Semiserious Chefs

Nathan is learning to crack eggs. He is super aggressive, so this is great practice for him to learn how to tone it down.
(Yes, Andrew knows he looks silly here)

We have a busy life. It’s a different kind of busy from most folks. We don’t have to get up early, commute, or rush from one kid event to the next… well not really. In fact we work from home, and we work together. When I say together, obviously I mean Andrew and I, but our son is unofficially involved in all the jobs we work, also. Although our home daycare is the only officially ‘paying’ job we have, we really feel like we are actually working 4 full jobs: daycare, 4-plex landlord, foster care, and the treatments that go along with CF (cystic fibrosis).

I can see how one might not include foster or CF as a ‘job’ but the amount of responsibility and life revolving schedule they each include, really does turn them all into a job. Not only that, but as I said before, Nathan is very much thrust into the responsibilities of these two, specifically the hour and half of daily treatments for CF, but also with the sharing, caring, and patients that are required of him within the daycare and fostering setting. The last and least of these responsibilities would be the land lording, but patients plays no less a part for him when we are both tied up trying to fix and figure out some recent disaster or disturbance on the property or simply needing a few minutes of quiet to go over finances.

So this leads me to the importance of cooking in our home. ‘Cooking’ is just one of those things we have to do as part of each day. Perhaps ‘cooking’ is one’s career choice, but not for us. For us it is creativity, exploration, and most importantly, family time. A couple years ago, around the 10 year mark for our marriage, Andrew and I unofficially did a review of our shared interests and ‘together time’. We sought out new television series that we would both enjoy and watch together, we researched games to play as a couple and a small family, and suddenly realized (and focused on) just how much both of us love to cook, but in very different ways and with very different ingredients. This is how Semiserious Chefs started to evolve.

As we began to cook together, either competing in Dueling Duleys or helping to photograph and document each others’ recipes, Nathan began to be interested in the prep work we did. He moved up from stacking bouillon cubes, to stirring things, and then peeling carrots down to a nub quickly became his favorite way to contribute, and it was contributing to such dishes as the pot stickers. Not only was cooking becoming a whole family affair but we certainly, certainly, certainly were NOT going to miss out on the awesome homeschooling lessons that could be included!

Here we have fractions according to Nathan.

Now, with all that being said, we recently received a new foster child. It is going very well, and besides the normal sibling and 2 year old ‘hiccups,’ we are not having a lot of troubles. However, from the perspective of a 4 year old, “Mommy, I’m sad. I didn’t get to spend very much time with you today,” we obviously needed to plan some special time together. I could think of no better way than to cook ‘Gorilla Eggs’ together.

Some not-so-gently removed gorilla eggs.

So what are Gorilla Eggs? Obviously not something you can just snag out of a nest. (I hope our viewers know at least that much!) It started back at Andrew’s first father’s day and had become a traditional dish to serve him as a loving gesture. You see, Andrew sort-of looks like a gorilla. At least so it’s been said all the way back to when we were dating in high school. So one day I purchased gorilla shaped baking pans as a way to give him a hard time. I decided to serve him some of his favorite things shaped as a gorilla: eggs, bacon, and cheese.

This recent evening when he and I made special plans for a cooking project with Nathan, Gorilla Eggs were the perfect recipe. It is a special family treat, and the prep work is all manageable by Nathan. It was wonderful. Nathan shredded cheese. Nathan chopped bacon (and only bacon and not his fingers thankfully!) Nathan cracked eggs, poured milk, and stirred. He even got range-time cooking hash browns; both for the first time! Thrown in the mix was some homeschooling including: creating a recipe, handwriting, and fractions. But the best part of all? We all got to spend some special time together.