There Has To Be A Market For What I Can Offer

Hello again, dear reader. I've been busy the last week and a half with several different things, but I do plan on resuming regular posting here.

What's on my mind today is something that's related to something else I've discussed here before, which is the way that so much of what we eat and drink has been reduced in quality. The changes are so subtle, and done so carefully, that it's easy to not ever really notice them.

What brings this up in my mind again is the fact that a few days ago, I decided to spend a little bit more money than I normally would, so that I could try a brand of ginger ale I'd never heard of before.

The brand is called "Fever Tree" and is imported from the United Kingdom.

All I can say is "wow". It is the best tasting ginger ale I've ever had, by a large margin. I am looking forward to buying more of it, and to trying the company's other products, as well.

As you may already know, my second and more recent degree is in hotel and restaurant management. You may also know I've had a very hard time finding a job in the Binghamton area. What you don't know, but I'm telling you now, is that I'm becoming increasingly aware that the only way I may get a job is to go into business for myself.

I trained under a very amazing person who is a master chef. But something I've never quite understood is how he accepts the changes in some things and how many of my fellow students follow his lead on that.

For instance, when I was kitchen manager for the mock wedding, several of my class mates questioned my insistence that we use sugar-sweetened ketchup in making the cocktail sauce for shrimp. Ketchup is ketchup, they said.

But when they tasted the final product, each and every one of them acknowledged that the sauce does taste better that way than when made with ketchup sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.

My point is this. I have always had an inclination towards making the best food and drink that I can.

That simply has to include quality product and quality ingredients. Now that I have some very good training, the food I cook and the drinks I mix taste the way such things did forty or fifty years ago.

People love that, and they say so repeatedly.  So, the question is this. Does this area have enough of a market for the best of the best? Can I make a go of things as a private chef and bartender?

I think it's time for me to try to find the answer to that.