— Omneya Tsosie

So, um just a little bit about me. I have been cooking since I was four years old. My dad was actually the main cook in the house while my mom worked my dad cooked and so I was like his little Sous chefs and for me the most my most favorite memory was of him allowing me to to stand on top of his feet. His hand is right over my hand and he's teaching me actually how to make fries zucchini fries. And so those little memories from being a kid and just being in the kitchen really transpired into why it is I do what I do. I just love people and I love the camaraderie and the feelings that you get when you're serving for me just acts of service is like the highest level for me and with food being a universal language. There's so much that can come from me and it's really the joy that you From people like this was amazing or I've never tasted this before it didn't want to or just the experience of it all. That's literally what led me into I'm doing what I do now and why I love to speakers speak about it as much as I do. That's that's beautiful. I cooked with my grandmother. My mom was not a great. My mom was like kind of, you know, very a feminist and kind of a hippie and she was not interested in food for outside of from a nutrition standpoint and I but I cook with my grandmother and am I my grandmother is like very is like the smartest person ever. I know you think your grandmother is smart like I mean really smart, but but I mean it was very sciencey. She was not somebody who's like a little bit of this a little bit of everything. They had to be very very precise and you know, you had to with the sugar and the egg whites 300 times one, two, three, four, five, six, seven eight nine ten up to 150 and then you have to switch arms and then do the other side and that's how we got meringue for the lemon tarts that we made and I love that precision and instill to this day. I actually prefer baking over over cooking. I'm I think I'm a pretty good cook, but I really prefer like the structure of Making because it's like the Finesse of it and but I also you know, it's was very curious and loved cookbooks My Grandmother Had cookbooks. We didn't have cookbooks at home because that wasn't something that my mother did and my dad also did a lot of cooking as well and I needed to learn I had to learn like if I was gonna survive so it was like out of hunger and you know self-defense and yeah and just practicality but I loved cookbooks and I love the magazines and the pictures and always wanted a like, you know, a big three layer lemon meringue cake and I didn't really get one until I was like 16 and I had to make the thing myself but that Curiosity from cooking and the exploration and going to farmers markets. It's still like how I start my Saturday and but also like I Could talk, you know when my usually when I was in the kitchen with my grandmother we were talking and we talked she asked me about school and you know how things were going. We talked about life and she told me about her family and I learned so much about her at the table and and I found that that happens not only with grandmothers but regular schmegular people sometimes like you know, we every time any time you ask somebody what is their favorite thing to eat? You learn everything you need to know about them. And so that is the thing that really drives me.