Summer reading means looking for something lighter, less work-related, fun and different. I decided to write my 148^th 50 Minute Classroom column with summer reading thoughts in mind.

I was first asked to write only four or five Gold Medal Classroom articles in January 2009 while the publisher and editor looked for a permanent columnist. I said at the time I did not know how to write articles for this audience and was told to write about me and what I did with my classes. I laughed and said, “No one cares about me. Teachers want practical things to do with students.” I vowed not to write about me and basically haven’t. For your summer reading, I am bending my rules a bit and will tell you the story about how I will arrive at writing 150 articles over 14 years for CAFÉ.

The purpose of this article and the next is to illustrate when life gives us lemons, we not only make lemonade but teach others how to make it themselves. Instructors can teach students that they can shape their life by how they make that lemonade! In other words, these articles will focus on recognizing opportunities, running with those opportunities, and turning those opportunities into success and adventure.

Although my culinary instructor career has been successful, this was never my intended path. In fact, I never considered the culinary and hospitality fields at all.

I began at California State University at Fullerton in 1975 as a business major with an economics concentration. In 1979, I entered Hastings College of the Law with the clear resolution to become an admiralty attorney in San Francisco. Admiralty attorneys work with ships, sailors, the oceans, etc. I thought San Francisco was the place for that. To make a long story not too long, the admiralty position never developed and I ended up practicing business litigation with a banking emphasis.

After working for several law firms, I decided to strike out with a law school friend and open our firm. It was a failure both emotionally and financially. When it collapsed, I called a colleague of mine who was in-house counsel for a bank (meaning he worked inside the bank running its legal department.) I asked him for advice on my next position and he told me that he was going to expand his law division and made me a job offer! That was the first of many times when one door shut a better door opened. I ran full speed into that open door. (Please reread that last sentence. It is important for you and your students.)

I worked with my friend for a few years and then moved to a higher position in another bank. I find it bemusing as I adjust to retirement from culinary instruction, the country is going through more major bank closures. Bank closures are how I got into culinary teaching in the first place.

The bank I worked for was sold and I was on the street with literally a thousand other bank attorneys from other failed and taken-over banks in northern California. Further making things tougher was that my wife—a high-powered trial attorney—was working with a firm that was suing banks and their managers for these failures. Life wasn’t looking very positive!

I decided to volunteer at the local humane society while searching for a new job. I bumped into Kathy, a woman I knew from law school and we went to lunch. She told me my cooking was so well-known in law school that getting an invite to my Thanksgiving or Easter dinners was a highly prized commodity. I asked her how she knew about the dinners and she replied, “Everyone at Hastings knew.” She asked me how I learned to cook and I told her as a graduate student I didn’t have much money so I would walk around San Francisco, read menus and descriptions, and try to recreate them in my apartment. She suggested I open a restaurant and I told her that as an attorney, I had shut down way too many.

A few weeks later the phone rang and my daughter answered it and said, “Dad, there is a woman on the phone named Kathy and she’s crying.” I nervously picked up the phone and Kathy told me she was having 40 men over for a combination birthday and football playoff party for her husband. Her caterer just called to cancel, and she couldn’t find anyone else. She asked if I would cater for her. I told her no that I wasn’t a professional caterer and didn’t know how to do this. My wife grabbed the phone from me, told Kathy I would do it and hung up.

I looked with horror at my wife. I reminded her she wanted me to cook food for a baby shower she was hosting that same day. And, Kathy’s event was at the same time five miles away. My wife said I should just make more food than planned for the baby shower and serve that. I suggested that I might not know anything about catering, but I couldn’t serve 40 guys at a football party the same food I was serving 15 women at a baby shower. I also reminded my wife that she told me that I was to take our daughter someplace during the baby shower. “Take her to Kathy’s house as a helper. The guys will think it is cute,” she said.

I made all the food in my home kitchen and since I had no professional knowledge or experience, I did it all with a paring knife. I still look back at that day and laugh at my antics.

At the end of Kathy’s event, two people asked me to cater events for them. They asked me for my card and what was the name of my business. Of course, I had neither. Esquire is the professional term of courtesy used for lawyers, and since I was still a lawyer, I spontaneously came up with the name Esquire Catering. Moments later, I created a slogan that stuck for years: “Catering Any Better Wouldn’t Be Legal.”

So, I entered the hospitality industry while doing volunteer work at the humane society, answering a distressing phone call, and using only a paring knife. Next month, I will discuss how I got into teaching. That’s another crazy story and, like writing for CAFÉ, it involved a four- or five-month commitment that went on for over 20 years!

I am reminded of the song “Truckin” by the Grateful Dead and the line: What a long, strange trip it has been.

Adam Weiner, JD, CFSE, has been a culinary instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 18 years.