S4 Ep20: Actor & Celebrity Chef LJ Klink

This week on Magic Making Mischief we get to talk with the incredible #celebrity #chef and #actor LJ Klink! You may have seen him in shows like Grimm, Green Room, or Z Nation, or tasted some of his tantalizing dishes, now we get to chat with him on 12MAY at 7PM CT! Don’t miss this live #podcast episode!

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Ukita’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ukita_cosplay/

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LJ’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theljsays/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Hey Magic Makers, I'm Mommy Rella. I'm Yuki the cosplay.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Juju Jones.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

And I'm CJ Peterson. Welcome to Magic Making Mission Future Wands to the Ready because we solemnly swear we're up to no good. And speaking of up to no good, today we have with us uh celebrity chef and actor LJ Clink. Um but do not despair. We are not ignoring the start pre-recording. So keep that in mind. Today, we have special guests with us today. Like I said, actor and politics. LJ.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Hello.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Yeah, some of you may recognize him. He's been in a couple different things. Green room. Let's see what else have we had him in. And what else have you been in, sir?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Uh I've been on the Food Network competition a couple of times. And so I won Extreme Chef. And uh that was Smart Dog Media. And then I also took second on Guys Grocery Game, Extreme couponing, I think.

SPEAKER_04 1:56

You were on Guy's Grocery Games? Yes, I was that nice.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

So that was uh that was a few years ago. I think three years ago I was on there.

SPEAKER_04 2:08

Cool. So I'm gonna go back and watch that now.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Okay. I think it's I want to say like season 13. I don't know. I you know, I don't really watch myself on TV, so I uh I feel that. Yeah, I did, you know.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

Now we had something funny happen right before we came online. We figured out how Yukita and LJ met, and it seems that everybody has a twin in this world.

SPEAKER_04 2:33

And Yukita, explain how you two so essentially um LJ is my husband's twin slash doppelganger because they look exactly alike pretty much, uh with the difference now in the facial hair, this is about it. Um once upon a time, me and my husband went to go see a private screening for a movie called The Green Room. And one of the characters in the movie, like me and my husband and some of his friends couldn't help but notice that they looked very similar. And me being the girl that I am, I deep dived because I'm like, what is this? Because celebrity duplicators and whatnot. And they're also around the same age. So I was like, wait, do you actually have a twin though for real? And it's it's it's a funny story. There's there's a lot to it, yeah. But essentially that is LJ is my husband's doppelganger.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

Very cool. So I'm gonna dive into this twin thing. So I ran into my twin in high school, and so I was with the twin off in high school. So you keep have you run into your twin yet? I have.

SPEAKER_04 4:00

I have, and she is so much my best friend that we literally call each other twin.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Very cool. Bobby, have you?

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Uh kind of. I had a girl at college that I became really good friends with who people kept confusing us for each other because our hair and uh structure looked a lot alike. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Uh Juju, um so I have two things. One, I have a twin, but her name she's not my twin, but she is my cousin. She's my cousin, and we come from the same uh maternal, she's from my maternal side, and uh we both look like my mom. And then I have been told that I have a celebrity um doppelganger, but uh I'm not quite sure about that, and that is Christina Reese.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Oh, Christina Reese. Oh yeah, oh I can see it.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

We lost we lost Shakita.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

But that's my that's my story of the twins. I can see it.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

I can see that. Okay, so Mr. LJ. So how did you land um which one came first? The actor or the chef?

