Senior and long-time wrestler Devin Mundy never thought he’d get a concussion that would land him off the matt and into the kitchen. After receiving a concussion during wrestling practice last December, his doctor told him the unexpected news – he could never wrestle again.
Mundy discovered that there is one upside to being out of wrestling- eating.
Now that Devin does not need to make weight for wrestling, he can eat all of the concoctions he cooks up with Chris Gegg in culinary teacher Rebecca Just’s cooking room. This year, the two of them have Just three times a day.
“Mrs. Just is my favorite teacher, and it’s just a place to relax,” Devin said. “I can talk to Mrs. Just or just hangout, and I can cook and eat if I want.”
In these classes, he and Chris mostly cook with a deep-fryer. According to Chris, the deep-fryer can transform a Toaster Strudel, making it taste like a doughnut, among other wonders.
“We made deep-fried Oreos one time, and that was really good,” Devin said. “It’s pretty much like an Oreo melted into a funnel cake. It was pretty sweet.”
According to Chris, Devin thoroughly enjoys the eating part of cooking.
“It’s cool to get to eat what you make yourself, especially if it turns out to be good,” Devin said. “It says that you know enough to not have to follow the recipe. “
The experiments Devin and Chris’ are able to cook up are due in part to the freedom Just gives them in the classroom.
“There’s no real sound rules for it,” Just said. “You can be creative, you can try new things, use your imagination. It’s not as structured as some other things.”
Chris and Just saw Devin’s cook- ing skills elevate when he agreed to compete in the Iron Chef competition last fall.
“As soon as we started doing Iron Chef, he picked up on stuff quickly and excelled,” Chris said.
It’s a bitter-sweet situation though.
“It’s nice cooking but it sucks [not wrestling],” Devin said.
Cooking may not fill the hole that that wrestling left, but it’s an aspect of Devin’s life that he wants to con- tinue to move forward in.
“I probably don’t want to make a career out of it because the hours aren’t very good, but I would like to keep learning about it,” Devin said. “I might go to culinary school just as a hobby on the side. It would be cool to make more advanced things, and I would be able to understand how things work and not have to just follow what a piece of paper says to do. “
