Column: Home chef

I really enjoy what I do for a living, but at the same time often think what it would be like to have picked another career.

While I certainly love sports about as much as one can, the fact I can barely go up or down the stairs without falling, I knew early on I would never be able to take that path. In fact, the other day I was super excited to take a glass of chocolate milk and a bowl of popcorn down the stairs the other night, slipped halfway down and the mess was horrific. I'm still finding spots of chocolate on the ceiling and was sore for a few days.

One of the career paths that has resonated with me later in life is that of a chef. Perhaps it is the fact that I do a lot of cooking, or maybe it is the ridiculous amount of time I spend watching the Food Network. I love to see chefs in action and I consider them true artists. My favorite part of traveling is eating at great restaurants and I always like to try and recreate some of the best things I've eaten. I'm a huge fan of world-renowned Bobby Flay, and after eating his spicy chicken and sweet potato hash with a poached egg and green Chile hollandaise, I wanted to march into the kitchen and demand someone show me how to make the dish.

It was a love of cooking that led to make the leap and try a meal delivery service. I had seen the commercials for years and figured it was time to give it a shot. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the prices, but I always seem to end up spending too much at the grocery store no matter how hard I try to budget. I can go into the store with no wallet and just a $10 bill -- and still manage to put $30 of groceries in my cart -- it never fails. I can also go in for an ingredient and come out with 30 different things. One on occasion, I went to go get toothpaste. I came back for everything for a huge turkey dinner. I also came back without toothpaste.

I decided to try the service for a week and see what happened. The commercials made it seem like I could not only learn a lot about cooking, but that I would be eating some things I would never think of doing myself. It was probably good to get out of the rut of eating about the same 10 dishes per month anyway.

It was like Christmas morning at my house when the first few meals arrived. There were numerous big boxes on the porch and everyone was super excited to open them and see all the food – and the about 3 tons of dry ice that comes with it.

It was an interesting process gathering all the products together and studying the step by step guide to the first meal. There were ingredients I would never think of using and it required more effort than I could have imagined. This first several meals were great. The food was high quality and better ye it was healthy. As a guy that probably eats pizza twice a week, it was a great break for the carb overload. I felt a lot better too.

At this point, we decided it would be a great idea to sign up for the service for three meals a week. Soon it was about twice a week that we would show up and our front porch looked like someone had gone crazy on Amazon. It lost its fun really quick. It was about an hour-long process just getting everything ready, then the meals would take another hour or two. The fun of trying to be a chef was no longer present. I felt like it was a job.

I also started to not like some of the food. I'm all about trying new stuff, but some of them were not very kind to my palate. I think I did an admirable job of cooking them the best I could, but on one occasion messed up a Mexican style soup so bad that I really wish I would have been able to share my cats dinner. It tasted like a mix of tomatoes and a pile of garbage. One day the combination of prices, taking up so much time, and the hit and miss food was not the right way to go for our family. I instead have moved on to spending probably way too much work time searching recipes that appeal to me. I'm happy now finding the happy medium of still enjoying cooking but finding my own recipes. This way I don't have to share food with the cats.