Dave Rogers is a 14-Year Army veteran who served in Desert Storm, Bosnia, a Tour in Korea, and the World Trade Center. Rogers left the Army in 2005 due to a neck injury he received while serving at the World Trade Center. When he left the Army, he felt like he had nowhere to turn until he found the VFW. Over the last ten years, Rogers has dedicated himself to taking care of veterans and their families in his area and helping in the community. When the pandemic started, Rogers moved his “Coffee with a Veteran” to Zoom. It was through that program that he found out that homebound veterans and their widows (mostly WWII and Korea era) were on a waiting list to get hot food, he transitioned this into “Cooking with a Veteran.”Starting with cooking, the program turned into a Facebook Live and YouTube Station where he shares his recipes and stories with his audience. This program was especially important to Rogers during the height of the pandemic. He knew many veterans would struggle with what to eat and wanted to create easy one-pot-meals they could enjoy and make themselves. Rogers has also been lucky to have some of his recipes published in a couple of newspapers, including the Long Island Advance, Islip Bulletin, and the Shelbyville Times-Gazette. He has also been highlighted by the VFW National for his program and had the chance to cook for Past National Commanders, Hal Roush and Fritz, in special “Cooking with the Chief” episodes.Rogers continues to bring weekly, sometimes twice a week, episodes of his show to share his cooking experiences with anyone who wants to learn a little GRUNT style of cooking. During the pandemic he set up cooking events to feed first responders, and those homebound veterans. His cooking programs grew into live cooking events to raise money for veteran programs and for service dogs for veterans and first responders. Currently, besides his “Cooking with a Veteran,” Rogers also teaches a “Vittles with a Veteran” class at the local recreation center and does live demonstrations and private lessons in the community for those that want to learn new ways of adding to their cooking plans.“When I talk about my love of cooking, I like to tell how my mother (God rest her soul) was such a bad cook she could burn water. The running joke was due to a BBQ we were having at our grandmother’s house in Queens, which had a slanted driveway. My mother placed the hotdogs the wrong way, and before she knew it the hotdogs rolled off the grill and down the driveway. The joke went from she could burn water to her cooking was so bad the food would run away. This had become the trend with many young men in our family marrying women who could not cook, which is what encouraged my grandmother to teach me a few tricks.My fondest memories of my childhood were walking to my grandmother’s house after school, you could smell food cooking all over the block. On Sundays, the family would gather around the table and share stories, along with the great food my grandmother would spend the whole day cooking. After she passed, those days stopped, the smell of great food was mostly lost, and my interest in cooking had gone astray.Until I joined the Army, that is. Traveling to various countries, my love for food grew with each culture, sharing with me their secrets and passions for their society's food. I am often asked what I like to cook most or what kind of food I like best. As a child that may have been easy to answer, growing up in New York, we ate a lot of Italian food and Chinese food. At least, what I thought were these culture’s food. The more you travel, the more you learn that much of what we consume as a culture’s food in America is Americanized, made to fit with our palates and often missing some ingredient that either we know nothing of or does not grow locally thus isn’t available in our market. While this has changed greatly since I was younger, there is still a lot of bastardization when it comes to various culture’s food, probably due in part to the lack of understanding of a nation’s diet, but also in part due to flavors we have grown to know growing up. At a younger age, I thought that fast food was flavorful, but now I am older and have experienced many different cuisines. On the rare occasion that I have fast food due to need, it is not tasty to me anymore.One of the things I have learned over the years is that great cooking is about keeping it simple and mixing it up. Flavorful food is not lots of seasoning or adding lots of salt but allowing the flavors of the food to stand out. Through this book, I will talk about my experiences with food and culture, as well as tricks I have learned with adding something unexpected. Anyone who watches my episodes of “Cooking with a Veteran” knows that I am enjoying cooking a lot with alcohol, while I enjoy the flavor this gives to many of my dishes, I know that many people prefer not to or can’t have alcohol, and for this reason it is always an option to my dishes not a must.Besides his love of cooking, Dave is also an artist. He has always had a love for creating and experimenting with art. Through this book, besides his food, you will also experience images of Dave’s Art.Read more about this authorRead less about this author