Just call me Chef Jenn

I love to cook. It's what I do to unwind at the end of a long day. It's what I do to entertain others and part of me thinks I do it to also find acceptance from people or to get them to like me. I was lucky to have been raised in a a multi-cultural family, with a French grandmother on one side and Italian on the other. I know how to cook classic dishes, but I love cooking the complex ones that text my patience, test my abilities and that test the palates of my nearest and dearest friends.

I have made some amazing friends here in Panama City and I look forward to making even more and expanding my cooking skills even further. I learn a lot about people when I cook, their likes and dislikes and if they are brave enough to try something if it is different.

I have always loved to cook and that stems to all the time spent in the kitchen with my mom and dad when I was a kid. My mom was the everyday cook, but my dad...man could he make homemade spaghetti sauce! It was a recipe handed down by his Italian grandmother and I remember watching him cook it because it was an all day process. After he died, when I was 11, my mom tried to replicate it, but alas it was not the same. I miss those times, especially having moved down here by myself. All those times spent in the kitchen cooking with my family. Another Christmas will pass this year with me spending it alone and my family all huddled into my uncle's tiny kitchen trying to spit out a huge Christmas dinner. I will attempt to make a smaller version of it for myself but I know that it will not be the same.

In the meantime...I cook. I cook for myself and I cook for my friends. I cook in an attempt to cling to my heritage and to discover not only a piece of my past but also the piece of my future that I will someday hand down to my children. I cook because it is what I do and it is one thing I do well.