PICTURED: Tay(lor), left, and Dor(othy), right. Yes, we still love ice cream cones.

To kick our new site, here’s a practice profile from the other half of the gastro.gnome duo:  meet Dor(othy), co-founder of Good Food Jobs.

ABOUT DOROTHY

Every so often, there comes a day that changes your life. Ours was Dryden Dairy Day (circa 2004).  We’d love to claim that it was the allure of a rural town’s historic dairy celebration that drew us there, but it was really the advertisement for 25 cent ice cream cones that got us on the road.

Dorothy and I met as Cornell University tour guides, but our paths weren’t destined to cross until we carpooled to Dryden Dairy Day and bonded over our love of ice cream, agriculture, and that unique, intangible quality of a friendship meant to be.

We grew up on alternate ends of the universe, or so it seemed - me on the sunny shore of New Jersey, Dor on a small farm in rural Kentucky. While I was cruising the local Food Town supermarket, she was planting potatoes.  My parents were beach bums; hers back-to-the land, homesteading hippies.

In spite of different origins, we ended up in the same place, at the same time; divine intervention. Delicious ice cream.

Our paths diverged yet again after graduation - I studied and worked with food in Italy while Dor took her Interior Design degree to a prominent architecture firm in New York City. But it’s no coincidence that after a couple of years, we finally settled in the same place - as luck would have it, just a short walk from eachother’s apartments in Brooklyn. Our penchant for food, friendship, and the environment (built or natural) has continued to bind our relationship, and motivate us to work together in doing what we love.

Our passion and energy have finally culminated in this new endeavor: Good Food Jobs. Although our goals are primarily altruistic, we’re not shy about the fact that starting a business together means seeing one another VERY frequently. And interviewing Dorothy was just another way for us to sit down and spend some time together - here’s what she had to say about her new Good Food Job.

IN OTHER WORDS…

T: What attracted you to a good food job?

D: I was never the type of person who dreamt of making lots of money. I was shocked as a college student to learn that some of my friends chose their majors in exchange for their parents’ approval or tuition payments - that the creative, artistic ideas they were passionate about would only land them in debt or cast out. In other words, I’m kind of a dreamy, gullible type who really wants to change the world. I was attracted to Interior Design because I felt strongly that the world we create around us has an affect on how we feel and how we live our lives. After working in that field for a few years, I found myself craving more of a direct connection to the impact I was making on people. My individual feelings about conservation and environmentalism were growing stronger by the day. I realized that the world I grew up in - small farming, land stewardship, real food, open minds - was the one I felt most connected to. And I was lucky enough to know someone like Taylor who understood what I was after and most of all knew the potential there was to use my motivation in some unique and different ways.

T: How did your previous work or life experience prepare you for a good food job?

D: I’ve learned something from every job I’ve had - whether the overall experience was good or bad. These are important lessons for people who work. There are a lot of factors that contribute to that work experience, and many of them are not at all what you expect to become attuned to. For instance, I never really thought about office politics until I worked in an office. And I never knew that I liked helping people until I worked as a tour guide - a job I applied for only because I was a desperate summer student! (I was a VERY shy child.) It ended up being the best job I’ve ever had - I worked outside, I got exercise, I met new people every day, and I had the satisfaction of being able to offer direct and meaningful support to students and their families. I also liked making people laugh - that’s good life experience. As for my love of food and farming, that’s thanks to my parents, who truly live by the things they believe in. They have inspired me to take my passion seriously.

T: What advice do you have for others in search of a good food job?

D: Be persistent. If you have an embarrassing story to tell about why you love food so much, or why you think it has the ability to change lives, don’t be afraid to share it. (The best answers to interview questions are not written in an HR manual.) Apply for jobs that don’t exist yet. Beg for someone you admire to let you follow them around (seriously - everyone needs company). Take a leap of faith. Anticipate being disappointed, and learn to accept every rejection as an opportunity for what might come next.

T: If you could be compensated for your work with something other than money, what would it be?

