It’s been a month and a half since I started culinary school while still taking my MBA. I’ve been wanting to write about so many things but I always manage to just list it down somewhere and forget to actually write in my blog.
My fourth semester for my MBA program at Fordham started on September 3, 2013 and the next week on September 9, I began culinary school at the Natural Gourmet Institute.
MBA classes are on Monday nights from 8-10pm , Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6-8pm. Culinary classes are Mondays-Thursdays from 9am-4pm and Fridays from 9am-1pm. It’s a packed schedule and it has been really tiring but somehow I always find myself excited and happy to wake up early to go to cooking classes.
I know that other people are thinking, “You’re crazy for trying to do both at the same time!”, but I’ve always wanted to go to culinary school and I wanted to start right away. I first visited NGI in July and decided it was time to choose to study something I really feel passionate about.
Today is a good day to share how my love for cooking started. The past two days at school have been about eggs, what we think of as the beginning of life, so here’s my culinary journey story from the start.
When I was around 7 or 8 years old, I became obsessed with making leche flan, or a custard with a caramelized sugar syrup top. I forget what started that, but I found myself trying out recipe after recipe of leche flan. My family had to taste so many of them, and most of them were horrible. We had batches of failed flan in refrigerator but eventually, years later, my mom gave me this perfect recipe shared by one of her friends. I’ll post it when I can.
My mom also nurtured this love for cooking. She signed me up for children’s cooking classes, cooked great meals for us, has an extensive cookbook collection and has every imaginable kitchen gadget.
When my eldest sister was choosing universities to attend, I was around 7 and I decided, based on seeing one of the brochures she had, that I wanted to take up Hotel and Restaurant Management when it was time for me to go to college. Ten years later, I ended up as a Business Administration student after a year as a Political Science major at the University of the Philippines.
After a couple of years working in the family business, I started my MBA in the US, which is where I am now.
So today when we made custard in culinary class, I just felt like I’ve taken the longer road to what I really wanted in the first place. I love being in the kitchen, making great food that people enjoy.
I’m lucky that my school focuses on healthy cooking, because I believe that the quality of the food we eat affects us on all levels. It’s not exactly “you are what you eat”, but “you are what your body does to what you eat”
I’ve been interested in sustainability and feeding the world. I joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and now pick up organic vegetables, fruits, eggs, yogurt and sustainably caught fish every week.
I think there has to be a larger push to move away from the industrial agricultural and food model. I believe in buying organic, opposing Genetically Modified Foods and eating local. I know that the world has to move to a more plant based diet. The right diet can heal illnesses. Big pharmaceutical companies, while they make life saving medicines, also have to maintain profitability, so they market drugs for conditions that can be managed with a better diet and lifestyle.
We have to ask our parents and grandparents about how they used to eat when they were younger. They didn’t have freezers and refrigerators so they had to buy everything fresh and local.
I’ve always wanted to help improve the world somehow, and now I know I have to start by helping you make better food choices, influencing you to cook at home, share a good meal with your family and go back to basics.