"The Story" - Chef and Father

Chef and Father has been down many paths on its journey to completion, but the focus has always been the same: to make parents’ lives easier. As a new parent myself, I craved information in all areas of raising a child. How do I change a diaper? Is she breathing too fast? When do I give her a bath? How do I heat up the milk? The questions are endless and I found myself up nights reading every book in the house that had anything to do with caring for an infant. You can’t help but feel a little helpless, but my wife and I were lucky to have the help of friends and family and we got through the first six months without a hitch.

Then, when my daughter turned six months old, something new came into the picture. Solid food. Uh oh, here we go again. Get out the books, start making phone calls…wait…hold on. Cooking. I know cooking! I browsed a few books to get the basics and then I got to work. I have been a chef for sixteen years and cooked all over the world. But nothing has matched the joy and satisfaction I received when my daughter took that first bite of mashed yams I prepared and actually seemed to enjoy it. I was hooked. Over the next year and a half, I came up with all sorts of fun and healthy ways to cook for kids and, more importantly, new techniques to make it easy on the parents.

I am a working parent, too. Just because I am a professional chef doesn’t mean I’m at home all day cooking for my daughter. So I developed a system that made it easy for me or my wife to prepare a healthy homemade meal in minutes. With our extra time, we spent more nights as a family together at the table and I realized how important this was. I felt this was something that has faded away in our society and I wanted to help bring it back. The next step was to figure out how I could help other parents.

I love to teach and the one thing I felt was missing from all the books I read was an actual person showing me how to do it. I could read for an hour on how to change a diaper but it takes minutes to learn if someone is right in front of you showing you step-by-step just what to do. (I keep using the diaper analogy because, like feeding your child, it is something that must be done whether you like it or not.) A state-by-state tour visiting every new parent out there seemed a bit daunting, so I developed this DVD. “Chef and Father” is my way of giving back to all those who have helped me along the way.

Thank you.

Greg Johnson, chef and father of daughters Finnley and Ellory, has been cooking professionally for 16 years. He is a graduate of The California Culinary Academy in San Francisco and has worked in top restaurants in San Francisco, Hawaii, Mexico, and Seattle. For the past 7 years he has worked as a Private Chef for some of Seattle’s most high profile families.
Chef Greg lives in Seattle with his wife Dawnelle, his two daughters and their two puppies, Thrill & Moxie.