 Hello Forum
I'm John, I live in Chicago. I'm another of the mid-30s career changers.
Grew up in Central Illinois, in the middle of nowhere. If you walked out the back door of my parents' home and went 200 feet you'd be in a corn field. Growing up, my dad was a gardening freak, he had about 3 acres of garden space he tended to religiously. In the summer, everything we ate came out of the garden that day. Unfortunately, my mother was a poor cook so the quality of food we ate was offset sort of.
Got an English degree and went to work in the hotel field. Worked for a hotel company for 8 years, loved the first 6.75 years, hated the last 15 months. Left that and started managing a real estate company. Don't really enjoy that either, and started thinking about cooking.
I've been a pretty serious home cook for the past 11 years. Initially, it was because I wanted to impress my wife, who was then my girlfriend. I ended up working my way through Pepin's Complete Technique, couple of James Beard books, and a bunch of other cookbooks. Learned how to follow a recipe until I felt like I could make my ow. The hotel company I worked for moved me around as they promoted me, so in the past 8 years I've lived in Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco. In each place I've tried to learn as much about local cooking as possible by dining out, picking up cookbooks from local chefs/restaurants and hitting the local markets weekly.
Food was always my biggest non-professional passion, and I never considered it possible to switch careers until recently. Then I decided this month to go back to culinary school, and then asked a couple chef friends about that move. They both told me not to do it, at least until I have a little experience in a kitchen. It can be a problem getting that experience, but luckily one of my friends hooked me up with a stage in a fairly reputable Chicago restaurant. My stage is tonight, and I couldn't be more excited. My plan is to keep my lousy day job, stage in the restaurant as long as the chef will have me once or twice a week, doing whatever he asks with complete enthusiasm, then hopefully get a full-time job for very little or no money as a line/pantry/whatever cook in the restaurant. I'll try to keep the real estate job then, doing maybe 2 days/week, while working full-time at the restaurant, and a few months from now I'll decide if going to school is the right step.
John  | 
