Welcome to Cooking for Joy by FK!
I’m FK, Francine Kowalsky and I find joy in cooking. My love affair with food is long and my career path into food is untraditional. I grew up in a family of foodies, though at the time no one called it being a foodie — you just loved food. My parents who were in the wine business, threw elaborate dinner parties, cooked everything from scratch and lovingly exposed me, at a very young age, to culinary delights from all over the world. My grandmother believed that having food on the table was as important as breathing, and that food had to be good!
After finishing a degree at Brandeis University in Political Science with a minor in Philosophy, I did what every Jewish girl at the time never dreamed of doing, and went to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. Never one to do the conventional, I studied to become a chef and then promptly left that education in the kitchen and went on to a long career in the Wine & Spirits Industry.
I can still hear my dad joking around about the three pies I had made for him. He would laugh and say my culinary education, cost more than his mortgage. He would laugh about how I went to the C.I.A and all he got were three pies, and yes this would be told to whomever was listening at the time. Flash forward to a few years ago, when my corporate career in wine took a detour. After leaving the “safety” of a company, I went out on my own and created a company specialized in wine and spirits marketing. I still work in wine but life is never a straight path, it’s full of twists and turns. Opportunities present themself and it’s up to us to embrace them or not. Change is inevitable, it is as they say the “mother of invention”. To quote my one of my favorite singers, “If You See a Chance Take It” and I did. That chance, that opportunity brought me back to cooking, a career path I never thought I’d pursue, but here I am teaching kids how to cook and loving every minute of it.
How fabulous to be able to inspire, educate and impart my love for food into kids at a super young age. One of my closest friends runs an after school program for kids K-5 and needed a chef teacher to fill in for a semester. I didn’t even think about it, just said yes. Then after I did I immediately thought what the heck did I just sign on for? I’ve never taught cooking, let alone to kids! But boy am I glad I took the chance, embraced the opportunity and signed on. The Cooking for Joy this FK is getting by, having taken a chance to do something totally out of my comfort zone has been the change of a lifetime and I love it. Shout out to Dad – hey I’m finally using that Culinary Education!
