The Chef

(The Family: Seth, Evelyn, McKinley. . . and Gaga)

My name is Seth Schwimmer and I’m the founder of UpGood. I humbly stand before you – at your service – ready, willing, and able to help you cook better and faster.

Over the years, I worked in restaurants. I devoured books. I cooked for my friends. I cooked for my family. Basically, I learned everything that I could about cooking. But it’s not that easy. As I came to discover, it’s actually a lifelong journey, and you must be dedicated to your art as you progress through life. Much like a martial arts practitioner who dedicates their mind, body and soul to training. It’s often said that a black belt is just a white belt who never gave up. The same thing applies in the kitchen. All great chefs were once amateur cooks.

But the journey from cook to chef starts with two necessities:

• Dependable tools that you can trust
• A strong foundation of skills that help you cook better and faster

So I set out to develop a line of cooking products that weren’t boring or cheap and would make it fun to cook again.

I cleaned out the drawers in the kitchen and realized we had all these tools and gadgets and thingamajings that just sat there, took up space, and cluttered up the kitchen. Bye, bye . . . in the trash you go. So many unnecessary kitchen tools. So many products with questionable materials. I threw out all my plastic containers. This was “Aha Moment” Number 1.

Next, I took a closer look at my cooking skills. I soon discovered that there were a number of gaps in my culinary knowledge. Looking back, this was understandable. Many of us learn how to cook from our parents and/or grandparents, but let’s face it – they (most likely) weren’t professional chefs. As a result, many people are self taught and have undoubtedly picked up some bad habits along the way. I know I did. It’s easy to progress to the intermediate level and get stuck in a rut. You don’t know what you don’t know, and it feels comfortable to make the same familiar meals over and over again. This was “Aha Moment” Number 2.

There I was . . . cooking, researching, experimenting . . . then, life happened. My wife and I had a baby girl: McKinley. The moment we saw her, she became our whole world. Everything else just slipped away. Life was great, but now, as a new father, I was working out less, getting less sleep, and running on fumes. Things that were priorities before wound up being replaced with other activities. And frankly, I was exhausted. My life started spiralling out of control. I would come home from work and feel tired. I wasn’t motivated to cook. I wasn’t motivated to clean. I wasn’t motivated to change diapers. I failed . . .

Somewhere along the way, I also lost my love for cooking. It now felt like a chore – something I had to do – and I dreaded coming home from work, sifting through endless amounts of recipes and trying to figure out what to make.

So I came up with a plan. Bwhahahhahaha! First, I had to make cooking fun again. Second, I had to increase my skills so that I could get in and out of the kitchen quickly.

Great! Except, where do I go from here? As a busy parent, I don’t have a lot of free time. So now, I’m strapped for time AND overwhelmed with options. This is the Information Age after all, but there’s so much information I’m drowning in it.

For starters, there are a million different recipe sites. I don’t know what’s good. I don’t know what’s bad. I don’t want to sift through them all just to find one good dinner. Talk about time consuming.

Then, there are all the cookbooks. Have you seen those overloaded compendiums with 1001 recipes for this and that? Holy moly! Who’s going to make all of this? I mean come on, there’s no way that the people that even wrote these books made all of these recipes. Some of them don’t even have pictures, and it’s a guessing game as to whether or not they taste any good.

There’s just too much info out there. So I wanted to organize everything in a way that made it easier for people to cook at home and have fun doing it. I wanted to provide people with quality kitchen tools that they can trust. I wanted to give people information on how to eat healthier, lose weight, understand ingredients, and make smarter choices at the grocery store.