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Well, that's a great question. Um, so as a kid, my grandparents um had a restaurant and my parents were real young and my grandma had a heart attack, and so I started at three math and science and reading with cooking and poker. And so um I I really cooking came first, and then um I I pretty much wanted to I early 80s they had uh the show Fall Guy, and now it's been made into movie, but in the early 80s, um I would wanted to be a stunt man, and I was like, you know, I can I can jump off my bike as fast as I can ride. And um my mother called me aspiration king because I had so many stitches and so many uh bump bruises always because I was always trying to be a stunt man, and then I got to be in a play, and I was in a play, and it was really interesting, and I learned that theater, although I done did it afterwards, theater wasn't as much my um my spot. I always kind of felt like I was overacting in theater, which um on screen those micro movements are different, and I learned that from just doing some interviews, and I put a before podcasts and before all that, I did a video on VHS called Clink's Cooking Hour and um invited a chef on it to talk about something. And I was like 15 years old, and so that was about the time where I was like, this is really cool. Uh and um, and then upon graduating from uh high uh from high school, um, I was I went to culinary school, and in culinary school, I started going out and uh you know, going to the new newses and you know, doing that Sunday morning TV show where I'd cook and be in front of the camera. And that's really where it got where I really said, okay, I can be in front of the camera. This is cool. And then um through it all, I I was I built a culinary school in central Illinois, uh Richland Community College. Um we we put a culinary school together, and when I did that, I ended up becoming the um the noon um chef. And I'd come on and be like, Hi, I'm Chef LJ Clink, and today we're talking about the shallot. A shallot is a small pungent onion that is put, you know, a lot of people think it's a garlic, but it's not a garlic, it's a you know, and I did that, and they would cut me in whenever it was a slow news day, um, which was, you know, most days. So I was on almost every day, and I filmed like 60 of them out of whack. Well, the food network saw it, and um, they asked me to um come in, help on some show development, meaning like be a participant in a show that would never go to air, but how does it work? And it kind of putting a pilot together, a pilot that would never air. And so um I went and did that. And um upon that, well, oh, you know what? I I forgot a whole piece of this. So let's let's go back. I uh I jumped right past in um 2000 in 2001. I wrote a letter to the view. Um, they had asked about what Disney had um, how Disney had affected you and how it changed your life. And I wrote a letter um to the view and said, you know, this is this is why. So um it was when Barbara Walters and Lisa Ling was on there, and so um I got to be the on-air uh up-and-coming chef, um, Lisa Ling's date. And so I got to talk to Barbara Walters, 17 million live viewers, and I spent a whole day at uh Disney California Adventure two days before it opened, and I got to do everything, all the backstage passes. Um, there was a hundred red carpeted stars, and I looked around and I said, I could do this, this is no problem. And uh so, and I'd done all that other stuff, like I said, that I'd worked up to. And um, upon that, somebody saw me that had an outdoor adventure show and said, Hey, do you want to go on this outdoor adventure show? For two and a half years, I was the on-air chef, also did a lot of the media pieces, you know, the filming, um, some editing, voiceover. And I did that, and it was on the outdoor channel and the sportsman's channel. So I did that, and then I um ended up building the culinary school shortly thereafter, got the job on the new news in Springfield, Illinois, because I had that experience in front of the camera.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

And then yeah, and after all that, I um I just started getting calls from people that are like, Hey, you think you want to do this? And I'm like, heck yeah, I'd do anything. And uh and so, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

That's my husband is a is a huge Fall Guy fan. He still has his lunch kit from whatever he was uh watching the show back in the days. Oh yeah. I can appreciate that inspiration.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah, yeah. So uh that it it's really funny, you know. I I really believe growing up in the 80s and the 90s, we um we got a different look at what what sitcoms look like. Um now that you know I've you know I've had all these experiences and um you know, you know, acting classes and all these different things and retrospectives and all the things you do to be better at what your craft is, what your love is. And um, you know, I I I I feel that gap that some of our entertainment doesn't have anymore. It's really cool to go back and revisit.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yeah, I agree with that. True. I have a question.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Who was your most like inspirational person growing up that inspired you to cook?

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Well, um, so as far as uh so my parents go to a little restaurant, and I wanted to be an attorney. So um I said I can go to culinary school because I can afford to pay for that myself, cook my way through law school. And so uh it was kind of a means to an end, but really my mom, my mom kept telling me she's like she was a pastry chef for 30 some years um at her own restaurant and and then catered before we had a restaurant, and and when you know, her abilities, she never was classically trained, but worked with a lot of great chefs, and she she just encouraged me, you know, to go into food. And I was like, mom, I don't want to be a line cook for the rest of my life. I'm I I can't do that. I see these 50 plus year old guys, and they're broken and they're bitter, and I don't want to be that guy, and so she convinced me to go to culinary school, and um with the idea of I could afford to pay for more schooling later, and then I got um I got um accepted into the law school I wanted to get into, and I turned them down.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Wow, that's what a flex though. I asked that because I like cooking, I like experimenting. I'm I am an amateur compared to you, sir. But my mother inspired me and she was an excellent cook.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

