For me to become a professional chef again, I had to repeat techniques over and over again until they became part of me, and the knowledge was ingrained in my hands. Until then, I couldn’t concentrate on the texture of the dish or the combination of flavors. Because of my faulty memory, I have copies of each recipe taped to the cabinets showing each step of the procedure in case I forget. I go over and over each recipe in my mind for days before I actually cook them. My knives, pots and pans all have to be in a certain order or I am lost and confused.

What most people don't understand about professional cooking is that it is not all about the better recipe, the best presentation, the most creative combination of ingredients. It’s more about consistency, unvarying repetition, over and over in exactly the same way. That’s why one of the most essential tools you can have is a set of digital scales. I convert all the liquid and dry measurements to weight for accuracy. If you ask three cooks to measure out a tablespoon of cornmeal, chances are you will wind up with varying amounts. Multiply that by the number of measurements in the recipe and there’s quite a bit of room for error. But an ounce is still an ounce no matter who measures it. Once a recipe is "set" anyone can make it, the hundredth one will taste the same as the first. 

I don’t care much for American cooks, an opinion shared with a lot of other chefs. Generally speaking, American cooks suck. Most born in the USA, school-trained, culinary sophisticated types have a sense of entitlement. With few exceptions, they are lazy, undisciplined and, worst of all, high-maintenance. Annoyingly opinionated, possessed of egos requiring constant stroking. 

Its 3:15 and time to get started on another day. The three Vicodens I took before bed have worn off, my hands hurt, and my feet hurt too, pain radiates up to the knees, which add their own voice to the chorus. I'm psyching myself up for the long walk to the bathroom, an exercise I will no doubt perform with all the grace and ease a one legged man is capable of.

I can’t remember what it was like not feel constant pain, after a while you just live with it. By the time the second pot of coffee is perking, I’ve mastered the mechanics of walking and balancing, and can now wrap my ankles. It’s a lot to go through but it beats being in a wheelchair. 


For me, cooking has been a life-long love affair of food, with moments both sublime and ridiculous. But like an old love affair, you only remember the happy times — the things that, attracted you in the first place, the things that kept you coming back again and again. I hope I can give the reader a taste of those things and those times. I've never regretted the unexpected left turn that left me half-paralyzed and often confused. And I've always believed that good food, good eating is all about the risk. Whether we're talking about raw oysters or working in a professional kitchen as a chef - food for me, has always been an adventure. 
What better way to prepare for my new life than starting a Cafe?

How did I end up in Antigua you ask? When well-known Guatemalan author and international journalist Julie Lopez, now my fiancée, asked me to visit nearly three years ago, I chucked everything, packed up Mutt and moved to Antigua. It was like discovering paradise compared to Colorado. It seldom gets below 65° even in the dead of winter, and it stays around 85° all year round. Mutt, my fifteen pound Maine Coon cat, loves the mild winters here.

Antigua is the perfect place to live. A large ex-pat community, lots of restaurants, hotels, and it’s cobblestone streets make it the most cosmopolitan city in the country. Hordes of tourists regularly flock here from cruise ships that dock only an hour away. There’s always something to do here, and despite the violence, crime and corruption common in the rest of Guatemala, it’s safe. 

My memory is sketchy at best, and not to be relied on. The accident itself, I can’t remember. Mostly what I know about my past reveals itself in unexpected flashes to be forgotten a day or two later. I know I used to be a business consultant and a chef because there’s a box of trophies and awards I’ve won that say so. I don’t remember much.

I do know that I would get a job as a dishwasher, or whatever position was available so that I could learn the various techniques used for a particular dish and then I’d quit. I was always more interested in how to prepare the food so it tastes good, than in making it look good. After all, the only reason for attending culinary school in the first place was to learn how to put things together in a pleasing manner. I didn’t want to be a chef, I could make twice as much consulting, and cooking was simply my way of relaxing and relieving stress. 

After the accident, I can’t remember any of my recipes. But if I look up a basic recipe on the internet and begin preparing it, my memory will kick in and the result won’t be anything like the original. I stare at it as if it suddenly appeared from outer space, a more succulent, moister version of the original recipe. How did it get there? I don’t know, maybe it’s a muscle memory, a remnant of my past glory. I don’t have a clue, I can’t force it or I’ll get blinding headaches and see double. So I’ve begun to write down the recipes because my memory isn’t reliable – I forget the salt, or put it in twice or even three times. Once I even forgot the mashed potatoes. There they sat on the stove; whipped, creamy mounds, floating in butter and completely forgotten. The last guest had left nearly three hours ago.

The brain is a wonderful and mysterious thing, it can rebuild or even establish new neural pathways where none existed before. I’m living proof - My brain reinvented me.

