Moving through the pages of this book, you'll notice it's organized in the format of a menu. More specifically, it resembles what's known as a tasting menu. Each phase of Chef John's life is represented in the form of a menu item. He has been everything from a fast food cook, to a dishwasher at a family style restaurant, to a cook in a four-star establishment, to the executive chef of a country club, and many points in between.Though the book covers many areas of his life, it is deeply rooted in cooking. Many people may wonder what it's really like to be a chef. This book will be a useful tool for those that find culinary arts intriguing and wish to learn more about how professionals do what they do. However, as with lots of endeavors, there are so many metaphors for life that can be drawn from the act of cooking itself. At certain moments it may seem heavy on culinary concepts but they are just set-ups to segue into practical life lessons. You can meander along with him as he dissects the spiritual, mental and emotional aspects of each season of life. You'll explore how those areas affected his cooking, and how his cooking in turn, affected all of those areas. One of the goals of this book is to shed some light on the life of a common chef, who never entered the public arena of star chef status. More importantly though, it approaches the life of a common man from a Christian point of view, uncovering familiar struggles that so many of us may go through. The book aims to break down religious barriers that we often times place ourselves behind which only separate us from each other and from God. It also seeks to encourage those individuals, chefs and non-chefs, who may find this life very difficult to navigate. To let you know you are not alone and that with God's grace all things are possible. Throughout the book we unearth numerous life lessons along the way. As you travel through the memories, some lessons will be an instant shot of spiritual adrenaline. Others, however, may be those toughies; the spiritual cud that requires some chewing, pondering, partial digestion, and eventual revisiting again. During your journey through the pages of this book, you may find life's answers. More importantly, I you may uncover life's most precious questions.
Having spent many years in the industry, John Smith Edwards has become an authority on cooking. He began at the age of sixteen when he landed his first job at McDonald's in Tampa, FL. With culinary school seeming to be out of reach, John began feverishly working wherever he could find a job. Touring through the school of hard knocks he went on to work throughout Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. He held a wide range of positions from dishwasher to fry cook, to prep cook, to saute and grill cook, sous chef, executive chef and even private caterer. At the age of thirty-two he left the business, taking a sojourn into the health care industry. Eleven years later, feeling a renewed passion he answered that ever-present call to return to cooking. He began by reflecting on his previous sixteen years in the business. All of the trials, struggles, triumphs and failures. John took those memories and formatted them into Raw Ingredients: Practical Lessons from a Culinary life. While self publishing this book he has continued to work in local restaurants while pursuing a life-long passion of helping at-risk youth. Portions of Raw Ingredients sales go to helping fund that endeavor. John also enjoys spending quality time with his three daughters and his girlfriend.
