(To get these super cool temporary tattoos I designed, go to my new Food Fix Kitchen Pantry now. Then come back and read the post!)
When I decided to go to culinary school shortly after I packed my 19-year-old son off the Culinary Institute of America, I couldn’t wait to get my very own chef coat and enter the professional culinary world myself. I wasn’t thinking about inspiring others. At 52, with a professed preferred bedtime of 10 pm, I was barely hanging on to the whirlwind I had set in motion by entering that “second course” of my life with it’s long commute into The City, and it’s late night classes.
My fourth year into this “reinvention”, with my blog gaining popularity and the cooking school booked well in advance these days, the subject of 99 per cent of the emails I get from readers, or people that have seen me on TV, or read about me in the press, are about how inspired they are by my story and what I’m doing. I have one of those “who me?” moments every time. Hey, I’m just over here trying to keep boredom and brain atrophy at bay for as long as possible, and hopefully earn a living doing something I love. But inspiring others? Cool.
So far this year I’ve been asked by one charitable organization to speak on a panel of “women we admire,” to teach a workshop for a women’s group conference on “Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things,” and I’m working on a presentation for another group called “Reinvention at Any Age.” There is nothing like the spectre of an expectant audience that has paid good money to hear and see you, to make you sit down real fast and figure out what you are going to say in order to entertain and inspire.
The three graphics you see here are part of what has come out of some of these sessions in which I face a blank page and wonder just what it is I believe in, or how I try to live my life, or in what way I could possibly be an inspiration and yet not take myself too seriously.
A few whimsical kitchen tools, and a few thoughtfully placed words and arrows later, I have what I think is my credo. And since I am a chef after all, it makes total sense to want to turn these into tattoos. And since I want to share them with you, it makes sense to turn them into fun temporary tattoos that you can wear or not wear on a whim, or give to someone you love for Valentine’s Day (or any day) who needs a little “stirring up”.
Get some tattoos inside my new Food Fix Pantry. It’s the “store” I’m sort of starting…mainly to offer up stuff like this that I design (I see t-shirts, aprons, and grocery totes in my future) and other unique things I may come across that I want to share.
