About ‘Bob’s Good Food’
Hello! I’m Bobby, and this is a website dedicated to my cooking. A bit vain? Absolutely.
If you’re here to see anything considered “expert,” you’ll be sorely disappointed. I’m just an average person that’s gotten into cooking and wanted to share what I’ve been up to with others.
Over time, I hope that I’ll be able to demonstrate some personal growth and help instill confidence in others to take up cooking. It has turned out to be one of the most attainable and rewarding things I’ve gotten interested in.
For the longest time I was unbelievably intimidated at the mere idea of cooking. So much could go wrong I had thought. Certainly, it takes years of study and dedication to be any good at cooking.
As it turns out, simply giving it a shot is all it takes. I’ll be chronicling the various shots I take right here.
So, who am I?
You’re not here for me, you’re here for the food! So I’ll keep this short.
I’m Bobby. I am a sales/marketing professional that grew up in the Chicagoland suburbs. I enjoy playing golf and love talking with people.
I’m married to my loving and incredibly patient wife, Liz.
We have an awesome tricolor Collie, his name is Scout.
My culinary background
Simply put: I don’t, have one. Nothing formal, anyway.
To reinforce just how lacking my culinary background is, here’s a quick overview of my history with cooking and food:
Growing up, my parents always made a point of ensuring we had family dinners at least six nights a week. My dad is a phenomenal cook and would prepare all kinds of meals for us. The rule in the Hutchinson household was that we always had to - at a bare minimum - try everything on our plate. I learned early and often that brussel sprouts weren’t for me; each time they were prepared I had to give them a shot… they never seemed to get better. To each their own.
My dad also enjoys getting the rest of us involved while he cooks, so I was often recruited to help with the preparation of meals several evenings a week. At the time, I considered being pulled from Legos or Nintendo64 a real nuisance… Goldeneye wasn’t going to beat itself.
In hindsight, though, it was incredibly beneficial. I utilize a ton of the little things my dad showed me, sometimes without realizing it.
Bottom line: while I was living at home, I was eating fantastic meals and very much taking them for granted.
Once I went to college, it’s safe to say that my weekly diet’s variance diminished substantially. Frozen pizzas and meals on campus were awfully convenient. When I was home, the meals my parents would make for me were greatly appreciated (my mom’s pot roast is second to none and the open-faced Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches my dad would make for my buddies and me were addicting). While it’s true that the means to cook great meals were severely lacking while I lived on campus, it’s also true that I just simply didn’t have any interest in spending time preparing food. There was plenty going on and easy food tasted perfectly fine. Why spend the time? Even once I was off campus and had a kitchen at my disposal, I was totally uninterested in spending any more time than I needed to on preparing food. The opportunity costs were (mistakenly) far too high!
Post college, things didn’t really change. Despite the fact that I now had the means (i.e: money and a real kitchen that I didn’t have to share), I hadn’t established habits that facilitate exploration into cooking. I had created an odd, internal catch-22 for myself: I haven’t done any cooking before, and don’t really know how. It would be too difficult to start now. Why bother?
Then things changed. Liz had been encouraging me to take up cooking for some time and insisted I would enjoy it. Generally, I agreed that I’d like it, but still considered it pretty intimidating. Honestly, I didn’t want to fail.
On a lazy Sunday afternoon I went into the galley kitchen of our first apartment and opened the fridge. We were running a little low on food. It was reminiscent of a scene in a movie where someone goes to look for something to eat and finds a single beer, some condiments, and a note saying to go to the store. It wasn’t quite that bad, but we certainly didn’t have any frozen pizzas.
Despite the lack of convenient food, we did have three things:
1. a package of pre-seasoned carne asade steak
2. mozzarella cheese
3. a baguette
The open-faced steak sandwiches my dad would make for me and my buddies came to mind. The meat was already seasoned, so the only thing I could do to mess these sandwiches up was overcook them. I sliced the bread, cooked the meat, assembled the sandwiches, and carefully monitored them in the oven. An hour later after setting out on my short culinary quest, Liz and I were eating delicious sandwiches. It was just the spark I needed.