What are You Doing After Graduation?

This is a question I’m getting a lot lately. It’s an honest question, I’m graduating is roughly one month. I have, in fact, asked others what they are doing also, but mainly in a curious “do other people actually HAVE a plan?” type of way. It’s a safe assumption that you would have some plan after school, why else would you go through all this? Culinary school is hard. It’s not taking some cooking class down at Central Market.
I never thought much about what I would do after, I wanted to go to school, but my plan for afterward was a giant question mark over my head.

As you may know, I’ve been working on my capstone project, and it’s due here pretty soon. It has given me an idea. I never wanted to be the “allergy girl” or that annoying gluten free person, but I have done the research, and I will stand on the table waving my epi pen in submission.

For the most part, I wanted to work with restaurants and teach their staffs about cross contamination, and how not to do it. It was selfish at first, see if I knew a kitchen was safe, and not going to poison me, then I could eat there. It was a win/win, you don’t make me sick, and I will pay you to eat your food. But then I got to thinking, and reading; so many kids now have food allergies. Everyone knows at least one family affected by this. When you combine that with the fact that most people of my generation never really learned to cook more than opening cans and boxes and mixing them together, I saw a need for that annoying allergy girl who has been through this. When you are told that an ingredient you’ve been eating is making you sick, and you have to stop eating it, then you find out how many names that ingredient goes by, and how hard it is to avoid it, it gets intimidating. You have to go through everything in your pantry. You have to revamp your entire cooking paradigm.

This is where I will come in, I will teach you how to navigate he kitchen and grocery store. How to feed your family food that is easy, and allergy friendly. If you need help, you can email me and I can do what I can to help you.

So now when asked what my plan is after graduation, I suppose I have one.
Now I just have to graduate.