The who and what of it all...

Hi there, and welcome to Fire, Iron and Spice. Me and the little family are glad you stopped in. I'm sure you are curious about who we are and what we and I are all about, so come on in ad sit a spell and let me share a lil bit.

I grew up, a product of the early seventies, in West Texas, right on the Mexican border. It was dusty and hot and full of contrast—wide open spaces, hard work, strong flavors, and people who showed love more through action than words. Food was always around, always important, even if I didn’t realize at the time how deeply it was shaping me.

In my early teens, after my parents divorced, I moved to the Pacific Northwest. It was a complete shift—green everywhere, rain instead of heat, mountains instead of flat horizon. I didn’t know it then, but that move planted the seeds for a lot of the balance I’d spend my life chasing. Old roots mixed with new soil.

I’ve always loved food. That part was there from the beginning. But I didn’t really start embracing cooking—the craft of it, the patience, the intention—until later. My very late teens, early twenties. That’s when it stopped being just something you do and started becoming something you feel.

I’ve had three major influences on my cooking, and they still guide me today.

The first is my mother. She is the ultimate hostess. The kind of woman who makes people feel welcome without ever saying the words. Food was her way of caring, of gathering people together, of making a house feel alive.

The second is my grandmother. She taught me that good food doesn’t just come from recipes or measurements—it comes from the soul. From memory, intuition, and love. She cooked with her hands and her heart, and somehow everything tasted like comfort.

The third, and maybe the most technically shaping influence, was my former boss and mentor, Helle. I interned under her while working at a guest ranch. She was my executive chef and had previously been the executive chef for the Danish Embassy in Paris, France. Helle is the one who truly taught me how to hone my skills—how to respect technique, precision, and discipline without losing the soul of the food. She took what I felt instinctively and helped turn it into something solid, something dependable. I still hear her voice in my head when I cook.

Over the years, I’ve owned small kitchens. I ran a food truck. I built a catering operation. I spent more than 20 years in the food industry, and eventually… I burned out. Commercial kitchens can take a lot out of you. So I stepped away and took a job in the oil fields, where I worked for about seven years.

Funny thing is, that’s where my love for food came back.

Maybe it was the long hours, the rough conditions, or the reminder of what it means to work with your hands and your body. But somewhere out there, my connection to food was rekindled—not as a business, but as a grounding force again.

During that time, I bought some land in Colorado with the plan of building a small farm. Around the same time, I brought my elderly mother to live with me. She’s disabled, and growing up she sacrificed a lot for me—more than I probably understood back then. Now it’s my turn to take care of her. She’s now blind and suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, and our lives are quieter, slower, and very intentional.

Not long after my mom moved in, I got a boxer puppy named Tess. Then another boxer pup, Belle, to keep her company. They became my kids in every way that matters. Belle passed away from aggressive cancer on the morning of her eighth birthday. I was working overnight, and she waited until I got home so I could say goodbye before she died. Losing her felt like losing a piece of myself. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through.

Now it’s just Tess and me, along with my mom.

The plan was always to build a small homestead—somewhere safe, simple, and healthy where the three of us could live well and start slowly growing food and a life rooted in intention. But before I could even break ground, I was laid off from my oilfield job just before Thanksgiving in 2025. That kind of thing has a tendency to throw a big fat wrench into the inner workings of things...

So here I am. Just a simple guy, with a simple plan for my family to live a simple life.

Working to build something stable. Doing what I can, one step at a time, to create a place we can call home and slowly bring that homestead dream to life. Food, care, resilience, and starting again—those are the threads that run through everything I do.

I am glad that you are here, and I hope you find something real. Something honest. Something that feels like it was made by hand.

NEXT: The Where (Why I chose Colorado)

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