About three years ago, my husband and I went to a wine dinner at a local wine bar. The chef prepared eight different courses all paired with different wines. About half way through the dinner, I thought, "Hey, I could totally do this!" Now I'm not sure if that was logic or the wine talking at the point, but after the dinner was over I became slightly obsessed with doing one myself. Months later, that's exactly what I did. I hosted my very first wine dinner. I had a small group of family and friends over to the house and made them my personal guinea pigs. No one seemed to mind being experimented on...and the food did turn out good if I do say so myself.
It sparked something in me. Over the past years I've done several more at my house, each time for more and more family and friends. And it never fails that at some point someone will ask me, why don't you do this professionally? It was a question I'd asked myself several times. I didn't really know the answer. Maybe it was because I didn't feel as if I were really qualified to put myself out there. After all, I've never been to culinary school. All I know I've learned from doing, watching more cooking shows that I would like to admit...and becoming slightly infatuated with Chef Gordon Ramsey :) Those who know me know that confidence in myself has never been my strong point. I could never really make money doing this, right...well...maybe I could.
A few weeks ago, I got just the confidence boost I needed to finally listen to all my loved ones and put myself out there as a personal chef. I booked a gig! A real paid gig doing exactly what I had been doing for friends for years. I stressed over it for months. Planned everything with painstaking detail, praying that everything would go according to plan. Then an amazing thing happened. The day of the event came...and everything DID go according to plan. It felt incredible. Here I was, in another person's kitchen, preparing a much needed romantic dinner for her and her husband...and they LOVED it. More than that...I LOVED it. For the first time in a long time I felt genuinely proud of myself. And that's all I needed. That little spark lit a huge fire!
I got home and got to work. Now I'm armed with a website, Facebook page, all kinds of goodies and ready to roll. So here we go...fingers crossed...let's see where this takes me!
