sure it was lovely.

Also i want to point out that i don’t have a problem if you like a certain food the way you like it even if it’s not the way it’s meant to be. That’s fine. I have a problem with the fact that if i cooked you the traditional version, you would stick up your nose and tell me i don’t know how to cook. For example. My youth pastor on youth camps would make ‘beef stroganoff’ and i loved it. It was really yummy. One day i asked Kel to cook me beef stroganoff and i was like, what is this? This isn’t beef stroganoff! However it was. I’d grown up on a modified version of beef stroganoff FULL of sour cream. Traditional beef stroganoff doesn’t have that much sour cream. It wasn’t that i didn’t like Kel’s dish, however i was expecting something different to what i got, which created disappointment. The solution? When i feel like real beef stroganoff, that’s what i ask for. When i feel like the ‘beef stroganoff’ i grew up on, i ask for creamy, mushroom beef instead. I guess what I’m getting at is, you may go to a restaurant and be disappointed because what you get is not what you wanted. I get that. However if they are actually serving you what they are meant to be, that’s not their fault. You have to remember that maybe what you like or are used to isn’t actually what the dish is meant to be. And you can’t go and give them a bad review simply because they didn’t serve the dish up like you’re used to. That is not fair on them and it does a disservice to you, showing how ignorant you are.

It saddens me though that many restaurants are serving up dishes like beef stroganoff and they aren’t what they are meant to be. And people aren’t questioning it. We’re becoming a society where we don’t actually find things out for ourselves, we just blindly follow. Did you know that most traditional carbonaras don’t actually have any cream? In some parts of Italy they do, but it’s a very minute amount. If you go to a restaurant, most of them serve carbonara swimming in cream. And most people think that’s traditional carbonara. No wonder we’re all getting so fat.

I don’t want to be negative, however working in a restaurant can really make you bitter about people (can’t you tell?) and how ignorant they can be. And mean. And i wasn’t even cooking the food! How would you feel if you slaved away in a hot kitchen creating a meal for someone and they turned up their nose simply because ‘they didn’t like it’? I’m sure many parents do know how that feels! If you have a good reason not to like it, like your chicken was raw, fair enough! Otherwise, check your manners.

I don’t know everything, i’m still learning however i have come a long way from being ignorant. For me this blog is not only to share our experiences and gain knowledge from others, but to challenge people in their mindsets of food and everything to do with it.

Another of my passions is reading. I actually have a blog about it! Check it out www.readingforthemasses.wordpress.com