It's it's it's amazing with with being I feel so grateful and I'm so blessed that I've been able to do the things I've got to do. And when I talk to people about my experience in food and entertainment world, people think I'm making stuff up. They're like, oh, you know, like there's no way. And you know, one of the things I got to do is I got to go work in China, and I've got to work in China and Mexico, and um working in China, what I learned about food is that it it bridges the gap. It's I was in a I was in a kitchen in Suzhou, China, with a dozen chefs that spoke no English. I spoke one or two words in Chinese, and uh we were able to have a blast. We spent like 11 days together talking. We made meatballs, we made dim sung, we made Chinese pizza, which is amazing, um, which is basically they all from China go to Europe like American a lot of Americans do, and they learn. So we had food as our conversation, and uh that was like the moment in my in my brain, and I was in my early 30s, I was like, oh my gosh, food is everything. I don't need I don't need language. I mean, our primal needs are what our primal needs are in food and and you know, a beverage of whatever is so important to that, and um, so it's amazing how food makes that occur.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

That's really cool. You use your language. That's that's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Yeah, it you know, one of the things that I you know, I wanted to be an attorney, not because I wanted to be, you know, all the bad things that you hear about attorneys. I think it was watching too much LA Law in the 80s, too, as a kid.

SPEAKER_04 14:29

That'll do it.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

We'll we'll we'll blame that, you know. Um but what I really wanted to do is I wanted to help people, and that was my my big my big piece. And I had a, you know, and I struggled, I've struggled in some of my roles because my whole goal is, you know, to better the world I live in. Yet the roles a lot of the time the roles I play are um probably the worst of the worst. And I had an acting coach tell me, um, she's a brilliant lady, and she looked at me and she goes, she goes, LJ, we sin on screen so others don't have to in real life. And I was like, wow. And and and and that was so monumental. That gave me that that to go in there and think about something from this terrible spot and know that it doesn't affect anything in my life outside. And um, I've I've literally been on set with with other people, and um, they're like, you know, and I my hair was you know down on my shoulders and had a big beard most of my time, and you know, it's just uh recently that I I kind of cleaned up a little bit. Um, I actually want a new headshot. So that was I I wanted a different look, you know. I was kind of getting typecasted, and so um never some type of weird metalhead, never. Oh, it's crazy, and I'd be sitting there and be all dressed up and looking terrible, and somebody would be like staring at me, like, what are you looking at? And they're like, You're one of those like super like smart guys that's not as bad as he looks. I'm like, No, I'm a freaking actor. Are you kidding me? I work with kids. I mean, literally. So it's just like, no, but at the same token, um, it it's it's been such a wonderful journey and it's such a yin and yang to what my soul is. I get to do two very craft-driven jobs um that that have such an impact on people. You're entertaining them, you're making them happy, or at least you're emotionally driving them. And I get to do that with food and and entertainment.

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Well, speaking of kids um that you mentioned, uh you we were talking before about the school, the um school food reform. What is that?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

So, you know, we all have moments in our life where um we uh we get stuck in a place, and I was in a very, very um egotistical place, I would say. That would probably be the best way, ego-driven, you know, the chef world, when you get when you start getting all the accolaclinates and all the um the letters behind your names and your certifications, and you know, and I've gotten to the point where I, you know, I was in upper upper echelon of that group, and then I was acting and doing that, and that becomes yes, hmm. And so uh with with that, um I I my kid came home from school from preschool one day, and she looks at me and she we'd moved back, and we were in the town that I graduated um high school from, and my family's restaurant was in. And she looked at me and she goes, Dad, I wish I could get food. My I wish my friends could get food like I get. And it was moving, and it was for a four-year-old to say that she noticed her friends got crappy food and it wasn't good. And I told her, I promised her I'd do something. And you know, and that was a time I was doing green room and I was on, I was working on TV behind the camera as a producer and stuff, and I was like, sure, baby, whatever, I will do whatever I can. And I didn't take that lightly. And so I got into school food reform and I was one of the chefs that came out with um the 2010 Healthy Kid Act, which is the Healthy Kid Act um from the Obama administration. And I was um, after they trained the first group of chefs, I was the first wave of chefs that were trained. So I worked in 23 different school districts in seven different states, um, changing food, um, teaching, teaching um lunch ladies how to um you know run their kitchen effectively, efficiently, how to um properly wash fruit, how to use a knife, how to how to season something, how to how to actually cook.

