Silence: a reflection on food.

During our times of uncertainty in life, there is always connectivity you can find through the relationship of nature & food.

You may or may not know me initially through my career path and relationship with food and hospitality.

I started as a dishwasher in 2005 for my intermediate school, I loved hearing the ladies cook, watch them work, and eventually learn to help them when they wanted me to. In 2007 I worked for a Hawaiian food pop up for summer series festivals, quickly became a prep cook, lemonade extraordinaire, and cashier. Opportunities a many have come from these simple, at the time unnoticed, paths that presented themselves to me.

I worked doing random kitchen gigs for family, friends, and strange situations until I went to school to be a nurse. I realized quickly that I was always sitting between classes where I could see the kitchen staff at the college cook, the sounds of the kitchen felt like home, and I had to go back.

I decided to not accept my acceptance into the nursing program, dropped out of college, lived off and on in my car and on couches, and ended up in Coos Bay to attend culinary school, off the recommendation by my family to definitely not go — I still went. I went through, got two degrees, had a family emergency that sent me back to the Willamette Valley.

When I came back I went from 100mph always moving, always working, having a great set up at the coast; to unemployment, living in my grandparents basement, thinking if anyone offers me minimum wage that’s probably better than the creeping depression I was feeling.

I got a job offer, another job offer that made me a connection of a lifetime, but quit that job two weeks in and then the job I wanted. The job I wanted actually sent me back to my hometown, Independence, where I never really thought I would go back to, and then changed my career and my life relationship with food.

I set goals when I moved back to the Valley, crushed the fuck out of those goals, and now am in a position to influence the future of food, and the future of generations of hospitality.

Somewhere in the story I started catering and event services for small groups, bigger groups, and just for fun.

The last two years I’ve really set the path to grow my business this year, 2020, weddings booked up my summer weekends, the thoughts of new contracts with more venues, consulting, future plans for growth in general.

Though, this year in my career can be classified as silence.

I have been largely silent this year. This year was supposed so solidify and gain clarity for me in the realm of my career, my business, and in my love of food. I started Roux in 2014 when I was in college, I just loved to cook and provide for people, I didn’t know what I was doing. I loved food, I loved connectivity and creating experiences. It was simple and ever changing.

I can honestly say that I haven’t loved food as much this year.

My heart has been tested, repaired, and fucking broken over and over again by this love and this industry of food over the last fifteen years. All in different ways, different scenes, different steps, I have loved this, then hated it, and it’s gone back and forth from food insecurity as a child to buying shit because I’m curious about the ingredient, because I had the ability to, to filing my first unemployment claim as a self employed small business owner. This industry has provided me growth in unimaginable ways, and not all good and not all bad.

I write this now because it is my next year, my next chapter in life I guess, I’m still not sure about this shit.

I have been absent with food, I have been silenced by the distance it has created and proctored for me. I am not ashamed of that. I am youngish, growing always, and still learning.

The second you stop learning is the second you die.

I am taking a sabbatical to fall back in love with this broken system, and to fall back in love with myself through food.

I want to provide for my family, our loyal and bad ass employees, and our guests. I cannot do that without grace.

I have been outside a lot lately and that brings a realm of calmness, connectivity, and love.

I have always been an advocate for the outdoors, and through that it has brought so many roots in my career I was unaware of until I got back into nature and became engulfed by the outside world again. Nature proves complexity, simplicity, and a calm force.

I cannot wait to bring that back with me when I enter back into the world of being a Chef and an educator through food, until then, I am growing still.

So how do we end up here? A blog about nature, projects, experiences, and living intentionally? It’s all through connectivity.

Thank you for hanging out, looking out, I can’t wait to feel that love and fire again.

Until then, I’ll be surrounded with family and love in nature and in abundance.

-Audrey