Passing the saucepan mantle

Lately I've been reexamining all of my old pipe dreams, the ones I thought I'd discarded for some allegedly good reason. I think it's because I'm self-sufficient again for the first time in eons, but the fact that Autumn is coming up helps, too. So the past month has consisted largely of me asking myself things like, "Hey, why not write that novel?" or, "What's stopping me from moving back to Oneonta?"

The one that caught me somewhat short was an old Life Plan that got shoved aside many years ago: culinary school. About eight years ago, the idea of become a professional chef had a great appeal, due mostly to me watching Great Chefs of the World every Saturday on the Discovery Channel, during which I'd sigh wistfully and wish I could "do that." I eventually put that idea away under the belief that I didn't have the tortured-soul-symphonic-composer-meets-corporate-raider-meets-Genghis-Khan personality that, as far as I can tell, one needs to succeed in the field. I decided to limit my cooking career to that of a hobbyist.

The problem is that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool foodie, and I'm currently living a lifestyle where my options for cooking my Fontina-Stuffed Salmon with Herb Jus and Roasted Garlic Green Beans for eight people at a time have become limited. So I've been thinking, which is a dangerous, dangerous proposition. I figured that I could take some classes at the local community college, assuming that I could mold my work schedule around it, or something like that. Or maybe—just maybe, mind you—I could go to the Culinary Institue of America, a scant few hours down the Hudson River from here, and do the Whole Program, and basically surrender the next several years of my life to a pipe dream. Maybe. But that can only come with total clarity of what I want to be when I fail to grow up.

All I need is a sign. This is where my daughter comes in.

I got to see the kids over the weekend, as they were staying with their grandparents while their mom went apartment-hunting in Massachusetts. After getting 23 hugs and four flying body-tackles, we settled in to the activity that they chose: watching Daddy play Crash Bandicoot on Grandma's PlayStation. (No, I don't know how this became a spectator sport, but they asked. No, they did.) As I did so, I noticed Abbey was writing a book again. Which is to say: she swiped several pieces of paper from the printer, folded them in half, stapled them together at the spine, and started writing. (It's okay: Grandma steals the paper from work in the first place.) I then noticed, the next time she walked through, that she had taped another piece of printer paper around her head in a circle, and tied yet another around her waist with a shoelace.

She was wearing a toque and apron. The book she was writing was entitled The Young Cooking Skills Book.

"Daddy?" she asked. "Do you know any recipes?"

The best part, though, the part that made me pump my fist in the air with pride, came as I helped her prepare a snack, which consisted of leftover corn-on-the-cob. (Her palate has been broadening quite a bit lately; at the family picnic she went to, she apparently ate half her body weight in steamed clams.) She wanted me to put on the butter because I'm "better at it." She looked on the counter for the butter dish, and found the tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

"I don't think we have any butter," she said, the slightest hint of distaste lingering in her voice. "All we have is that stuff."

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my little girl. I think I'm going to culinary school. The next generation depends on it.