Last Call: Just Tell Me What You Want To Learn To Cook
As of today I've been staff writer for The Takeout for one whole week, and I've yet to crash the entire site or accidentally link anything to PornHub. I feel this bodes well for my future at this company.
Though I'm new here, I've been on all sides of the food biz for over 15 years now. I've worked the line (in the kitchen) and the floor (in the dining room); owned a bakery for close to a decade; wrote my own critically-acclaimed cookbook in addition to the less critically acclaimed but far more xxxtreme WWE Cookbook. I've written recipes that are found all over the internet, had a recurring cooking segment on the gone-but-not-forgotten VH1 show Big Morning Buzz with Nick Lachey, and have spent the past three years paying the bills as an industry consultant and freelance food/humor writer. And, according to my therapist, I'll never be able to move past my debilitating impostor syndrome if I don't get used to saying "I know my shit." Because I do! I'm very good at many food things, and how to do other stuff good, too!
Though I've had the chance to write for some of the most incredible publications, there is only one place that I ever wanted to work at full-time, and that is this one. Why? Because The Takeout appreciates all foods, and all the people who enjoy them: the highbrow, the lowbrow, the curious and the connoisseurs, the folks who live large, the ones who pinch pennies, the ones who are stodgy and serious, and the ones who will understand that my repeated usage of stock photos of this caliber is part of a higher calling.
Food is the great equalizer. In the streets, I'm a respectable, fancy-award-nominated food writer about town. In the sheets, I'm an exhausted working mom of two very expensive just-adolescent boys that, at this point, I am trying to keep alive. You're less likely to find me at a Michelin-starred restaurant as you are to find me eating McNuggets alone in the silence of my car. That's another thing my therapist wants me to talk more about.
And since I'll be writing recipes for our community, I want you to tell me what you want to see. I cook, I bake, I grill, and just for you guys, because you're special, I sous vide. The Takeout is about making people's lives better through food, and that's what I intend to do here. So in the words I have repeated thousands of times throughout my career: How can I help you?