Balancing your life and your love
I have been self employed since shortly after college. That makes over 20 years of working for myself. This year working for somebody else with a set schedule has been a tough adjustment. I am used to being very fluid with my time and being in full creative mode all the time. My current job is enjoyable but I miss the joy of creativity. I have decided that my next endeavor will be to find a way to work my culinary interests back into my life.
My first step was encouraging my husband to start brewing his beers again. I am a back seat home brewer. I help me pick the recipes and hone the flavor qualities he wants to have in those beers. One of my greatest gifts is my ability to almost taste the flavors in my mind so he can tell me what flavors he wants to come out of his beers and I can tell him what hops, herbs, spices, and or fruits he needs to add during brewing to produce them. I must admit beyond procuring ingredients and later drinking I don’t involved in the brewing process. I love that smell of boiling wort it is such a comforting smell almost like baking bread.
We have a refrigerator dedicated to our serving beers from our pony keg (5 gallon kegs) system. It hold 3 kegs which means we can potentially have 15 gallons of beer on tap. My husband and I enjoy very different beers so I will choose a beer, he will choose a beer and then we choose one we can both enjoy. It normally takes him most of a day to brew a single 6 gallon batch of beer so he does that on Sundays while I am working. Two Sundays ago he brewed our version of Southern Tier Pumpking which used graham crackers, vanilla, lots of pumpkin, spice and will come in at about at 8% ABV. Last week he brewed his version of 3Floyds Zombie Dust. This week he is brewing one of my all-time favorite brews our imperial version of New Belgium’s Trippel. All 3 of them are outstanding brews and I would be happy to share those recipes with you if your interested.
I have decided my next goal is to go to culinary school. Here in San Antonio we have the Culinary Institute of America and I have been dreaming about attending it for a while but now I am ready to do it for real. I learned from the food truck that I need to learn to take baby steps and this is a perfect place to start my next adventure. My current job will cover my tuition so I just need to enroll and start looking at classes! I am Super excited!
In the mean time I plan to sell my food truck and get my blog rolling again and start living the dream again!
