Retire Early Lifestyle
Retirement; like your parents, but way cooler

In 1991 Billy and Akaisha Kaderli retired at the age of 38. Now, into their 4th decade of this financially independent lifestyle, they invite you to take advantage of their wisdom and experience.

Creative Cuisine at Home:

Global Flavors for Everyday Meals

Billy and Akaisha Kaderli

Grilled lamb chops on a bed of mashed sweet potatoes, broccoli, fresh corn off the cob

It was a match made in Heaven.

Billy loves to cook, and I love to eat.

We have spent our adult lives either in the Food Industry or - like Anthony Bourdain - focused on culinary tourism.

We get it, not everyone is so obsessed with eatables.

And one's taste in food (pun intended) runs the gamut.

Blistering red bell peppers and fresh tomatoes on our gas grill

Some people's sole focus is on "not being hungry" and their approach to a meal is simply to get it over with, as it is a bother to them or a complete interruption in their day.

Others' theme is on nutrition, being vegetarian, vegan, avoiding carbs and sugar, counting calories, the Keto diet, only eating live food, and nothing cooked or only eating meat as in the Carnivore diet.

There are those who live to snack or graze throughout the day.

Some didn't have scheduled mealtimes at home while growing up, so as an adult they don't have that pattern established. Their eating habits might be chaotic or driven by hunger-in-the-moment, and preparing meals is foreign to them.

Our Biga dough pizza with home made pizza sauce, meats, Provolone cheese, mushrooms and fresh basil from our garden 

People's relationship with food probably stems from childhood experiences. If Mother's cooking was "so bad" they moved forward into their futures with a dislike of eating. Or maybe they took the opposite approach and learned to cook so they would never be subjected to bland, overcooked, canned or mushy food ever again.

In my case, I was raised with an international palate - one set of grandparents came from Southern Italy and the other set was from Austria/Germany. My Mother was an excellent American cook, so weekly I was given outstanding German (dampfnudel, hassenpfeffer, dumplings), Italian (wedding soup, hand made cavatelli, pasta Bolognese) and American food (pot roast, pork chop, chili con carne) on a consistent basis.

The few times we had take out, it was Chinese.

One of our antipasto misto boards that we make at home

It was a natural tendency for me to try new flavors and unusual pairings.

When Billy and I met, we couldn't believe our luck. Both of us were devoted to food, and we loved to travel.

What a favorable combination!

Our freshly made fruit tart

And we have made the most of it all along the way.

From traveling to Europe in 1979 in pursuit of food presentation and recipes, to buying our restaurant in Santa Cruz, California when we were a mere 27 years of age.

Our styles and preferences in the kitchen complimented each other's.

I tended towards baking breads, making desserts, putting together unusual salad and cold plate combinations and satisfying comfort food.

Grilled fresh salmon with Béarnaise sauce, Roquefort noodles and fresh broccoli

Billy was the artist.

Trained as a French Chef, he knew sauces like nobody's business.

He was a master at preparing seafood, could break down his own meats (which saved us tons of money), and was adventurous in his flavor combinations.

Marinated and grilled shrimp with pasta, fresh herbs, sautéed onions, garlic and cracked pepper

After retirement, we traveled the world together with a focus on food.

From Sicily, to Japan, to Mexico, from the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Thailand to Paris.  

We learned the history of how foods over the centuries traveled from country to country due to the Diaspora of peoples around the globe.

Our fantastic Chapala, Mexico Special

When a culture was uprooted from an Arabic country, from Africa, from Southern Italy, or when a land was invaded by foreign armies - the recipes, skills, methods and spices came with them.

Peoples' cuisines reflected the respective stories of their homeland.

Food is not just sustenance, it's living history. It connects people, harbors friendships, opens doors.

Who would have known the influence the Arab peoples had on the cuisine of Mexico? or of Sicily?  

Hot Italian sausage, roasted potatoes, grilled asparagus and fresh corn off the cob

Items like coffee, chocolate, yeasted or unleavened breads, spices such as tumeric, cinnamon or even dried fruit like apricots or dates all changed the presentation and combination of foods we eat today.

The natives of the Americas took a grass and altered it crop after crop. That grass is now the cobbed corn we harvest in our modern world.

Life, and food, are always changing.

Another one of our grilled Biga dough pizzas with Kalamata olives, various cheeses, fresh herbs and home made pizza sauce

Europe was transformed by the potato and by chocolate, too - which was considered to be sinful, and only the rich could have access - and believe it or not, coffee was illegal at one point!

The caffeine in coffee inclined people to have conversations. They discussed the state of their current affairs, and governments closed down coffee houses for fear of people rising up and taking over parliament.

Coffee made the people think too much, challenge and question the status quo. Apparently that wasn't a good thing.

Jimadore cutting pinas in the blue agave fields, Tequila, Jalisco, Mexico

Whether it's the making of wine, the double distillation of alcohols such as tequila or the rolling of cigars for export, what we as people ingest has been carefully guarded... or taxed, or nixed all together - by either peer pressure or the law. 

Consider the sinful eating of meat on Fridays, or the conventional eating of horse meat all over Europe, Russian and England. That is, until those horses became essential to fight off Arab invasions which came in from the south. The horses were needed for the military, so the eating of horsemeat for some countries became "barbaric" or - again - sinful.

In this way, the demand for what was considered to be delicious and a delicacy - became unwanted or unpopular. Peer pressure changed people's perception of this valuable source of protein that was utilized for centuries.

Today, the custom of eating horsemeat is still alive and well in dozens of countries around the world, but you won't find that option in America.

So, yes, Billy and I are FOODIES.

We are companions of Anthony Bourdain and we walk the same road.

We find the growing, the preparation, the flavors, the back stories, and the presentations of eatables all over the world to be a fascinating and worthy pursuit.

“You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.” –Anthony Bourdain

Retire Early Lifestyle appeals to a different kind of person – the person who prizes their independence, values their time, and who doesn’t want to mindlessly follow the crowd.

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