Let the beauty we love be what we do

I believed that being a pastry chef was 2nd only to being a princess.

I grew up on the hips of chefs. My grandmother was a fantastic cook and baker. Her daughter, my mom, inherited this passion and skill and--guess what--so did my mom's daughter. I spent countless hours in the kitchen next to her: learning the importance of tempering eggs in 4th grade, latching a pasta maker to the ironing board in 8th grade, and creating a burnt sugar drizzle "cage" on a freshly-squeezed key lime pie (why??) in high school.

At 28, I graduated college-- I was on the drop-out-start-over-drop-out-again-10-year-plan. I never liked school. I prefer Street Smarts. As soon as school was over, I mailed my diploma to my mom. I then walked into a bakery with a portfolio of the cakes and pastries I had made in the past year and I was hired, on the spot.

I developed my career as a pastry chef, kitchen manager, wedding cake creator, special event coordinator, team collaborator, class instructor, business leader and operations manager. I was revered by my teammates, colleagues and customers. I had a great reputation and attracted great talent whom I groomed to be excellent chefs, managers and leaders.

I was living my dream.

But what happens when your dream is exhausted? When it's reached its capacity? What if you just don't feel 'it' anymore?

After 20 years being a chef, I was tired. And I was bored. I stopped eating sugar one day, which I guess isn't monumental, considering I stopped eating meat 30 years earlier. But for a dessert maker, it might be a sign. Sugar and pastries, wedding cakes and truffles suddenly became flat, archaic and useless to me. I wasn't inspired by them, didn't want to make them and really didn't want to promote them anymore.

Boulder county, Colorado--where I have lived my entire adulthood--is considered the Silicone Valley of Natural Foods. There are endless entrepreneurs, organizations and networks of individuals and companies who collaborate to puff every quinoa and extract every drop of CBD in order to create endless good-for-you products. Maybe health food is my new dream (???).

I interviewed with several companies. Attended symposiums and pitch-slams, hob-nobbed and consulted with many in their product development and operations systems. I tried to find my niche, only to feel that each enterprise was like a rice cake: bland, boring and (often) unsalted and stale. Despite the creativity of the products, I felt absolutely no inspiration.

Then I saw this picture and my new dream began:

THEY'RE GROWING MEAT IN TANKS. Jaw. Drop. This sounds impossible: I want to work with these scientists (my new team of bakers). This sounds complicated: I want to help organize. This sounds game-changing: I want to be in this revolution. This sounds like it will be met with resistance: I want to sell it.

I don't eat meat. I don't eat plant-based meat substitutes. I'm a vegetarian of the '80's; we eat tofu and tempeh. It's our comfort zone. I protested circuses in college, wearing my Birkenstocks (made of leather---guuuurl!!) and waving a placard. But I silenced a bit since then, only expressing my animal-rights "activism" at mealtime.

So when this picture popped up, when "alternative protein" was introduced to me as a food industry, it melded my two passions together in a heartbeat. I didn't even see it coming. I had forgotten I was an animal lover, didn't contemplate a profession in climate activism, didn't think that all my skills and talents could be applied to something GREATER, something so innovative and revolutionary. It felt like "something/someone" knew me better than I knew myself.

Every moment since this revelation has been spent researching, outreaching, communicating, networking, praising and stalking everyone in the alternative protein industry. Many people praise my passion, enthusiasm and energy. Few want to hire me.

In my old life, I could assist with manufacturing and production (amongst the hundreds of other tasks done simultaneously). But in this space, manufacturing is done by scientists and chemists and engineers and I ain't any of those (I bet those positions require a lot of schooling...). Breaking into this industry--for someone like myself--requires grit, determination, hope and patience.

But what else are dreams made of??