Between all the reading and my speech therapist, I could talk and interact with people to a limited extent. By three months my progress was so great that they gave me a custom wheelchair, a bright yellow thing with an armrest for my paralyzed right side. By now my routine was set, I’d go to the top floor, get off the elevator and race to the opposite side of the building, then take that elevator down to the next floor and repeat the process. I would do it over and over again, fifteen, thirty, fifty times until I was worn out. Then I would read and practice talking to myself, until it was time for the next appointment.

By the time my casts came off, I would work on the exercise bike until I couldn’t move. I was drenched in sweat, and the pain was so great I couldn’t move. I just kept repeating over and over again I can do it.

At first it was torture, but by the time I left the hospital, I could go all day with the resistance on high, after walking around the entire hospital pushing my wheelchair. I’m still numb on the entire right side and my memory is pretty well shot. But if I concentrate, I can talk and walk nearly normal. I taught myself to do everything left handed – knife skills were a bitch, but I can chop, dice, and julienne pretty well. I’m slow and clumsy, but it gets done. I’ve found that cuts and burns don’t bother me – and there were a lot of them. A quick rinse under cold water and I’m back cooking. It’s not just a lack of pain either, I’ve cut myself to where the bone was showing, and left imprints of my hands on pots when I would forget that they were hot – within two weeks there wouldn’t be a scar. 

The hospital routine never varied, breakfast at eight, lunch at noon and supper was served at six. The various appointments – doctor, speech therapy, personal hygiene, physical therapy, adaptive learning and psychiatry were sandwiched in between. Lights out was at 10 o’clock every night, seven days a week. It seems like it was a lot, and at first it was, but inside a week I was showering without assistance and had managed to transfer from my bed to a wheelchair. I saw the doctors about once a week. That left three hours of adaptive learning, speech therapy and physical therapy every day.

Every night I would leave my wheelchair further away, and stumble and hop my way to bed. Before long I could maneuver myself pretty good using my left side for balance and concentrating on what I had to do with the right leg to get it to move forward. It was slow and painful, not very pretty to look at but it got the job done.

During the day I would practice using the chair, it’s hard to go straight when using only one hand for locomotion… it tends to go in circles, but I managed. After a while I could make it down to the second floor for therapy on my own, without the help of an orderly.

That was a banner day for me because without an escort, I was free to roam the hospital at will and I took advantage of it. I’d load up two or three books in my wheelchair and off I’d go, whenever I got tired of “pushing” the chair, which happened often, I would read. I became a sort of fixture throughout the hospital, from the gift shops and outpatient clinics to the psychiatric ward. I knew every nook and cranny of the hospital, eventually the staff became used to seeing me around and ignored me.

How It Started

What I remember most clearly about my new life is the sight of my family gathered around my hospital bed, looking grim and despondent. My right eye was fucked up - I was seeing double and saw everything through a hazy film, even so, one glance at their faces told the story… I was in deep shit. They didn’t think that I would survive this. I was angry at myself all the time for not being able to communicate, and now a new horror set-up shop - what if this would go on for the rest of my life? Or get worse? They’d send me to a convalescent home and I’d stay there, in my “marvel” of a wheelchair, until I died. 

Then my brother entered the room, he’d flown all the way from Florida, and said “How’s it goin’ Bro.” After a few minutes he turned to my mom and said “He’s going to make it.” and promptly left the room. I didn’t see him again for nearly three years, when I visited him from my home in Guatemala.

“I can do this,” I said, although I didn’t believe it.” I will do it.” as I finally gave in to a drug induced sleep. The next morning when I awoke, I couldn’t remember my own name, but I could remember I can do it.

I was more determined than ever to prove the doctors wrong, and walk out of the hospital on my own two legs. So began one of the longest and most difficult journeys I’ve ever been on in my whole life. 

From the Beginning

I remember waking up in the hospital bed, how disjointed and confused my thoughts had been, how sometimes I couldn’t even recall my own name. The anger at not being able to express myself or be understood. The dawning realization that a part of me was never going to be the same. I spent nearly eight months in the hospital going through the hell of physical rehab, and getting speech therapy and learning to cope.

At first I slept most of the time, but gradually it got were I didn’t need but three or four hours of sleep. So I began to read. Every spare minute was taken up with reading, it didn’t matter what the subject matter was, it was all grist for the mill.  Romances, technical journals, law books and fiction it was all the same to me. It was words, put down in order so that people could understand them, something I needed desperately if I was to prove the doctors wrong.

I also began to use a wheel chair that an orderly would use to take me to the break room or various appointments – physical therapy, speech therapy, getting fitted with braces and my own wheel chair. It was a state of the art electric one with a toggle switch to control it with the fingers of my left hand. I could even change the seat position from upright to laying supine. It was a marvel of technology… and I hated it.