What if…?

What if I’m utterly incompetent in kitchen, the worst student in the program? I’m nervous about this, but I’ve learned that ideas like this are fears, not reality.

What is it about food and cooking that I love, that draws me to it? What if I don’t like the discipline of professional cooking, where good food is a requirement but repeatability is also essential? What if all the joy is taken out of it? In my daily cooking I don’t use recipes, I just wing it. I’m fairly successful at this, but there are liabilities to this approach, one being that when I manage to make something really good, I often can’t repeat it. This suggests that whether I like it or not, the discipline and everything else I learn will be good for my cooking, probably good for me in other ways, too.

So there’s a little nagging voice telling me that I’m shirking my Responsiblity, I’m afraid of being incompetent, and I’m afraid that… I might lose my passion for food and cooking? I just don’t see that happening. There are risks. I’m derailing the all-essential steady progression in my career. The future becomes less known, and that’s scary. There is a clear element of faith in this decision: I expect there will be joys and opportunities I can’t yet imagine.

The decision is 90% made. The afternoon/evening program works best for us. But there’s one question left, before I register, that really bothers me, that I don’t think Edith has considered. So I ask her,

"How will you eat?"