I’ll never forget the first time I traveled abroad by myself.  I was just weeks out of culinary school and found myself working as a pastry cook in a super fancy fine-dining restaurant in downtown Melbourne, Australia.  The sous chef, in a particularly stressful minute of dinner service, barked at me to go fetch him a “capsicum” from the refrigerator.  I instinctively turned and ran to the refrigerator, having not even the slightest clue what a capsicum was.  There I stood, scanning the produce, pleading with myself that it would suddenly dawn on me.  Had I studied this in Product Knowledge class?  Did I write a paper on it at some point?  I had not.  And I did not.

This was the first realization for me that food is a life-long learning journey.  In this particular instance it was in the literal sense, and later it would be in a more philosophical sense, but nonetheless it has been a never-ending learning experience for me.