SPEAKER_04 18:54

And season is it.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah, and and school food, what do we we hear all this stuff terrible about school food? And uh, and at that time, it you know, me being me, I said, I'm gonna be better than Berkeley, California. They're public schools, you know, I'm gonna be better than them. And I think it was year before last we officially could say we're better than them. And this year I bought uh in the last year and a half, two years, it will be about two years by the time I get my next order. Um, I bought in about 30 cows. Um, live on the hoof cows, I send to the USDA plant. So um when I said I was gonna change food and make it better, I've literally um started the slow food movement that was cool in the 90s, but made it at a school in eastern Washington. We uh we, you know, we're a suburb basically of Spokane, Washington, but we're rural, we're we're agricultural and uh we do 5,000 meals a day, about 2,000 breakfasts, about five, about 3,000 lunches. That's on the low end of our average. And um, over 75% of those meals are um local local food or scratch cooked food. Like we make our own ranch dressing. We make you know 40 gallons a day of ranch dressing and uh that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

40 gallons a day of ranch dressing. Add some jalapeno to it, and I'm all in. We yeah, we jalapeno ranch is my favorite sauce right now.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

It hey, that's one of mine too. It's great on pizza, I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_04 20:30

Oh, yes. Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

But uh so that you know, that's the part that I get to do every day. Is is um I get to better the world. I got I got 40 employees that work for me. We're over a 285 square mile radius, and um most sites cook, um, but uh we do transport as well. So I've got a warehouse and uh a couple secretaries and an assistant director, and uh we all go out and we battle good food. And I, you know, I came from the world of fancy, fancy food. So um for me, I don't look at it as K-12. I don't I don't hire people that are you know lunch ladies, I hire people that are cooks that like kids. You know, it's pretty simple.

SPEAKER_04 21:16

It's not meat loaf, it's meat pate with a chip uh but the tomato drizzle, tomato paste drizzle.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

I like to call that American pate.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

I'm a difficult question. What is your favorite thing to cook that you like?

SPEAKER_00 21:34

So that's that's such a great question. Um, and it's such a huge question. And as a cook, I've evolved. Obviously, um, you know, for me, I I went through classically French trained, and then from um, and then I went Mediterranean, and then from the Mediterranean Lebanese food, um even Indian food, went and then went and worked in China, and then I worked in Mexico, so I I have those. Influences and got to work with some Lebanese chefs and some Indian chefs that are just incredible. And so I say all that because I love all the pieces of that. But the thing that I'm probably doing the most right now is that really that um uh that farm to fork piece. Like my buddy owns a farm, we've done a ton of chiccuterie. So prosciutto's, Capacola's, um, uh chorizos, both dry. And so that right now is you know, it's very science-driven, it's patience, it's old school, and you don't waste any piece of any animal that you know you have. And and that warms my heart is you know, I went vegan for a while, not for any political reason or anything. I was like, you know what? I need to know the plight of the vegan, I need to know what that's like as a chef. I want to know how hard it is to order. I want to know how hard it is. So I did it for 13 months. I didn't, it wasn't a one-week thing, it was a let's see what this this does. And I actually found out I from my doctor that I wasn't evolved enough um to be a vegan.

SPEAKER_04 23:03

What does that mean? Uh please explain. You need meat. You mean you're not evolved enough to not use meat.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Like, what does that mean? I like took it at first. I took it like, I'm like, how dare you? You know, you know, I know how to use things in those thumbs. Um, but no, I uh I actually his he's an Eastern European doc, brilliant dude, and he basically said that the way my physical body is made up is that I need to have more protein, animal proteins, and my body regulates them differently.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

So um so basically he he called you in medical form a neand adult, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:48

Honestly, essentially, because my husband's the same way.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

I'm still playing in my head. Like, doesn't mean my head be like, no, no, I'm a carnivore.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

So I'm like uh yeah, so uh you know, I I do not make up as much meat as I did before, and I guess that's a good thing. I really I really love love vegetables, even though the silent scream of the radishes keep me up at night.

SPEAKER_04 24:20

The silent scream of the radishes. If someone doesn't make that into a children's book, I'm gonna be highly disappointed in all of you.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

No, it should be a punk rock band name. I want to bring up the uh the shows you've been in because um Z Nation is actually my favorite zombie show. Like, I think it's way better than Walking Dead, in my opinion. Okay, so congrats on being on that one because that was a that was a good episode. That one got me. I was not expecting the direction that one went.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

I was like, Oh here's a little my daughter is in an episode, really, and yeah, and she um it was her first and last um acting gig. She just um she did it and then she got done with it, and it was like that was fun. I'm glad I did it. And she's the little blonde girl. I think it's the episode two episodes after mine, and she has a 44 meg and she's shooting zombies, and um, she ends up getting eaten by zombies. Oh and her grandma and my best friend's mom, who was like her grandma, helped nanny her, um, were watching her, and here she is sitting between them, and she gets eaten by zombies and they cry. Like, what are you doing? She's right here, yeah. But what the thing she took away from, and she's 20 now, uh, but at you know, I think she was 13. What she took away from was is like, Dad, that's just like corn syrup and root beer. And I'm like, she goes, It tasted so good.

