How It All Started

Drawn by April Dechagas

Wild Woodstock is a tiny piece of heaven in upstate NY,and where dreams come true… or where Sharon Gannon and David Life, of Jivamukti Yoga, teach at their home for the month of August each year. Kind of the same thing…

It is also where the seed of cooking for a living was planted in my brain.

A bunch of us had rented a house for a week, and I was asked to play house chef during our time there. So I created a menu and off we went. I really thought nothing of it. We needed to eat during the week, and I know how to cook. That is all.

There were only two other people in the house who had experienced my food previously. The others had no clue what they were getting into. For all they knew, I was going to throw a bowl of (vegan) slop on the table and call it a meal. As the week went on, I was receiving more and more compliments, and each night we were there, someone would say I should be doing this as a living. I thought they were crazy. I told them they were crazy. And yet…

I enjoy cooking, and I especially enjoying feeding people who do not typically cook for themselves. So why not? The seed was planted…but it had not sprouted yet….

Soon after, my friends Nechama and Michael gave me a call. They wanted to hire me to go to their friend’s house and cook dinner for the family one night…and so a tiny plant started to grow…that is growing and growing into a full-blown tree.

Note: If you don’t believe me about Woodstock being a tiny piece of heaven, just take a look at the picture above, which is a pretty good representation of the garden where we were staying – paradise!