I thought it high time I said hello. I signed up several months ago and have been reading this forum off and on, along with some of the articles; I guess I've decided to stay as it were and so will introduce myself.
I'm a new sugar artist in the greater Houston, TX area. I came to sugar pulling and blowing last year after taking a class locally. I was hooked to say the least! I also do some cake design and decorating.
I've loved food and cooking all my life (who here doesn't?) and have been cooking at home for almost 20 years. While I cook everything, my special love is pastry, followed by bread and desserts.
I used to be a nutrition consultant, teaching people about food and how to cook and eat. But people were more interested in me cooking than learning it themselves. To keep myself occupied while business was slow, I followed my own interests in cooking, expanding my knowledge by taking local cake decorating classes, where they also offered other things like airbrush and sugar pulling.
I recently started my own business, creating sugar art for decoration in my home studio, as well as making special occasion cakes for a small but dedicated clientele. While I half-fantasized about being a pastry chef much of my life, I decided against it after seeing what it takes to be a professional chef – I don’t have it!
But I’ve always been an artist – acrylics, oil pastels, photography – and sugar pulling suits me on many levels. In fact, food in general fulfills me on many levels; I’ve always said that food very neatly combines my love of art and science. And I really do love all aspects of food. Besides the artistry and all of the many psychological aspects food touches on, I love learning about food in many other ways; history/ sociology/ anthropology/ archaeology; chemistry/ biology/ microbiology/ anatomy/ botany/ zoology/ agricultural sciences; food even makes things like economics and world finance interesting to me. Astrophysics is about the only science I can think of that food can’t be applied to directly, but of course it is important to space exploration because those astronauts will need to eat something!
As you can see I tend to prattle on, so I will stop for now. I look forward to learning much from everyone here, and hope that I can contribute something of worth to this community.
