Music and Cooking!

Hi everyone. It’s Juri Panda Jones. Yes. I am the chef/musical director.

I am hoping that someday I can be a host of some reality show that teaches music and cooking at the same time. I love both. They are pretty similar when you think about it.

You have to use all your senses, improvise, be alert, sophisticated, be smart and be spontaneous.



I started playing the piano at age 3 and started cooking at age 4. My mom treated me like an adult when I was young and she even forced me to join her Rock band when I was 4. I rehearsed every Tuesday night with some adults and memorized all my parts. Then the day of the show, I got nervous and couldn’t perform. All I did was blamed on my mother putting orange scarf around my waist of the beautiful costume which she used her wedding dress’s material to make it for me. I cried so hard on the back stage.



I was raised in Japan and that place that I lived till age of 13 was very rural.

They had a farm and grew everything except onions and rice. I loved my grand-ma’s cooking. She let me help all the time and I did not mind at all. She always measured by her eyes and never saw her using any measuring tools. (I don’t think she owned any)



So now days, I hate to use recipes, measuring tools. I read them and I even record Japanese cooking show and watch them closely but I always memorize the recipes and ingredients. I use ratio thinking and dimensional thinking when I cook. Just like music.

You hear something and just use your sense to make it prettier. When you are in the moment and grooving, you wanna create that momentum with your gut and feeling not by meticulous manual and direction.



I love cooking because sometimes being artist can get frustrated because it’s difficult to see the end of tunnel, but cooking, yes you can see it. You can see that it’s done. You can see people eat your food, saying nice things to you and you can see that you did something positive for that day.



Music is harder to feel that goal than cooking. Cooking has tangible measurable outcome, but music/being musician is harder to see it.



I love being musician and chef because I am good at it and I feel perfectly balanced.



Thanks all the crew/ cast for eating my food and being so wonderful to me. As you know I believe in the power of food! It sure made us closer and we became such a wonderful team! I absolutely love Surviving the Nian. Working with all of you makes me so proud and wanna make me cook more food for you guys!



And please remember I can play the piano, too!

Juri March 28