Cook for Fun, Fly for Money

My decision has been made. As nice as it is to fantasize about cooking professionally, the reality is that the flying job provides (and will continue to provide) me the income and flexible scheduling that has allowed me to pursue my passion for cooking. It has allowed me free time to practice at home, to study in Paris, and enough time to do a 10 week internship. It would be easy to throw caution into the wind and flow with the adventure of the unknown if I was fresh out of college, but age brings about such boring virtues as responsibility and accountability. Additionally, I am only a couple of years away from being eligible for retirement and it would be highly negligent to forgo all of those benefits.

So, no Intermediate Cuisine this November. Currently, it's difficult to justify the expenditure of going to France, if it's only as a hobby. Perhaps I will attend in the future. In the meantime, I will continue to hone my kitchen skills by cooking for friends and family. Sometimes, my own kitchen can be the greatest classroom. In the meantime, I can "experience" the professional kitchen world through the eyes of my friends like Sjoerd, or Will who have continued on to work in the real world.

On a more upbeat note, I am excited for my Basic Cuisine friend Alan who will begin Intermediates in one week and plans to follow that with the Intensive Superior in November. Congrats!

I am heading to Amsterdam in 2 days to visit my friend Sjoerd and his wife Jayne. It'll be nice to get a first hand account of his adventures in a real kitchen.