How It Started
For me it all started when tragedy struck our family. My Father was killed in a car accident when I was 13 years old. Suddenly over night my life changed from just a being a normal teenager into more of a caretaker as my Mom, had to find work, while I took care of the house and began to Cook for the family. Not that Mom totally left the kitchen. Absolutely not! Let me tell you about my mother. Her maiden name was Lillian Barrilleaux. She was a legitimate, bonafide South Louisiana Cajun from Houma, Louisiana. It don’t get more cajun than that. Of course, she could cook. I attribute everything I know from my time with her in the kitchen. These are precious memories now, but at the time, not so much.
If you do the math, given my current age, I have been cooking now for over 60 years. In the beginning, what started as a necessity, now has become just part of who I am. It’s what I do, It’s what I love, It’s my passion. I read articles, I buy cookbooks, search the Internet, go to cooking schools, I watch cooking shows. Cooking is just a huge part of my life. Not that I don’t have other interests, I do, but eventually, every conversation with me will ultimately end around the subject of food. So much so, that LoveTwoCook, until now, was my favorite password.
So with all this pent-up energy and the strong desire to teach what I have learned, I needed an outlet. That’s when we started my YouTube channel 10 years ago. Fortunately, I married someone who is equally passionate about food. He’s not a cook. Emphasis on NOT A COOK, but loves everything about food. He is my encourager, and sometimes inspiration. He is my Videographer, Video Editor, and Website Administrator. It is safe to say if it involves A computer, he takes care of it. So we make a pretty good team.
We started the channel and as it sometimes happens, life happens. We moved and where we moved we just didn’t think we had an appropriate backdrop to show off my talents. Looking back we were wrong, very wrong, but you just can’t look back. Even now we don’t feel we are cooking in less than adequate conditions, but you know what, we make it work. Here is my learning experience. It is not the kitchen, But who is in the kitchen cooking. A major paradigm shift for me. I suddenly remembered how my husband and I cooked a full 7-course Thanksgiving dinner, including 1 fried turkey and 2 fried ducks with a deep frier and a hot plate in a screened shelter in a Texas State Park for around 14 people. And there were leftovers for 2 to 3 days. People still talk about it. It is a subject for another Blog for another time. That is even today a very good memory.
So my husband said I think we should restart our channel because you have a lot to show us. You are going to cook anyway, I might as well video it and put it up on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Then we realized, hey people will need a recipe to follow, so we created this Webpage to catalog the recipes. And we hope that this Web Page is doing what we hoped it would.
All that said, allow me to explain exactly who I am. I am a Cook. I am not a Chef. I take a recipe and most of the time I follow that recipe. I will change it to fit my taste but the majority of the time I will follow that recipe. A Chef creates the recipes I follow. A chef really understands the physics and dynamics of cooking. They are in the truest sense, artists. Chefs use favor, color, and aroma as their pallet to create something totally new and different. I have developed a few of my own recipes but still, that does not mean I am a Chef. I have a huge respect for Chefs.
I do feel I am pretty good instructor. I love teaching and sharing what I have learned. I have a lot to share. And I am constantly learning. So I’ll finish, my very first Blog with this. I will continue to cook, my husband will continue to video, as long as we continue to have fun doing it. I hope you will come along with me, because like my husband said, I have a lot that I want to share with you.
Darlene
