My name is Wes Young and I am proud to be a part of the church and my cooking is part of what I do to help me pass the word of God to everybody.
My cooking started when I was fifteen. I was raised in foster homes and the last one was when I was fifteen. Their names were Elnora and Charles Loving and I soon called them my parents. Dad was from Texas and owned a restaurant there for twenty years. Mom was from the New Orleans area and she cooked in a restaurant for twenty years. I had two great people teaching me!
I didn’t realize the value of my cooking, though, until I got married and my wife couldn’t cook. I went in the kitchen and it hit me this was something I could do so I did all the cooking. When my children were six I let them in the kitchen to help and by the time they were nine they could do full meals by themselves.
In 1997 I retired from the Veterans Administration and I had a friend that owned a restaurant just a block from the Federal building and asked me, since I was retiring, could I come and cook breakfast for him. He said he would teach me in two weeks. I told him I had never cooked professionally and he said that didn’t matter. After a week he said he was going to have to let me go and I told him to get out of the kitchen and let me do what I have to do. From then on I cooked breakfast and lunch for two years, doing 150 or more breakfasts in a three and a half hour span. I had twenty-five to thirty orders at a time.
I got out of cooking for a few years until a friend joined the Elks in 2008. They needed a cook so my friend told them she knew a cook. I cooked for the Elks for three years, then the Sons of Norway came to one of my dinners and hired me to cook for them. I cooked once a month for 100 to 300 people at a time. I did that until last year.
Two years ago I got involved with Sanctuary church and the Green Bean and it has been great for me. I was meeting a lot of people and started community cooking with some of the members. I am getting a reputation for cooking. It is a passion for me and now the Lord is with me and I will cook for anyone at anytime.
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