Spring Cleaning 2024

We hope all is well with you and enjoying Spring here in Northern New Jersey. The season has merited that I sort through our APEM account and clean out a few thousand pictures. Luckily, many were duplicates so that made it easier. But I kept many if not all the pictures of you all, the customers, especially the Halloween costumes.

It was sad looking over and deleting pictures and memories of APEM. But as time has gone by I know that my time in the food industry ended. It is natural that one should outgrow one thing and their world shifts to another. That is why I take Spring to be a time of vigor and discovery. Rather than hibernating during the winter I have been cocooned waiting to be reborn. And just like a newborn I have to learn new things, or rather in my case relearn. Books, books, and more books of various kinds have become my friends.

The culinary novel is moving along though sometimes backwards. There have been aspects of writing where my experiences at APEM have given me advantages. Our concept our APEM was to bring people along for a ride, a celebration, and to a place of comfort. And other aspects of writing I’ve had to slow down and pay attention, because I simply don’t know them yet. The book is about being in culinary school at a specific time. So I learn about writing to write about learning how to cook. A good way to spend the Spring.

Alex