D: This is such a great question because we live in a world right now where money has been devalued a bit, and I think there’s potential to see how much the world is offering us that you couldn’t find in a bank or a store. What would I work for, besides money? Fresh strawberries. Buckets of them.

so here it is: the start of something revolutionary.  allow me to introduce myself.  i’m a gastro.gnome.

what is a gastro.gnome, you ask?  well, here are a few definitions to clarify:

gastronomy the practice or art of choosing, cooking, and eating good food.

gnome a legendary dwarfish creature supposed to guard the earth’s treasures.

gastro.gnome a jovial presence put on earth to connect people who derive pleasure from good food.

after forging my own career path within the world of food, i realized that my efforts were best spent guiding other qualified, capable individuals on their path to food (and life) enlightenment.  let me explain.

growing up in the suburban new jersey (please, no jersey shore jokes), i often accompanied my mom on her frequent trips to the local foodtown (yes, that was the name of our grocery store).  it wasn’t until high school that i realized i loved grocery shopping.  what others thought was truly torturous (scanning aisles, looking for inspiration for dinner, bumping into friends and neighbors doing the same), i thought it was an adventure, a sport, a social experience, a treasure hunt.

i began to explore more: i’d find recipes with interesting ingredients, hop around from store to store looking for new and interesting items, and from time to time would accompany friends to nyc (while they were looking to shop at the boutiques of soho, i’d hit up dean and deluca and gourmet garage).

so it was time for university and i scoured for a program that addressed food in the way i wanted to learn it.  everyone would ask, “well you want to go to culinary school, right?”  no, not exactly.  “well you want to own a restaurant then, right?”  well, no, not that either.  “what could you possibly want to do then?”

i want to make people feel as happy as i do when i eat really good food … to  enjoy the fresh air when they pick apples every october, to anxiously await corn so sweet i eat it raw off the cob, or to stop and taste something delectable every once in a while.  the way i see it, if you’re going to have to eat every day for the rest of your life, it might as well be as enjoyable and experience as possible.

i ended up in montreal, a european city of sorts, just over the border.  the gastronomic scene simply fueled my fire and after two years i packed up and headed to the slightly warmer climate in ithaca, ny, where i studied hospitality management.  i finally found a program that was closer to the way i wanted to learn about food.  it wasn’t perfect (while my classmates were working on restaurant projects, i geared my toward specialty food shops, and while others frequented the bars and restaurants, i would spend my off-hours at the farmers market.

but with graduation came the forthcoming fear that i’d have to decide what i actually wanted to do with my life (well, i knew what i wanted to do, i just wasn’t so sure that i could find someone to pay me to do it).  fortunately i was wise enough to realize i could procrastinate.  through a bit of crafty reseach, i found a new english speaking master in food culture program at the newly formed university of gastronomic sciences in italy (founded by slow food in 2005).  naturally, i applied.

and i spent the next 12 months eating my way around europe, learning about the traditional food products (think olive oil, cured meat, pasta, wine and cheese) and how they differed from the imposters you now find in the grocery store.  it changed my life.

we listened, we learned, we tasted, we ate, we laughed, we saw, we smelled, we felt, we lived. we experienced good food.

while many of my cohorts opted to stay in italy, i hightailed it back to the states, where we, as a culture, needed the most work.

i came back.  and i struggled.  i had all of these great experiences, yet i wasn’t 100 sure how to apply them.  do i work for a non-profit promoting sustainable agriculture?  do i find a farmers market? do i dare work for a restaurant?

in the end (and by that i mean in a few short weeks) i found my dream job: running the education department at murray’s cheese.  i couldn’t have asked for more.  it allowed me to educate people about good food (namely cheese) at an establishment that sold it.  it wasn’t cooking.  it was just finely crafted foods that people could take home and “prepare” with little more than removing it from its packaging.  ancient fast food, as i call it.

after 3 years (and endless learning) i decided to depart from murray’s in a grander mission.  i could comfortably continue to educate in the confines of the classroom forever, but during my tenure i met hundreds of fellow food lovers looking to make meaning of their love of food.  they want to turn their passion into a profession.  i decided it was time for the next phase of food education.

so here i am.  this blog is in conjunction with my second food related career.  in june 2010 i (along with my partner in crime, dor) are launching a gastronomy-centric job search website, designed to lure others into the world of food. for all of you out there who want to work with food, but are unsure of the options outside of the kitchen, we’ll post everything from work with farmers and food artisans, policy makers and purveyors, retailers and restaurateurs, economics and ecology.

but for inspiration, we’ll start with this blog.  stay tuned as we profile the most interesting, engaging, and unlikely food professions and professionals that we come across.

pull up a seat at our table.  we look forward to sharing with you.