Graduating Culinary School in NYC
The day arrived. After nine months of culinary school, we were going to be moving on. All those faces and bizarre and new cooking techniques felt so familiar now. I did not want it to end. The people in the kitchen that I had learned and grew with had become an intergral part of my life.
For the good part of the last year, although life was challenging, there was a definite direction, I was at the French Culinary Institute and I was going to learn. Coming from a next-to-nothing culinary background, except some in health food, the techniques and methods I learned were new to me and kept me on my toes. Was it crazy that I had chosen this route?
Having a diverse professional background which included working on Wall Street doing research and selling stocks for more than a decade, then managing art, to come to then study, work and be completely consumed by food, health and the environment, I felt like I had not just been around the block, but maybe around a couple of them. This is where I wanted and needed to be, but the question loomed… Now what?
It was melancholic that graduation day. Knowing that I would not be working in the kitchen again with my family of classmates. At the time I could not imagine working in a kitchen without them being there. I loved working in the kitchen with them. I loved being at FCI. Even on those days, when I screwed up and mistook the salt for the sugar when making my lemon tart, and got some dishes simply thrown in the trash because I was late on presenting, it was spectacular.
It was the birth of something new again. Over the past year, I had finally been granted the divorce that I had been requesting for the past 5 years. I had lost almost everything financially, including my house. I was raising my 2 children alone. And now, crazy me was going to be starting at the bottom again. But somehow it felt right. Still the question loomed…. Now what?
The thing is… I know what … I’m just not sure exactly on the how yet. So with this chronicle I will share the what and the how of working in the culinary field in NYC. But not just in any fashion…. Or in any method…. I will explore and share culinary adventures and lifestyle choices that do more than simply make you feel better, I look for the ones that improve the way you experience life.
I am fascinated with and will write about new techniques in the kitchen and with the garden. Everything nose to tail, farm to table, bizarre and exotic, healthy and not, vegetarian, vegan, raw and everything in-between. And of course, what it is like to work and be in a restaurant in NYC.
Join me … with love,
