Recently, if you took a look at my facebook page, all you would see is status updates about food... mostly baking updates. I either have no life, or I have a serious passion for cooking. I don't even think I understood just HOW much I love cooking until a week or so ago. I really really LOVE to cook, bake, ice, decorate, saute', fry, knead, mix, whisk, chop, mince, and eat. It's a passion, and I am starting to think it is what I was born to do.
I always wanted to be a chef, to run a restaurant... but life got in the way of my childhood dreams. When I was a teenager I worked in a restaurant as a cook - probably my first job that didn't involve babysitting. I loved it... and then I started thinking about other things - like how could I own a restaurant and have my holidays and weekends? How could I own my own restaurants and not have to get up early in the morning? And there were no culinary schools anywhere near Dayton, Wyoming. And using this line of reasoning, I proceeded to talk myself out of my dream. I went to school for something practical - to be an English teacher.
Funny thing about that - I didn't give a crap about being an English teacher. I really didn't. I had no passion for teaching. I had no passion for grammar or for good literature (although I really do tend to look down on people who use poor grammar, and I do LOVE to read.) It wasn't a good substitute. So I dropped out after a couple of semesters.
I toyed with the idea of going back to cooking, but cooking doesn't pay the bills, and I needed money. I ended up in my current career - working for doctors to get their bills paid by insurance carriers. Do I have passion for this? No. I don't particularly like doctors, generally speaking... And I am convinced insurance carriers were invented by the devil. And after doing this work for the past (oh, God...) 13 years (?) I am burned out. A bad side effect of this business is that you tend to end up jaded and disliking humanity in general. It's hard to see the good in people when you spend your days arguing with beauracrats and being berated by doctors because they aren't getting the money they think they deserve.
And now that I am 37 years old, I realize that I hate my job. I hate it. I have no passion for it. I do it because I have to. I need to pay the bills, I need to support my family.
I also realize what it is that I WANT to do - I want to be a chef. I want to be a pastry chef. I want to run a catering business. I want to bake beautiful cakes for beautiful brides... I love all of it.
For me, the food I make makes people happy. It brings a little bit of love and happiness into their lives, and it is something I do. Something I can give to others that makes life a little sweeter. Someone asked me the other day after looking at a picture of a cake I decorated (I am taking a WONDERFUL cake decorating class right now - here are the websites from my teacher, Zubia Kahn: http://zubiaswiltonclasses.shutterfly.com/ and http://www.giveemcake.com/ ) if I really thought all the work I put into a cake like that was worth it since it only took a few minutes for people to eat it. In my mind, it is completely worth it. These things are a large amount of work, but it is the kind of work that I love to do.
This past summer I made up my mind to go to culinary school. This winter I decided I NEED to go to culinary school. It is my calling. It is my passion. I will do it.
So, no recipe this time... sorry, folks! Just a lot of rambling about food and cooking!
