Confessions of Thomas Cooley, R.D.

Thomas Cooley, R.D., director of dining experience, Inglis House, Philadelphia, makes his own nine-pepper hot sauce, hates bottled water and would love to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef.

Q. What is the best part of your job?

I figure out ways to increase people’s happiness and satisfaction. Doing that with limited resources and staff and patients or residents with incredible diversity and strong opinions makes it a challenging way to make a living.   

Q. What is the worst part of your job?

Dealing with self-centered customers who always want you to prepare food the way they like it and have no empathy for others or for our need to satisfy a population.

Q. If you weren't in foodservice what would you be doing?

I wrestled for Penn State. I would have become a WWE Superstar and then gone into politics. 

Q. If you had a time machine what historical event or era would you visit?

Dallas, Dealey Plaza, Nov. 22, 1963, with video cameras set up. I hate unsolved mysteries and conspiracy theories. 

Q. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I would like to be as good with my personal finances as I am with department budgets.  

Q. Which living person do you most admire?

Noam Chomsky.

Q. What would be your dream vacation?

To snorkel the Great Barrier Reef while it is still alive.

Q. What is your guilty pleasure?

Stupid films by Michael Nesmith, Paul Bartel, Monty Python and Savage Steve Holland. And bragging about my kids.

Q. What will people always find in your refrigerator?

Tombasco (my homegrown nine-pepper hot sauce with garlic) and my wife, Mary’s, homemade black walnut or pistachio pesto.  

Q. What food fad do you wish had never started?

Bottled water. It is a waste and provides an easy alternative to forcing all of us to insist that municipal water be better.

Q. What activity is at the top of your bucket list?

Attending the Super Bowl when the Philadelphia Eagles finally win one. Do you think it will happen before I die? 

Q. What is the weirdest food you have ever eaten?

Raw callaloo leaves. I don’t recommend it. They made my face and throat numb, and I had to go to the ER.

Q. What are your words to live by?

“Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.”—Christopher Hitchens