Dennis the Prescott - Eat delicious: 125 recipes for your daily dose of awesome

For Leanne

Contents

HI. MY NAME IS DENNIS.

First off, you are all awesome. I want to thank each and every one of you for the massive gift of being a small part of your lives. There is an enormous responsibility that comes with the knowledge that families will join around the dinner table with recipes that Ive created and with inspiration taken from my photographs. I do not take that lightly, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my Canadian heart for allowing me the privilege of joining you and your family at mealtime.

My journey in the food world has been a somewhat recent, entirely unexpected, and altogether wonderful adventure. I grew up eating for necessity, like many folks I know. We ate between activities and often as quickly as possible, to get back to whatever was on tap for that day (basketball/baseball/sports games/mischief). I had zero interest in the gastro world, had never heard the phrases locally sourced or organically grown, and was perfectly content to eat boxed macaroni or bad takeout for the rest of my life. I was blessed with an incredibly loving family and wonderful friends, but completely unaware that I existed in an extremely underseasoned and un-delicious bubble.

After attending college for one year, I was asked to go on the road, traveling through the southern United States and Canada as the electric guitar player in a band. I had no love at all for the business degree that I was studying for, so after about half a minute of careful consideration, it was settled. And there began a ten-year, perfectly random journey throughout Canada and the United States in various bands, basically living out of a fifteen-passenger van. Touring life is awesome, but most certainly not the glamorous vision of rock stardom most people have in their heads. No room service, no home in the Hollywood Hills.

Over the years I landed in countless cities, restaurants, and homes, experiencing local culture and local cuisines and savoring every last bite. It was my culinary awakening, my baptism into the world of the delicious. But its a very slippery slope, friends. Once you slide, prepare to land facefirst in a massive pool. I experienced Indian food for the first time in Montreal, sushi in Vancouver, BBQ in North Carolina, and pizza (errr, proper pizza) in New York City. And I wanted more. The floodgates were blown wide open, and I had zero interest in returning to the same old, same old meat and potatoes diet Id grown up on. My palate was expanding and my taste buds were exploding. But every tour has a start date and an end date, and while these breaks were a welcome respite from the road, when I returned home, I was back to eating my childhood staples. I had no idea how to cook and, if Im honest, no interest in learning.

My band members and I had reached a critical stage in our career and felt it was time to set up shop in a major metropolis. After much planning, debate, and maybe a few tears, weand our eternally supportive familieslanded in Music City: Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville, and the South in general, affected me in a way for which Ill be forever grateful. I forged lifelong friendships with incredible like-minded musicians from all over America, and I woke up every day with access to bona fide Southern cuisine, aka the Food of the Godsfried chicken, pulled pork, biscuits, and sausage gravy. Oh my! It was an unending treasure trove of tasty eats. But there was only one problem: I had no money.

I wouldnt trade my time as a touring musician for anything, but lets just say that the benefits package leaves something to be desired. We were rich in access but poor in cash. Working on a record meant the band wasnt touring. No tour = no money. No money = the cheapest food possible, which typically translated to the dollar menu at a fast-food chain (read: gross). We arrived at financial ground zero, and my wife, Leanne, graciously decided to travel home to Canada to work and help support our situation. This resulted in us living apart for several months.

Alone, broke, and questioning why I would choose to live this way, I wanted to feel as if I had control of something, as if I wasnt in a total downward spiral. Meanwhile, I couldnt bear the idea of even one more bowl of cereal for supper. So, for the first time since college, I got my hands on a library card. I strolled into the food section of the Nashville Public Library, full of hope, head held high. I borrowed three cookbooks that day, all of them written by a charismatic, inspiring English bloke who wrote recipes that I could relate to, that looked incredible, and that I felt, with a little practice, I could pull off.

One by one, I started cooking through the books, and with each passing recipe, I grew more and more addicted to cooking, tasting, and trying new foods. Jamie Oliver taught a Canadian musician living in Nashville to cookand literally saved me from a life of un-deliciousness.

When I wasnt at the studio, I was cooking several recipes a day. Stir-fries, curries, steak, eggs. I was cooking so much, in fact, that I decided to start taking photos of the dishes with my phone, to remember what Id cooked the week before and avoid repeat dishes.

Shortly thereafter, I moved home to Canada and brought my passion for the kitchen (and a budding passion for photography) along with me. I decided to open an Instagram account, because all the cool kids were into it, and started posting (really poorly shot) images of food. Copying my quickly named Gmail account handle, I landed on Dennis The Prescott, entirely unaware that the DtheP moniker would stick in such a significant way. It was completely for fun; I assumed that nobody would look at my account. I plugged along, posting photos almost every day, and picked up new followers here and there. Then, one glorious day over Easter vacation, Nigella Lawson and the folks at Instagram gave me a shout-out on a list of her favorite accounts, and within twenty-four hours I gained ten thousand followers. I.N.S.A.N.E. My phone battery was working overtime, and I knew that this thingwhatever it was, exactlyhad just gotten serious. I will be forever grateful to have connected with a wonderful community of food-loving, passionate folks from all over the world via social media.

Whether its working in the kitchen, creating videos, photographing dishes, or writing this book, I still pinch myself almost every day. Its still hard to believe that a Canadian musician with zero backup plan has ended up where I am, and I remain more in love than ever with food and food culture. My hope is that my journey, these recipes, and these images inspire you to create delicious meals for your friends and family. To help you fall deeper in love with food, to share your journey with others, and ultimately to help in growing a culture of people who are passionate about taking back mealtime. My story is proof positive that truly anyone can create impressive and approachable meals at home for a fraction of the cost of eating out. You can step away from the same old, same old. And you can ultimately inspire others to join you on the brightly lit path toward culinary nirvana.