The Big Day

For nearly a year now I’ve been going to a community college culinary school, and tonight is my very last class. Every Thursday since last August I’ve been dropping Atti off at Bear’s office, donning my chef’s whites, and going off to chop and boil to my hearts content. I have a fantastic team of students I work with, and tonight we face our big exam – an iron chef style make something up on the spot challenge.

The biggest thing I learned in culinary school was just how much I already knew. There were definitely lots of “better ways” I learned, but on the whole nothing was new to me. I’ve been making veloute for years, I just always called it gravy.

This experience has really taught me a lot about how I approach life. I worked so hard for my education, and I have such a respect for it, that when I think about something I want to get really good at, I often think about going back to school for some intense study. Especially in art and writing. Those are two fields that I love, and two areas I feel intensely self conscious about because I so badly want to be good at them. For years and years I’ve thought about getting a MFA in creative writing, but the time was never right so I waited and waited, and never picked up the pen. But maybe I know more than I think I know. Maybe I can’t diagram a three act structure for you, but maybe I can still get my point across, just using a different name.

If the opportunity comes along that I can take some art classes, I’ll jump on it, because I can certainly learn the better way to do things. But maybe I need to stop waiting for that opportunity and just experiment my way along just like I’ve done with cooking. Because I’ve been making spaghetti space just fine for years without ever realizing that it was a tomato coulis.

Now, I have to go memorize some sauce recipes, just in case I’m called upon to bust out a Hollandaise at a moments notice.

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