Wakeup Call

Something happened to me the other weekend. I took a 3-day culinary basics workshop that has ignited change. For months, I’ve been day dreaming about cooking on a professional level. I do enough of it in my personal life to know I like it and that others like it too. I blog about it, read about it and watch shows about it. Cooking has become my thing. Or maybe it’s been my thing all along but I was too distracted by life to realize it until now.

Cooking had become so much a part of the routine that I wasn’t even conscious of the joy, the peace, the excitement it brought me anymore. As soon as I became a mother, everything in my life seemed to run on autopilot. I just continued running through the steps: wake up, get ready for work, shuffle papers, head home, retrieve child, cook dinner, bath time, bed time and REPEAT. Everything was so routine, mundane and conventional, with the exception of what I was creating in the kitchen. During the summer of 2008, I became acutely aware of that fullness I was finding each night toiling over my Kenmore. It would return whenever I entertained at parties or took a dish to work.

That’s when I began looking for outlets. I toured a culinary school and was consumed with longing. But alas, culinary school costs a small fortune and maybe this is just phase, right? I’d better sleep on it. I did and after standing under the tutelage of trained chefs for 3 days I’m awake!