SPEAKER_04 26:02

Oh my goodness. She said, I want to be a zombie again, just like an eight line of it.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

We had to like tell her to quit licking, licking her hand, you know.

SPEAKER_04 26:10

Like she's got all of it, all of her hand. She's just like, I'm gonna quit licking real quick. She's like, Oh, my children's dropping. Let me just drink a look.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 26:21

Oh, I have a two-part question.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

Do you have any advice for somebody who wants to get into the chef world or B, get into the acting world?

SPEAKER_00 26:30

So, yeah, I do. And it and it's gonna sound really cliche. It's first of all, just say I'm gonna do it. You know, I grew up in Cheney, Washington, and for a long time I said I'm just a uh chubby kid from Chini. And um, I kind of use that as my mantra is I can do anything. And um anything I uh you know, and I come from a very tough family, like real go-getters um that came from nothing. So everything they have, they've earned, and that gave me the thought that, you know, uh, I can do any of this. That's you know, and like a lot of people, you know, I'm ADHD, I'm dyslexic, all these things that so oftentimes we use as an excuse, not a platform. And I kind of use it as like, no, I can do that, and so that's it, and and people go, Oh, you just have no fear, you know, you're not scared of it. And I'm like, no, and that's where my company named Luck Junkie came from, is I I was told that that I was the luckiest person they'd ever met. And I said, you know what, I'm a luck junkie, I make all my own luck. And it's having the it's yeah, and it's and it's having the thought that I can do this and not being scared of failure. And you know what, I'll tell you what, I've been scared of failure every time I take a certification test, every time um I have to do a I have to do a stunt, even if it's falling out of a chair, you know, it's like if if I'm cooking on TV, I you know, I want to definitely make sure I don't have any like boogers on me, you know, like everything, like all that is like everything else. Yeah, but but with that, you go, all right, I'm gonna do it anyways. And and so whatever you want to do, do and um just start. I mean, Danny Glover, the story is he was working in a a theater in LA when he did um uh oh leaf a weapon, and he was he was doing theater work and they found him and they put him in that that show at 45 years old and he became a superstar. And and you know, stars are made every day, and and it doesn't mean that you're gonna be on, you know, I don't know what the the big show is right now, but um I don't either. Yeah, I I don't, but say the big bang theory, because that was that was I was thinking that too. And all that, you know, that those pieces are important to um, you know, just getting out there and doing it and not being scared of it.

SPEAKER_03 29:02

Very cool. Well, good advice, thank you, sir. Well, we appreciate having you on. You are an amazing guest, and oh thank you. Have the best luck as far as ADD and ADHD, our entire crew have it, so we don't use it as a crush either. No, no, it's our superpower.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Yeah, that's how I feel.

SPEAKER_03 29:26

So, you know, it's all good. So um, thank you so much for joining us. Lj Clink, you head over to his Instagram, which is T-H-E-L-J says. So you can check him out over there and see what all he has on his Instagram. Um, next week we have actor and writer David Lee Holm. So make sure to check it out next week next Tuesday at seven o'clock. In the meantime, get your ones ready.

SPEAKER_04 29:56

Did we mention that this was pre-recorded?

SPEAKER_02 29:59

Yes, we did.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

Yes, I did at the very beginning. All right, thanks so much for joining us again.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

It's been a real pleasure chatting with you.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Nice to meet you.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

If y'all haven't had a chance yet, smash that thumbs up real quick. Uh Juju, would you hit the view for a second? Uh and make sure to share this one out so that others get a chance to check out some of these awesome stories he had to share with us. I love uh I love hearing about your kids' program too. That's really cool. I'd heard of that. I didn't know anything from behind the scenes, so that was awesome learning. Um, and if you haven't had a chance yet, make sure that you're subscribed and following us on our individual accounts too. We've got CJ Peterson on TikTok and YouTube, Mombi Rella on YouTube, and Yukita Cosplay and Juju Jones on Instagram. And of course, Magic Making Mischip on our Facebook page. So till next time, guys, we will see y'all then. And Mischief Managed. Bye.