From Banking to Blogging: moving from paycheck to passion

“You should really think about opening a restaurant.”
“I’ll give you free rent in exchange for cooking for me for the month.”
“Marry me!” (said by a female friend who is now married to her college sweetheart and is the mother of an adorable toddler)

These are only some of the phrases I have heard over the course of my professional life from people trying to encourage me to turn my passion for and hobby of cooking and food into a career. None of these people actually work in the culinary field, they have just enjoyed eating dishes I’ve made and attending the dinner parties I’ve thrown together. They think that the leap from cooking to culinaria is a natural one. Being passionate about something, as I am about the world of food and eating, isn’t enough of a reason, however, to try to turn it into a paycheck. Or is it?

I have a certain hesitancy about this path. It’s just that…well…what would I DO? I’m not interested in being a chef (restaurant or personal); I can’t afford to go back to cooking school at this point in my life; I’m not really sure I’m all that interested in starting a little boutique food shop; and I don’t have the contacts or skills or background to delve into the world of food writing head-first. So, my options are, I feel, pretty limited.

The next best thing, I decided, just might be Blogging. Blogging has become the new means of self-expression and self-publishing, so maybe it is a good place for me to start. In order to give me enough courage to take the risk to bring the two things together – my Passion for cooking and my need for a Paycheck – maybe the thing to do is to share my trials and travails along this journey.

Websites devoted to all sorts of topics and viewpoints have sprung up (excuse the expression) like mushrooms in a damp cellar. There are lots of blogs about food and recipes and eating. I hope to become one of those that is more like a white truffle: highly-prized. I know that the passage from concept to execution will be a lot like cooking itself – sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet, but always to be savored for itself!