Passion

I have been blessed many times in my life and in many different ways. I have had the opportunity to follow my heart twice in my life to pursue a career that I was passionate about. My first degree is in Pastry Arts and my second is as a Certified Personal Trainer. I can see that these don’t necessarily go hand in hand but they both fill me with love.

Many moons ago I pursued my degree in Pastry with high hopes of putting it to use and starting a bakery with my mom. It was about a year and a half program that had a semester of savory cooking and three semesters of pastry. As I was starting my second to last semester, my mom received her diagnosis of ALS. When she and I discussed my desire to quit school and come home she urged me to stay and see it through because she always wanted to go to culinary school herself and she didn’t want me to quit my dream.

My mom lived long enough to see me graduate and work as a pastry chef in a local bakery back home for a few months but that was the end of our dream together. After my mom passed I stopped baking entirely because every time I tried, I broke down in tears. Much like I am doing as I write this.

It wasn’t until this year, five years later, that I decided to bake again. My husband and I are birthday pie people, oppose to those odd cake people. I realized that I had never made my husband a homemade birthday pie and I felt like a real ass about it (that was all me, not him). So I started digging out all my baking materials and something was different this time, I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t crying but for some reason, I felt like I was baking with my mom again.

It was natural and easy and enjoyable for the first time in years. I finally felt that old feeling of comfort while baking. I put on my apron and rolled out my pie mat and started creaming the pie filling (pumpkin for him, cherry for me) and it all just felt right. Until I started rolling out the dough that is, apparently a five year break from pies will result in some very ugly pies.

Two pies later and burn free, quite an accomplishment for me – ask my pastry friends, I finally felt the desire to bake again. So today, as I recover from a rather unfortunate trip to the dentist, I made some chocolate chip cookies. They’re not vegan or gluten free or paleo or anything fancy, they’re just straight up chocolate chip cookies. Filled with butter, flour, eggs and sugar and for the first time, in a long time, they’re filled with love.