Hi All

[habman]

Just found Chef Talk and decided to take a look around.

Ex-Chef that is looking at re-entry into the food business after spending 20 years in the IT industry

[Mezzaluna]

Hello Habman and welcome to Chef Talk. We hope you enjoy browsing the forums, participating in the discussions, and reading the cooking articles, cookbook reviews and recipes.

Interesting: a good number of chefs and skilled home cooks (and bakers, too!) have been connected to some area of IT. It'd be interesting to know what the connection might be- assuming there is one.

We'll look forward to seeing you here often.
Regards,
Mezzaluna

[habman]

Well at least in my case I fell into the IT thing.

I was an English major at state university and was also attending a highly rated culinary arts school. I had a part time job in a fine dining establishment and the owner bought an Apple computer, but had no idea what too do with it.

Well back in those days if you used a "personal" computer you had to pretty much know how to program if you wanted to get anything useful done and as an English student that didn't type all that well, word processing looked pretty good too me. So I had experience with PC's and my boss paid me to make his computer do what he wanted done. Accounting, food costing, sales reporting... that kind of thing.

I cheffed for a few more years in a couple of different cities, but I also ran a programming company on the side. Then on a trip home bumped into the love of my life, and decided that I wanted to settle down.

Computer programming paid much better, offer health benefits and I didn't go home smelling like the special of the day, so I made the jump, but I always missed the kitchen.

Working in a kitchen really helped in IT as I have learned to deal with pressure, which came in handy in my later life.

I have been in IT for over 20 years now, and the fun has pretty much been drained from the work by the corporate "weenies" have no idea of what they want or what it can or cannot do, so I am stepping back into the world of my first love.