Life Lessons from Brisket: From Shepherd’s Pie to FOX 13’s Brisket Hash
Childhood Sundays with Brisket
I have a lot of food memories. One of the strongest is Sunday brisket. My mother would braise it in a rich beef stock, and my father would slice the meat. The moment that aroma hit, I was in a trance. Like a shark circling chummed water, I couldn’t resist. If I was allowed, I would have eaten my weight in brisket.
And when there were leftovers, that’s when the real magic happened. Shepherd’s Pie. No shortcuts, no microwaves, just homemade mashed potatoes, caramelized onions, and brisket layered into her famous green cassoulet dish with the wicker basket holder.
I always wanted to “help,” but let’s be real, I just wanted to eat scraps. When she built that pie, layer by layer, it was like Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
And here’s the truth: my mother was my dealer. Her drug wasn’t crack. It was brisket, caramelized onions, and mashed potatoes stacked into a Shepherd’s Pie. One spoonful and I was hooked.
When she pulled it from the oven, golden and bubbling, the first spoonful was pure theater: the crunch of potato giving way to onions and brisket beneath. My mother wasn’t just cooking, she was the Willy Wonka of savory food.
Food as Addiction, Food as Healing
Fast forward: I became a chef, and food became more than memory, it became my drug. The dopamine rush of flavor was my escape from abuse, chaos, and silence. At 10 or 11 years old, Shepherd’s Pie wasn’t just comfort food. It was survival.
But addiction cuts both ways. Food once numbed me, and nearly killed me. Today, after decades in kitchens, a suicide attempt, and the long road through food addiction, I see food differently.
It’s not my crack cocaine anymore. It’s my therapy.
The plate is no longer my canvas, it’s my therapist’s couch. Each dish tells my story: complex, scarred, layered with intention. Food, finally, is healing me.
Resilience on a Plate
When I rewrote my mother’s recipe for Craveable Obsessed, I added smoke, crunch, and depth, because that’s who I’ve become. A chef who’s been charred, scarred, but not broken.
Food has taught me mindfulness, patience, and resilience. It gave me a voice when I was silenced. It gave me a second chance at life.
From Shepherd’s Pie to FOX 13’s Brisket Hash
That’s why this week’s FOX 13 Dinner DeeAs segment was so meaningful. I shared Brisket Hash with Garlic Chili Crisp, another dish rooted in my childhood but reimagined through resilience and creativity.
👉 Watch the FOX 13 segment + get the recipe here.
At the same time, my book Craveable Obsessed just marked its one-year anniversary, and was honored 4th in the world at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in the Food & Mental Health category.
Brisket taught me patience as a child. Now, it symbolizes resilience, intention, and presence, lessons I carry forward in every dish, every story, and in my upcoming docuseries From the Fire.
If this story resonates, pick up a copy of Craveable Obsessed: Journals of a Food-Addicted Chef. Or follow the journey of From the Fire, where a chef share the battles they barely survived, and the food that saved them.
For me, food was never just about flavor, it was about survival. Craveable Obsessed is my journey through addiction, silence, and healing. I grew up struggling with dyslexia, and only later in life discovered I also had ADHD, battles that shaped how I saw myself and how I used food to cope.
The book tells the story of how food nearly destroyed me, and ultimately saved me. If you’ve ever felt broken and had to rebuild yourself through the things you love, I hope my story shows you that resilience is possible.
And I’m not stopping there. My next project, From the Fire, will share raw, unfiltered stories like mine from other chefs who’ve faced the dark side of the kitchen and lived to tell it, because food doesn’t just heal the people we serve. It heals us, too.
