With a month to go, time is getting short to share my big news of the hour:

I’m going to culinary school!

I’ll be attending a great program in San Diego with a reputation for well-trained, employable chefs; it’s geared toward people like me who have a degree, have had a career and are looking for specific training in culinary arts, not a general education experience, and so the program is short and intensive.  I’ll be done with the program and my externship in early July.

Of course, most people I have talked to about this have asked me how I plan to approach my education from the kashrut standpoint.  And this I answer with a sigh, because the answer is not perfect, but as with so many things I have weighed my options, chosen what I consider the best plan for the long term, and must be happy with my decision.

According to my program, I am not required to eat anything.  However, I will be required to prepare all of the same assignments that every student must complete.  This will more than likely result in cooking treif, or non-kosher preparation techniques.

It was a tough decision, but here is a summary of the decision process.

1) The nearest kosher culinary school is in Brooklyn (the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts) but I am rooted here in San Diego for the forseeable future.

2) I want to one day have a job in the food industry, and should our family livelihood ever come to depend on my skills as a chef, I want to be able to do anything that may be asked of me in any job situation.  I’m sure this gets into a very gray area in relation to kashrut, but should the choices be my family suffering from lack of income or cooking non-kosher food outside my home, I would without hesitation choose the latter.  (Without duress, I plan to build a career that does not bring me to compromise my personal ethics, kosher or otherwise.)

3) What I do at school, I do not have to do at home.  That really was the bottom line for me.  I don’t control what happens outside my home.  I’m paying good money for an education and I plan to make the most of it.  But I do control my choices in home and in public, and I absolutely control what is cooked at home.  My education will change my skill set, but it will not force me to change my personal ethics.

So with the decision made, the start date a mere month away, I couldn’t be more excited!  I can’t wait to become a knife-skills ninja, slicing precious minutes off my meal preparation at home!  I can’t wait to know so much more about foods, much of which knowledge I hope to apply to the Jew and Julia project.

I can’t help but feel, having spent so much time in the past several months reading and thinking about Julia Child, that I’m walking in her very large and formidable footsteps.  She forged her path by cooking at home, getting education, and then striving to do something meaningful and satisfying with her education, as well as simply thoroughly enjoying great food.  I don’t know yet what I will find in my future, but that doesn’t sound like a terrible direction to move in.

My fires are fueled, and I’m looking forward to my new adventure!