So far 2008 is proving to be a year of big changes. Some of it is exciting - a place that we’ve been expecting to run into, though not quite so soon and not quite so head on. In the first 4 weeks that Mark has been without a job, I’ve felt panic, relief that he’s been home to watch the kids (seriously, it’s been 4 years, but how many more months - years? - can I expect to freelance 20-50 hours a week on 16 hours of babysitting? Insane), indifference, nauseated with worry and ultimately, a sign that this was the time to get our shit in gear and start our own thing.

Many people think that being a chef is a glamorous job; we get the same surprised reaction, followed by “you’re so lucky” and “how cool”, every single time we’re asked what he does for a living. What most people don’t think about is what a hard industry it is to be in when you have a family - the weird hours, (he was out the door by 4:45 am every morning) and the lonely weekends and holidays (he hasn’t spent a Thanksgiving or Christmas with us in the last 5 years). The pay isn’t enough to support a family and unless you are a superstar celebrity chef, there’s a bit of a glass ceiling on where you can go. We’ve reached that point, and for a brief moment he’s thought about a career change - a complete shift like real estate (it’s in the family), or going back to school to be a computer geek, but in the end, we thought that this was the time to start our own thing - the business that we’ve been talking about forever. It’s been hard for us to commit to it since there are bills to pay, but ultimately when we’re looking at those cute little faces of our two sweet kids, we know in our guts and hearts that we have to try.