RichardBlaine

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Created: June 22, 2012

About Me

Richard Blaine's EZ Cooking is my first food blog. It is the marriage of my love of food and my humble urban kitchen in my very first home that allows me to cook in the fashion that I want. Prior as a life long apartment dweller I never had the kind of kitchen that inspired me in the way my very own home kitchen does. It is small, but it is mine! It is a small 35 square foot floor with a 10×8 wall to wall plan that is a three sided kitchen with long granite counter tops with a bend in each and full granite wall splashes. I have a small Whirlpool 4 gas burner stove/oven and Whirlpool over head microwave oven and both of these units accompany my Whirlpool side by side refrigerator. My kitchen is my favorite place in the entire house. I cook everyday and I cook fresh food every night to take to work with me. I love comfort foods, nice and simple although I will take it up a notch or two to bring that comfort to a new level. I love to experiment with food, don’t you? Anyway what I have to offer here is everyday cooking for everyday people made with the ingredients that you have on hand at the time. There of course will be times when I come up with a dish that you may have to plan for in advance because maybe you don’t have a certain something needed to put it all together, that’s cool! I will have lots of videos. Most of my videos will be the dishes being made and I will also have entire tutorials on how to’s and tips and tricks. I am into making the best possible food, but I don’t make it a habit of making dishes that are excessive in nature or over bloated with ingredients that most people don’t have on hand on a daily basis. That being said I do like to make some classic dishes that are very easy to make and are not excessive by virtue of really expensive ingredients. Food is something that happens everyday and I don’t think it is necessary to go on a “treasure hunt” to find “one of a kind” or pretentious ingredients to make dishes with! You don’t need these types of things to be a fantastic cook. This is why the name of my site is EZ Cooking! So who is Richard Blaine? I am not an industry professional in the sense that I am not a food photographer or writer(only for my blog!) and I am not a food critic for some newspaper where I live. So in truth I will probably not win any awards for my food photos and that’s OK! I am not an award winning chef with a mega blog. I am just a man that has always loved to cook since I was a boy and I felt it was time to share my passion with others in order to help me grow and hopefully help others grow as cooks as well! I am the kind of guy that really likes to get immersed in a subject. I am totally immersed in food. (immersed, not submerged! I know that can bring strange images to one’s mind!) I don’t do bologna sandwiches for lunch and I don’t do mac and cheese for dinner, unless I make it from scratch and add my own flair to it! In my daily life I work as a retail cutlery store manager (the largest cutlery store in the Western United States) I come into contact with some of the finest chefs and cooks from some of the finest establishments my town has to offer and naturally the conversation is always about food. If I have the opportunity to talk about cooking I take it. I am always being shown new things that I previously did not know. I was a bartender for a few years and I like spirits. Irish Whiskey, Bourbon and Scotch. All on the upper end of the scale and my friends think I am a booze snob. I guess I am! I am only willing to put certain things in my body and it has to be quality. My specialty is cutlery as I have been in the cutlery industry for over 30 years now. I am a knife fanatic and means kitchen knives as well. I love a good quality kitchen knife! I have been cooking for my family and myself since I was a boy. I used to watch the Galloping Gourmet when I was kid. I was in junior high school and I was cooking dinner for me and my brother. I was in high school I was working in an Italian restaurant being around food and learning some of the recipes of the trade. I went to college and had Asian room mates that taught me how to make my first kim chee and basic noodle dishes. No matter what I have done in life I have been around food, and I have cooked food and loved food in all forms. I can honestly say that I enjoy food from just about anywhere in the world. I would venture to say that people that are open as to what they put in their mouth are for the most part very open minded people. Cooking food for others comes from the heart. My girlfriend calls me the foo foo chef because she say’s that I can take a pound of food and reduce it to 3 or 4 tablespoons in the middle of a plate! OK! I have started this blog as a way to share with you my personal take on food. I know that there are a lot of people out there just like me that love to cook and love to share about cooking. I have decided to start this blog so that I can share with you that which I have learned over the years from self study and education as well as trial and error. Do you have to go to culinary school to become a really great chef/cook? I believe only if you want to! I do believe that you can become a truly excellent home chef/cook from self education and practice and of course the trial and error that comes with learning. So it is my wish to share with you and to cook with you. I will do my best to not leave any stone that I have learned unturned for you. I look forward cooking with you and having you here!

• Likes: Food Naturally! Reading and making people happy one meal at a time!
• All Time Favorite Restaurants: Stromboli's Italain Restaurant(I worked there and they are not longer in business but at the time was considered one of the best Italian restaurants in Los Angeles!)
• Foods I cannot live without: All of them!.....:)

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