Time to Jump

My mom's career advice to me was simple; find what I loved to do and get paid to do it. Sounded good enough, but for some reason my path to actually landing that ultimate career has been all but straightforward. As those who know me can attest, I have worked in many various capacities, rarely staying put long enough to truly realize a long standing goal. My work history is a mile long, and until recently, my academic career spotty. I have worked on coffee farms in Maui, cocktail waitressed while studying at a culinary school in Italy, held numerous positions in kitchens, cafes, bars and coffee shops from Ithaca NY, to San Francisco CA, to Chapel Hill North Carolina and back again to practically all those places. I have been a personal chef, a line cook and a dishwasher, and learned from traditional chefs, raw food chefs, and macrobiotic ones. In all of this I have harbored some guilt, some residual resentment, that I never finished college. I see my peers out in the world with "real jobs", while I struggle to pay the bills. At the same time, I have loved almost every minute of it. In the end I have learned to cook, and I would trade that for nothing. Brought back to my home town of Ithaca NY under adverse circumstances, last year as my mother battled pancreatic cancer, I saw to it that my time here would not be merely to face the tragedy of caring for, and eventually loosing my mother. When I arrived home I immediately sought a job at one of the area's most treasured restaurants, the locally driven, farm to table focused Hazelnut Kitchen. What I learned from Chef/Owners Jonah and Christina Mckeough was indispensable, their commitment to local foods, exciting flavors and what I think of as the "new American food movement" was contagious. The love I had cultivated over the last 8 years, of food and cooking, increased ten fold. So did my skills in the kitchen. The work was hard, the schedule demanding, yet when I left the job I was more confident and inspired then ever to do something of my own one day. Fast forward to a year later, I have four semesters of school on the deans list under my belt, three part time jobs, and a new idea that would make my mom proud. Inspired by yet another industrious and entrepreneurial young couple, Ian and Sam of Emmy's Organics, I've determined that now is the time to jump. The thing is, I am going to need a little help.