ever since i was a little kid

rule at my house was if you cooked the meal you didn't have to do the dishes.. i hated doing dishes sooo....

I've been interested in not starving to death from the moment I was born

when the food network came on I may have been 14 or so at the time.

>>7280026
This honestly, except I was like 18 or so

>>7280017
After I went to college and had to cook.

Now I'm 20something, moved back with my parents, and cook much better meals than they can every night.

When I was pretty young, like probably about 6 or 7. I remember watching Food Network with my mom and thinking it was the tightest shit ever shat. My mom always baked a lot, and so I helped her out more and more as I grew up. Started really learning about cooking in earnest when I was like a senior in high school, and have been on /ck/'s wild ride ever since.

Hate to say it but Rachael Ray. Back in like sixth or seventh grade my mom would ask me to record episodes while she was working. I ended up watching a couple and I got hooked.

as a kid my mom took me to see emeril live

I fucking love that fat man ;_;

It started when I was in high school. Dad wouldn't let me watch anything but discovery/food network when my grades weren't where they needed to be. My interest in cooking multiplied by about 1000 once I moved out and realized I didn't know how to make anything. Trial and error ever since.

At the age of 14 when I got my first job in a small italian cafe as a pizza cook.
I loved that job, I got to take orders, greet customers, wait tables, make coffee, work back of house doing prep, dish piggin, working the grill and fryer, making desserts and dough.
There was no structure, I just asked to help out with shit and kept learning more.
Worked at the same place of 7 years untill I graduated from uni and got a real job.

>>7280017
>in food
Age 0

>and cooking
when I moved out

I wanted to make all of the recipes my dad and sister would never like particularly seafood.

and when I lived in college with a friend our diets were frozen pizza and italian sausage so I wanted to change that.

first foods I made were fried cuts of fish, enchiladas, and crockpot recipes later one casseroles (which usually suck), soups, and batch meals

My motivator had always been good food, at 6 I learned to make fried almonds I really liked that my mom used for some foods.

I do it for mouth orgasms everytime all the time

>be 5 or 6
>parents are visiting childless friends with me in tow
>they have a nice kitchen
>folks are helping them make dinner
>mom looks around and notices they set me up with a real knife chopping veggies
>"woah woah what are you doing he's 6"
"if you teach them the technique, it's perfectly safe, momanon"

That was more or less it, or so I'm told. After that, my mom had me do mis en place while she cooked and taught me to use the stove. Before long, I was coming up with recipes for (very, very) simple meals. I started watching food network at about 7 too. I think Alton Brown was my first celebrity crush.

>>7280017
only really started cooking good shit at 20. I realized I had no useful home skills and the meals I made were basic plebian foods. I'm glad I picked it up; it's a lot of fun trying to make the dish better than the last time you made it, and discovering new combinations of spices and raw materials. Plus it's a easy casual activity with females

when i was a teenager i started making big ol stoner sandwiches and fried everything in toasted sesame oil. i wasn't super into food but i enjoyed it.

my mum got me the fat duck cookbook for my 18th birthday and 8 years later i pretty much havent gone a single day without cooking something new. it helped that i was just going to uni and just got a girlfriend.

I only started to cook and pay attention to what I was eating when I was 16. I read some ebooks about the connection between diet and acne so I tried to clean up my diet and make most of my own food.

It didn't work lol. I just outgrew it with time. But I'm thankful for the lessons I learned about health, how to cook, and having that motivation to try new foods. Until that time I basically did not eat fruits, vegetables, seafood, etc. Just meat, dairy, grain, and sugar.

I'm so used to posts starting with "at what age" that my mind automatically thought this would be another passive aggressive "did you stop liking this *perfectly good thing*"- post