I am Jason Schuster, a culinary student living in one of the greatest food cities in the US, Portland Oregon. To describe my life I am going to take a look around my room. In front of me is my kegerator that I made from an ancient Samsung mini fridge. A very dangerous thing to have so close to my bed. The kegerator also serves as a workstation and currently has a slow cooker that I am converting into a sous vide device. I have a book shelf in the corner with some classic fiction as well as some cooking/ foodie books, the largest being “Mushrooms demystified”. Not sure where Mcgee’s “On Food and Cooking” is, but I’m sure it is somewhere floating around. Then there is my closet where I store my hiking supplies, wood chips for my smoker, and some clothes too. Next to my hamper of dirty chef coats are my set up for my primary fermentor doing its thing in a water bath. I have another book shelf, but one that has no books. I see a stock pot, a pressure cooker, some yoga supplies, bicycle stuff, and a meat mallet. My computer desk has my soldering station set up and plenty of cluster. And finally, I have a nice window with a rather pitiful looking sage plant struggling for life. That’s my life. In a word, crazy.
About the blog
Many of what I described will come up as projects. I’m part techy/ science nerd but my heart lies in food and drink. I truly believe that good food and a great beer is the key to happiness. Some subject that will come up are food costs plus the advantages of buying in bulk and planning ahead, nutrition and diets, science behind cooking, and of course recipes for great food. Beer brewing, smoking/ preserving, gardening, caning, picking mushrooms, molecular gastronomy and many other things that come to mind will be talked about as well.
I can’t do this blog justice without talking about some of my inspirations. To start at the beginning, Alton Brown helped to change my perception of cooking. He uses a sense of fun and science that inspires me as a chef. I already mentioned McGraw, who’s book serves as a go to reference guide. Blogger/ columnist Kenji as seriouseats.com is my inspiration for entering the digital age. Many other chef’s such as Keller also huge to me. Finally, I wouldn’t be here without you. People. Such a variety of tastes and desires. If we all just cooked for ourselves life would be boring. I live to serve.
My process is going to be mostly as a scientist: Creating a hypothesis, setting up an experiment with variebles and a control, then anylizing the results. While I have my formula, I am all about taking chances and trying new things. With that, lets get cooking!
