Eat Well, Be Well, Have Fun

“The way you make an omelet reveals your character.” – Anthony Bourdain 

Hello fellow food, drink and life lovers.  Id like to take a minute to introduce myself. 

My name is Tim Blanski, I live in the country outside of Spring Grove with my wife Lisa Catton, our two goats Jack and Luna, our two remaining barn cats Geraldine and Hazel, our last remaining chicken named … wait for it … Chicken, and her newly adopted orphaned pigeon named Nosie Rosie.

I am not a writer. I have never written for publication. I did however, have my first and only ever recipe contest entry win an Honorable Mention in the Star Tribune’s Best Recipe Competition!! It was some years ago, and I have traveled far since then, but in the Meatless Main Dish category I won with my Mushroom Manicotti with Asparagus Spears in a Tomato Basil Sauce. The main lesson from that experience, I think, was go with a shorter, easier to remember name, and don’t put the whole recipe in the name of the dish!

A few other things to know about me and food.  I love food! There are so many wonderful things to buy, bake, cook, roast, grill and smoke!  I love to eat!  I eat too fast, which is a bad habit formed in early childhood.  I grew up in a house with seven children and my parents.  My mom was not a particularly good cook.  She came of age with the advent of canned beans, Hamburger Helper, boxed macaroni, white bread and eight hungry mouths to feed!  Despite her best efforts, it always seemed like there was enough “seconds” for only four or five, not all eight of us.  Hence, it really was pretty much Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, quickest ones done get the most.  If you wanted seconds you had to eat fast and make your move.

Despite how much I love to cook and eat, I hate recipes. Rarely follow them. Often modify the ones I do read, with the goal of improving it.  I use recipes mostly as an idea. A suggestion to try and make something that I like, not what someone else liked. Selfish perhaps, but don’t we all want to eat what we like? I hope to share experiences around how and why I do that, and hopefully provide some entertaining reading along the way.

Maybe as an example of where my relationship with cooking came from, I’ll share a small story that has always stuck in my mind when people ask me where I learned to cook.  Ironically it goes back to the not so great cooking of my wonderfully sweet mom.  I attended The College of St. Thomas, now University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. After two years in the dorm eating college cafeteria food and single-handedly contributing the success of the Domino’s Pizza store on Grand Ave, I moved into an apartment with a college buddy off campus.

Moving off campus sort of thrust me into the world of shopping, buying, cooking and fending for myself. It was early after my move I decided I wanted to make chili.  People who know me now, know I literally have award winning chili with trophies to prove it, and have made amazing chili of a wide variety of sorts … but that’s for another column.  Anyway, I called my Mom and asked her for her chili recipe. It amounted more or less of hamburger, stewed tomatoes, celery, tomato paste, chili powder, salt and pepper, and two cans of kidney beans. Hurts me today to write those words! God rest her soul.

I diligently bought it all and brought it home and followed the notes she gave me. Cooked the burger, chopped the celery, added the tomatoes, spices and opened two cans of kidney beans.  Now do you KNOW how they look in that reddish grayish gooey goop in the can? I paused right there! I never liked kidney beans, hated ‘em in fact. Used to hide them under my bowl.  

A light went off in my head! An epiphany of sorts at the age of 20 making my first pot of chili. An act that was to launch me on my cooking career. I looked at the beans in their gray goop, took both cans outside and dumped them along the neighbor’s fence in the alley. I went to the store, bought three jalepeno peppers and a basket of fresh mushrooms and went back and added them to the pot!!  

I was literally giddy.  I had made my own recipe. I was cooking!

I look forward to sharing with you, and hearing from you all.