<p class="p2"><span class="s1">My love for food began at age six when mum allowed me to use her oven to bake mud pies made in the backyard! From these humble culinary beginnings I moved on to more edible meals and realised it was more than hunger being satisfied when I cooked for those I loved. It was a deep sense of giving and pleasure. I knew food would take me on a long journey throughout my life.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1">All I can remember aspiring to be when I grew up was a chef (apart from a small period of time when I told people I would grow up to be a bush ranger!). I followed that dream into an apprenticeship in commercial cookery, working 17 hours a day in hot cramped conditions with temperamental head chefs, earning terrible money. I loved every minute of it! </span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1">Learning something new each day was amazing, but no one could explain to me what was happening when we cooked, why we did things in a certain way. Never satisfied with the answer “because that’s how it’s always been done”, I took a step back from the working world and became a student again. This time I went to university, undertaking my Food Science degree. Science is by definition the study of the physical and natural world. It gives you an amazing ability to look at things in a totally different way. It can give you answers, but it also pushes you to ask many more questions. </span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1">Despite struggling with math and chemistry, I battled my way through to come out the other side with Honors and a sense of achievement I have never felt before. Not only had I finished my degree, I’d started the journey of understanding the ‘why’. Finally I had the holy trinity: the cooking skills, the scientific knowledge, and the passion to teach people as much as possible in a way they could understand. </span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1">Cook Lab is more than just a cooking school. Through these classes I want to help people gain skills and knowledge in the kitchen to really understand what they are doing when they cook, and more importantly, why. </span></p>