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Meet Gabriel Valadez

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabriel Valadez.

Hi Gabriel, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I have loved cooking since I was very young. I started making myself quesadillas when I was 7 or 8. Then moved to making scrambles for breakfast when I was in jr high. Fast forward another 20 years and I’m making spiked tres leches for 30 people while also crafting curries and curing gravlox.

I was very very heavy as a kid. With considerable help from my mother, I went from 275lbs to 225lbs between 15 and 16 years old. From there, I actually got very interested in fitness, and more so, nutrition. You can seldom eat a healthier meal than one you make yourself. You know what you’re using. There’s no mystery. It really helps your fitness/health journey when you learn even just the basics of cooking.

Café Gabe itself started as more of a quarantine-induced mania. I was doing insane amounts of cooking at home for my roommates and I. Fried Rice. Savory Scones. Scallion Pancakes. Amaretto French Toast. What else were we going to do besides eat and try to get through the pandemic? For a while, I would just share my results on Instagram, but I started feeling like I could do more (and certainly had the time to do so.) I do love being a little theatrical. A little creative. Mix all that together, and you have Café Gabe! It’s proven to be an amazing outlet for me to not only satisfy my love for cooking, but also creating and performing to an audience. As a matter of fact, as of 03/14, I’ve finally passed 100 subscribers.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not the smoothest, I’d say. Recording was never too hard. But learning all these software programs was something else. I used Movavi for video editing until finally upgrading my adobe account to get Premier and Audition. I already knew a lot of Photoshop, but these were completely different software packages with their own processes. That doesn’t even go into just learning the basics of good video/audio editing. Understanding things like framing, blending, and cutting in video, as well as trying to clean up audio. What does normalizing do? What does compression do? Just a real trial by fire. My first few videos all have different sounds and styles. I regret not really deciding what my format was going to be and then tweaking it from there, compared to how it ended up. Why am I showing basic prep work in one video and not the next? Why am I cutting onions in a wide shot one video but on a close up of just my hands on the next? Just kind of a mess…

Even though I told myself to have a few videos already done before I started the channel, I just ended up winging it and starting from zero. I was scripting/shooting/editing one video per week. (Café Gabe is a one chef show.) For around three or four months, I was on that pace, but damn it was rough on me. Even with my day job being remote, I just found that pace really knocked me out. Ultimately, I went to two videos a month, and even then it was too much. I took a good six month “break.”

I would learn that a lot of the YouTube chefs I followed most likely did bulk filming. Spend a day or two and record as many videos as you can. THEN you can just focus on editing and getting into a real groove of a set release schedule. I recorded five videos over two days back in October. I released my “Update” video right before November to sort of act as a soft-reboot of the channel. I created an updated version of my very simple little intro jingle. Recorded a proper intro. And had a blast making that Update video and becoming a Samurai for a brief minute.

I still haven’t gotten back to my weekly pace, but I have a real renewed focus and look forward to getting back to something at least approaching my initial release rate. There’s no shortage of amazing recipes to highlight, that’s for damn sure! I also feel like I have a pretty good feel for my “style.” How a “Café Gabe” cooking video will be. I don’t mind changing things up from time to time, but I feel like the basic framework is there and stable!

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Well, my day job is as a data analyst for a pipeline inspection company, though I have a BS in Geology. I am beyond grateful to have full time work. I was laid off from 2015 to 2018 from an offshore job I had, and love knowing I have reliable income and a job that, while I don’t love, I absolutely don’t hate. It affords me my bills. It affords me my vices. I cannot complain. But, I’d never call it a passion outright. Cooking is my real passion right now.

Café Gabe is a channel I created to show how simple really tasty food can be. There is no secret to cooking. Like anything, it’s practice. When people say “I don’t know how to cook”, it has always confused me. I may know now how to make a bunch of recipes offhand, but if I’m doing something new, I do what anyone would do! I google a recipe, and follow the instructions. And 99% of the time, it works! I want to show that as best I can, by being both informative and entertaining. Great steaks. Awesome tofu. Delicious muffins. I love to cook it all!

Any big plans?
Well, I’ve finally cracked 100 subscribers, so that’s very exciting! I don’t know that I’m outright gunning for YouTube to ever become my main source of income. Even now I don’t generate any revenue. It’s just a passion project and outlet that I truly love to share. If one day I started getting a check from Google every month, that’d be awesome! But right now that is not the real goal.

That said, it’s not to say I wouldn’t love some changes! I’d love to upgrade my camera set up and really take my video quality to the next level. Get better with the software that I use. And of course, I have just dozens of recipes already in my mind to record. The trick is to stay consistent! So consistency is definitely a goal of mine!

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Image Credits:

Pam Ashley Photography

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