Chef

I think I should probably become a celebrity chef.

Maybe I'll transition to influencer, if my people demand it.

This is kind of a sudden decision. I decided that I have a lot of offer society the other day when my wife was making her lunch. She had a bowl with some yogurt in it and was adding granola and whatever else people put in something like that. She said, possibly to herself, “I don't trust when they say they've added chocolate to the granola. There usually isn't very much.”

And then she said, “Where did I put the coconut?”

Because I like to be helpful, I said, “There's some tiny Almond Joys in the freezer. Chop one of them up. Chocolate, nuts, coconut... it's everything you're looking for and it's practically a health food.”

I'm not completely sure what she said next, but I think it was something like, “You're a bad person.”

I come by my substitution skills honestly. When I was growing up my mom was a working mother with three kids and a busy farmer husband. If she picked a recipe that called for brussels sprouts and all she had was broccoli – fuzzy and green, close enough. A favorite family memory is the time when she was making a Mexican casserole that called for Doritos and she didn't have any, but she did have something roughly the same size, shape, and texture. Namely, dill pickle potato chips. I'm not sure what ethnic tradition the final product honored, but I'm guessing it's famine related.

Some good things came out of that early training. First, we didn't starve. Second, I'll eat almost anything. Third, if I'm cooking and there's at least two ingredients in the cupboard, supper is going to be on the table.

Actually, I get my skills from both sides of my family. When I was about twelve, we traded tractors, and my father discovered that the exhaust manifold on the new machine was just the right shape to hold a can of soup. Drop it in there in the morning and by noon it would be more or less hot. That may not sound like much, but after a steady diet of sandwiches and stale coffee for a few decades, it was a marvelous advancement. The only issue was that in order to keep from setting the tractor on fire, you had to remove the label before heating. Sometimes you'd get tomato soup, sometimes chicken and stars or clam chowder. No idea what it would be until you opened it, but playing soup roulette was always better than bologna on stale bread.

You might be thinking, “Brent, there's a gazillion cooking shows out there. How in the world will you be able to stand out from the crowd?”

I'm glad you asked. Most of the cooking shows are all about making delectable food from the best ingredients. I mean, if you're starting out with Nova Scotia scallops, new potatoes and fresh asparagus harvested by elves, how hard is it to make a good meal? But if your kids are late for choir practice and the only food in the house is frozen pork chops and Cheetos, and the only clean utensil is a ten-year-old non-stick pan, it'll take a bold move to crank out something edible.

All I need now is the title of the show. I can't decide between “Eat It Or Starve” or “If You Think You Can Do Better, Help Yourself.”

I’ll probably let my public decide.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olson