Every few weeks I’m invited to speak to the newly arriving students at culinary school. I tell them I teach a class on love affairs.

I am the matchmaker.

I want to know what each student loves (not what he or she likes) to do.

With a little bit of luck, I can suggest ways in which they can marry their hobby or unique skills with their culinary knowledge as they seek a long and fruitful career.

I’m astonished to discover how many budding chefs yearn to own a truck. A truck that serves every kind of food from cupcakes and rice pudding to Korean barbecue.

Today I talked about the calendar. The US Tennis Open is coming up. So is the World Series. A sports fan may want to cook at the private dining room of a sports franchise or become a private chef for an athlete.

Dancing with the Stars employs a personal chef for each competition. Personal chef jobs are on the rise. It is one of the best jobs for an entrepreneur who can start a business without requiring a capital investment.

I spoke about jobs in art and design; photographer, food stylist, kitchen designer, and special event cake designer. Create a wedding cake in oil and acrylic paint to frame and preserve for ever and ever (or as long as the marriage lasts.) become a chef in a museum, create a food exhibit, become a lecturer on the topic of food in fine art? Become a recipe developer for Panera or Starbucks (or Dunkin D’s.)

Tasting is a good and well paying job. Taste ice cream, coffee, tea, olive oil. Chew gum. No kidding. Nestle is one of the companies that employs chewing gum tasters. There are real jobs that require super taster to… well…taste…all day. .

How about becoming an ethicist, a futurist or a trend tracker?

Or work on Wall Street analyzing food companies?

Or work for a food foundation or as a humanitarian or lobbyist or inspector to trace the source of contaminated food.

Here are just a few ideas for working in the food media: investigative journalist, vegetarian columnist, historian, folklorist (why do so many Jews go out for Chinese dinner on Sundays?)  The late Professor Alan Dundes examined this question with his students who also study the allure of violent sports, holiday traditions and even the mystique of the vampire.

Said Dundes: “As a psychoanalytic folklorist, my professional goals are to make sense of nonsense, find a rationale for the irrational and seek to make the unconscious conscious.”

How about taking up a career as a food memoir writer, biographer, commentator, geographer (do you know what a food geographer does?) trade magazine reporter, supermarket observer, radio host, (I’d like this job myself,) essayist, restaurant reviewer, food book reviewer (not only cookbooks but also food books dealing with politics, profiles of food companies etc.), catalog writer, TV star, ingredient shopper for TV star, TV producer, obituary writer for former food celebrities. Preparer of last meals in the federal penitentiary leading to a possible book contract for Meals to Die For.

I had only three minutes to describe my food jobs class so I didn’t have time to even mention careers in education, farming, science and technology or rare, unusual and extraordinary culinary careers so instead, I’ll get around to them in this blog. Please come back soon.

And.

Have a nice day (as they say at the bank!)

I firmly believe there’s a food job — or, a connection to a food job — everywhere I look these days.

If you watched the memorial services for Princess Di or Michael Jackson, you couldn’t fail to notice how many loving friends they had nurtured throughout their lives. During their final years, they were both disrespected but after their death, we were surprised to discover how many good deeds each had done with very little fanfare.

Diana was most famously, in the last year of her life, the most visible supporter of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a campaign that went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 after her death, which many believed was a posthumous tribute to the Princess. We also learned that Michael Jackson was a deeply beloved father who had supported many who were in need. They made a difference in other peoples’ lives and in so doing, enriched their own lives.

Think of the Oscars. Always at the moment of triumph, almost every star remembers to thank those who have paved the way for them and strewn rose petals in their path.

The famous historian, George Burton Adams said, “There is no such thing as a ‘self-made’ man. We are all made of up thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoke one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.”

Some people measure their self-worth in tangibles: how many things they own or how much money they have in the bank. Others count their riches in the number of good friends they have and the circle of acquaintances they have nurtured. I was struck by this thought again today as I watched an interview with Mitch Albom on his new book, Have A Little Faith.

I just mention these things to suggest an investment in a relationship is a bond that will pay a far larger dividends than any stock. And may even lead to a richly rewarding new career.

So if you are stuck about finding a food job but can’t cook or don’t want to cook, apply your love of food in a different medium. For instance, join, or start, a group of people who share your passion for knitting and you may start a new entrepreneurial business of knitted decorative cupcakes and cookies! Yum!

Courtesy of littlecottonrabbits.typepad.co.uk

The connections may come when you simply adjust your thinking and initial expectations — just a little bit.

Courtesy of http://www.thenibble.com/REVIEWS/main/candy/old/the-best-salt-caramels.asp

The three little words hovering on every lip are: downsizing, local and green. It is essential to keep up with what’s happening in order to keep steering our own ship with the winds of change blowing our sails.

Almost every enterprise is struggling. Brides are buying gowns from thrift shops and inviting guests to backyard barbecues instead of grand receptions. Restaurants are offering lower priced family meals. Food services of all kinds are paring their choices. Six seems to be the magic number for items on menus.

The pendulum is swinging again. The more we try to economize, the more we justify our sacrifices by indulging in affordable luxuries. Just lately you may have noticed the new affection for salt with caramel. Of course this doesn’t mean any old salt, but salt harvested from a location as exotic as the source of the bottled waters we once drank. Caramel, always a sweet treat, has now soared into the stratosphere of our affections.

We are also “into” tea leaves and chocolate and coffee beans that have been harvested from a single plantation. An increasing number of commodities are falling under the umbrella of “fair trade“. The growing enthusiasm for farm to fork and our new affection for small (but exquisite) bed & breakfasts are all part of the same trend — away from big and yet bigger to small and yet smaller.

You will remember how this is merely an echo of what has happened before?

There was a time when a drink of fizzing brown chemicals held enough liquid to fill a child’s wading pool. A sandwich was as thick as as a copy of War and Peace and a decent size portion of mashed potatoes was one into which we could sink both buttocks.

Then we turned our attention to small: one bite bagels and one chew cheesecakes. Zucchinis became so small, we thought that soon they would just be painted on the plate as part of the pattern. Now we’re seeing small(er) doughnuts, small(er) cupcakes and vanishing endangered head waiters and fishes of all kinds. In short, sushi has become the new pizza.

So, with everything shrinking, how is it, nearly of us are expanding?