That thing that I do…Part 1

I am a bit leery about doing a whole blog entry about what I do for a living. S’kat from s’kat the Food sent me an E mail telling me I should do a blog entry about what I do for a living. So this is for s’kat.

Ever since I can remember I have been totally enthralled with food and hence a life long battle with compulsive over eating. After spending a year in therapy to get a grip on what was causing me to over eat, I had gastric by-pass surgery in 1993. That surgery caused a very positive domino effect in my life. Weighing 260 at 5’2” was not conducive to getting around without being winded and I won’t even go into what it did for my self esteem. I lost 110lbs and decided to change my life.

I wanted to make my obsession with food to be a positive force in my life. I found out via a co-worker that there was a culinary school very near where I live. I hadn’t been in school in 20 some odd years but went and submitted my paperwork to attend Johnson & Wales University. Imagine my total shock when they accepted me. I started school in the fall of 1995 and graduated in May of 97.

My first job after graduation was less than fulfilling and I started to get restless after 4 months of working for $6 an hour and 40+ hours a week. A Sous chef in the kitchen where I worked was having a day with a snippy attitude and made a comment that changed my life. The chef snapped that he should just be a personal chef and quit this crappy job. Ding, ding, ding! Bells went off in my head so loud I thought everyone else could hear them.

I could not wait to get home and do a search on the internet. Sure enough I found a group called, The United States Personal Chef Association. I called the 800 number at least three times to ask a multitude of questions. No one here had ever heard of this sort of a profession. I wanted to research this group. I went to my instructors at J&W and they pooh-poohed the idea. Was I nuts?

Well, I have never been known for always making the best decisions with my money, so what else would I do but plunge head first with my trusty credit card and do it. The USPCA had a plan to teach you how to set up a Personal Chef business. I charged the plan and prayed they weren’t a scam. Sure enough about two weeks later, I got the whole deal delivered to my door.

I read that book from cover to cover and back again. I had a headache! What had I done? I had zero business experience and what the hell was I thinking???