Fresh Start

Hello!

I’m Katrina, nice to meet you, out there, whoever you are! This is what is known as the precursory First Post, which often strikes fear into the hearts of those trembling apprehensive types just starting out in the blogging world (a.k.a. me). I’ve decided to finally start a blog after years of lurking in the shadows of the internet, and a food blog at that! Yep, yet another drop in the massive food blog ocean. How will mine be any different? Well, I haven’t really gotten that far yet in the whole planning process… But! It will start by tracking my journey as I embark off to Chef School this week, which is tremendously exciting to the point of me having to stop and ask myself: “Wait. This is actually happening?”

It sure is! Here, let me tell you a bit about how I got to this point. About two years ago I graduated from the University of Toronto with a Specialists Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature. Which basically means I read sososo many books, more books than I had to in order to achieve your average ‘ol english degree. Why did I do this to myself? Because I’m obsessed with books! And writing about books! Particularly Canadian literature, which I love and adore and focused on for much of my time in school. After graduation, I decided to take a publishing course, because, well, it seemed like the obvious choice. If you love Canadian literature, why not work in the Canadian publishing industry? But that’s not exactly how things worked out. I finished my course, got my diploma, and landed an internship. Sounds like everything went according to plan, right? Well, the internship was at an educational publishing house, and I was doing a lot of emailing and spreadsheets, and it was not at all like how I envisioned it. I was hoping to work with authors, editing and developing manuscripts, or working with magazines, editing and developing content. Unfortunately, the only editing work I was getting was for accounting textbooks. So after feeling as though I had fallen off the proper track, I decided to take a break from the publishing world for a while. I took a job as a hostess at a vegetarian restaurant, and have spent the last year somewhat confused but slowly gaining perspective on what I really want in life.

So, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with going to chef school. Well, while I was at my internship, the one project that actually stirred my interest was working on the slideshow presentation for a chef training textbook. Watching the demonstration videos and seeing what the course was all about got me super excited! I would think to myself: “Oh man, I wish I was the one actually doing the cooking instead of just sitting in this windowless box watching someone else do it!” I guess you could say that was when the light bulb moment occurred, and I told myself that I should just go for it.

Besides books, my other true love in life has always been food and cooking. As a kid I would take my mom’s cookbooks and make plasticine recreations of the recipes, I was all over my EasyBake Oven, and I would even sneak down into the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning to experiment while my parents slept. Some experiments were successful, like the time I made a beautifully browned Irish soda bread for St. Patrick’s day, and others… not so much, like when I attempted to make caramel without a candy thermometer, horribly burnt the sugar on the bottom on the pot, and hid the evidence in the cupboards, only to be found by my dad months later! I took all of the classes that involved cooking in high school, I cooked in the itty bitty kitchens in residence to avoid the horrible meal plan food, I even took a fourth year seminar on food literature which had a cooking component to it where we got to prepare a meal for our class in the commercial kitchens of Hart House alongside of Chef Joshna (my group made a four course Mediterranean inspired meal which included hand made gnocchi and lemon soufflé for dessert). For me, going to chef school just seems like the next logical step.

I dream of being able to combine my love of books, food, and writing into one big happy, creative, and slightly eclectic career one day, and by writing this blog I hope to trace this journey as it begins to unfold.