Winter Hath Cometh and Pause

Decided to start my pause yesterday. The fact that it's raining, cold and possibly snowing later only highlights my genius more in choosing this period to start my end of season no-bike break. Next week I will be in the motherland...Tennessee. Looking forward to the visit very much.

Yesterday I began the official, unofficial process of applying to culinary school. I filled out my fafsa form. When I was an undergraduate and dependent child on my parent's tax return, I received a token gesture from Uncle Sam to help defray educational costs. Since I left California, I have positioned myself to make just above the poverty line which has allowed me to travel, race my bike a lot, become economically crafty, and above all more eligible for educational funding. The program here at the Culinary School of the Rockies is a 6-month intensive culinary arts program with a 1 month farm-to-table externship. The purveyors previously had a externship in France but I guess that ever-depreciating dollar scraped that idea. They describe the program as such,

"Culinary Arts feeds your passion. You develop your own sensibilities and philosophy about food, ingredients, cooking techniques and dining."

My own philosophy...I like the sound of that. It will be the perfect learning environment to develop my philosophy when I write my book. But developing my philosophy has it's costs...no such thing as a free lunch, or free self-developing philosophy. It's to the tune of $28,450. That is a $38/hr program based upon the 6.5hr day and 23 weeks of delicious enlightenment. During my observation day last December some key things I observed that are included: 1)someone is paid to do the dishes(ie those who know me, know that i spend just as much time cooking and making dirty as I do cleaning) 2)they include lunch b/c you basically cook your own lunch or group lunch 3)coffee is always available 4)they pay for the food at the awesome end of program 5)you get a name embroidered jacket and knife set, hello professional! 6) you get to eat a lot of food 7) you get to work, i mean experience the North Fork Valley in Western Colorado on a farm and restaurant 8) they help you find a job the rest of your life(so far FSU hasn't done anything for me) 9) Wine Appreciate development, yes I could use more of that and finally 10) I learn French Technique which will give me even more rumbling of sophisticated words when I talk about food or when I am in the kitchen(this I'm sure all my loved ones will and should appreciate).

So it's pretty much awesome I think. And of course I will probably bring those techniques to Bearclaw Granola and to the belly of Kristi =)

Yesterday I was thinking that I am too qualified and underqualified. How does this happen? Why won't Starbucks hire me? Why won't Safeway hire me? Why won't these private economic research jobs hire me? Am I flight risk? My story of racing my bike in Germany has now been changed to "the past 6 months I took an educational trip to German." I did take official German language classes, I even forked over some Euros myself for them. I guess educating in the classroom is less flight risk than "i educated myself on the ruthless, no gifts, no pity, no nothing street of Germany pouring every bit of energy into the pedals to say, yeah, I finished in the last group." We will see if it works.

Here is to high hopes! =)
Bearclaw