About Chef Brenda Palmer
Like so many people in this industry, I grew up around food. Everyone likes to cook in my family. As a kid my Mom taught me how to make a cream sauce for creamed asparagus on toast (a favorite that I still crave). What she really taught me was how to make a blonde roux even if she didn’t know that is what it was called. My Dad liked to bring home things like chocolate covered ants or a whole coconut, which was a mystery to anyone living in Pennsylvania in the 60’s.
I tried my hand at widely ranging professions until I took a second job at a fast food place; this is where I learned that something was different about me. As rush hour would approach, the other employees would grit their teeth and get stressed out while I was invigorated; I loved it when it got busy. I would push myself to see how many orders I could remember without looking at the checks. The adrenaline would course through me the faster it got, the faster I got; I loved it.
So when I told this story to the GM at a newly opened family, chain restaurant, I was hired. Standing up from the interview I turned back to him to ask, ”What part of the restaurant am I working?”
He blinked at me as if I should know, “You’re a line cook.”
That was 18 years ago and essentially, I am still a line cook.
After several years and several family/chain style restaurants, it occurred to me there was a lot more to cooking and I was bored with what I was doing. I started working upscale places and a whole new world opened for me. The French brigade system and all that comes with it replaced the manager/supervisor/cook/ prep cook organization of more casual places. Creativity replaced recipe books; knowledge and common sense replaced the unbending rules enforced by corporate chains. What a relief.
One well-known central PA restaurant I worked at fired 6 executive chefs in the less than 3 years I was there. The chefs came from all over with various backgrounds and I picked each brain as well as I could before he/she would lose their shininess in the owners’ eyes and be fired in favor of the next. Needless to say it was a very stressful place to work. I became the AM sous chef, which enabled me to make the daily soups and lunch specials, do some of the ordering and organize prep lists. I thought about food every waking moment. I’d get an idea of something I wanted to make, pick up additional components as needed on my way into work and experiment on the lunch crowd, which grew in the time I was there. I was encouraged to try new things and experiment; it was a very exciting time for me.
I jumped from restaurant to resort to restaurant to country club, catering a small gathering here and there. I took some classes and began a Personal Chef business officially in 2002, the same year that Wegmans opened in my area and the availability of chef quality food that need only be popped in the microwave exploded. The Personal Chef side of business never took off, but small party catering became a solid niche for me. I started doing cooking demonstrations, a local cable TV spot for a fund-raiser, writing cooking technique articles for personal chefs, featured in a business journal and regional magazine and of course writing recipes for various purposes. My daughter was old enough to take care of herself more and I was ready to take on as much as I could.
I was working as a sauté chef in a private country club (which was very advantageous for my catering) when I started having some noticeable problems. The Club was looking for a new Executive chef and they were looking at me. I clearly remember the night the General Manager was watching me work and I couldn’t remember the components of the different dishes; I’d been cooking that menu for a month and yet, I kept drawing a blank. The GM muttered something and left, I was let go not long after that. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, was age finally catching up? True there are not many 40 year-old line cooks around, but physically I was strong.
I was only one week into my next job (sauté line cook once again) when the headaches began and other seemingly unrelated, unexplainable things. Finally after several Doctor’s visits, I had an MRI on my brain to find that I had a tumor almost as large as a golf ball. I had been growing it for several years, but it was thankfully benign and removed successfully in 2003.
In the previous year I had begun spending much of my time visiting the infant C2C and building real friendships here. I fondly remember the flowers that Fred, Margie, Dave and Pam sent while I was recovering and I think I could feel all the warm thoughts and positive energy being sent my way.
Just a few months after my surgery was the first C2C culinary grant fund raiser in Tecumseh MI. This was such an important time for me because my self-esteem had taken such a beating from the tumor. I didn’t trust my own memory or senses. There was a time if you told me that the sky was not blue, it was yellow. I’d look at the blue sky and wonder if maybe you were right. At Chef Kelly Johnson’s wonderful restaurant (Evan’s Street Station) in MI, I got to meet and work with the people I had grown so fond of at C2C and raise money for culinary students at the same time. Some of these people have been EC to world-renowned places, worked with chefs that are household words or catered for 1000s and yet they treated me like their equal, which was a feeling I’ll never forget.
Since then I tried my hand at managing a fast-casual place before running away and back into fine-dining which is my love. As a lot of people who have serious illnesses, it becomes an eye-opener and I’ve since turned down salaried positions to take the lesser-stress jobs.
Currently I am very happy to be working the line as sauté chef at Zola’s New World Bistro in State College, PA. I have a handful of catering clients, not the least of which is Griffith Brothers Whitetail Deer Preserve where I’m considered staff. http://www.trophyclassdeer.com/
You can see me on Keith Warren Outdoors on the Outdoor Channel during an episode filmed at the Griffith place. If you watch this show, you might have seen me in last years filming at the same venue. The show will air 8-12 times starting in Jan or Feb 2007.
With all those hours that are not being spent as a salaried employee, I hike in the woods with my dogs, kayak, read and write speculative fiction. I am getting ready for my first Grandchild and yes, still into recipe developing and experimenting on my friends.