Welcome!

Hi! My name is Ed and I love to COOK! Where did I find my love of cooking, you might be asking yourself? Simple. My Mom. My Mom is an amazing cook and I grew up watching her every move in the kitchen. I would constantly ask her what she was doing and why she was doing what she was doing. Infatuation with cooking set in at a very early age.

As I grew, cooking was always of interest to me but being 6’7, I fell in love with sports. All of them but especially basketball. Go figure. Ha! Every once in a while, I’d make time to get back into the kitchen but that was becoming less and less. Not to toot my own horn, but I excelled in sports.

During high school, I ran into a wall. I started noticing that my back and legs hurt, a lot during practice. My coaches and teammates thought I wasn’t tough enough and made my life extremely uncomfortable. My love for basketball disappeared. I dreaded it. Going to practice would make me sick. I left the game I loved with my whole heart. That was one of the toughest decisions that I had ever made.

During college, my mentor urged me to reconsider playing basketball but I still had a bad taste in my mouth. Plus, college was really hard for me because, as I eventually discovered, I am dyslexic. I needed to focus more time on my studies. What did I want to do with my degree? No clue, but I knew I wanted to graduate and make myself and family proud. While at college, I started cooking a lot more again. My first love came back to me.

After graduating from college, I decided to go to Culinary School. What an amazing experience. How can I correctly describe culinary school? It was military school with a hint of cooking. Haha! School was tough but I loved it. I worked my tail off to be the head of my class. I started working in various kitchens across SoCal, including Wolfgang Puck’s Catering Company. The biggest night of my culinary career came while working for the Oscars Celebration Party.

Funny story. I was in charge of bundling steamed baby carrots and tying them off with a chive. But I had a serious problem, I have sausage fingers and was definitely the wrong person for the job. But the Sous Chef that was in charge was a tyrant. Everyone was scared to speak, let alone complain or ask for another job. I was ripping chives left and right but I knew that I was going to get yelled at for wasting so much product. So I decided to ask the Sous Chef for another job. My fellow cooks could not believe that I had the courage to speak up. The Chef was extremely annoyed at the wasted product and the fact that I bothered him. But I showed him why I could not correctly complete the job and suggested I swap with the cook at the bacon wrapped date station. He was mad but I earned his respect for coming up with a simple solution to the problem. From that day forward, I vowed that I would never behave the way he did in the kitchen. Believe me, kitchens are a very intimidating space, a lot of dangerous things live in the kitchen. A lot can go wrong. But if you live by fear, fear controls and hampers you and your creative success. That’s the day that the idea, the spark that would become Edible Ed was born.

During this time, my back and legs fought against me. Normal things became difficult, let alone working in kitchens for 12 hours a day. I had to leave my happy place after consulting with my doctors. My back was bad and surgery was necessary but I tried everything I could to avoid surgery. Nothing worked. All of those years of playing sports and cooking took it’s toll on my fragile back. I was born with a congenital issue that didn’t become apparent until then.

6 major back surgeries, including a back full of metal, countless injections, procedures and treatments and here I am. Unfortunately, I am unable to work professionally due to it all. But there is a silver lining to all of this. During this time I fell in love with my wonderful wife, got married and had the greatest kid in the multiverse. I had the pleasure of staying home with Emma, watching her grow everyday and become even more amazing. I wanted to continue to create, even though the things I loved were stripped away from me. Hence, Edible Ed’s! With this vehicle, I can create art in multiple facets and hopefully leave a lasting loving legacy.

My goal is to show everyone that anyone can cook and be creative, especially YOU! I love you and appreciate you. Thank you for your time and support. Don’t forget to SPREAD LOVE LIKE BUTTER!