Imagining the best, and thinking of Spain

As I rolled along at the Home Slice Bakery in Dubois, Wyoming, a Frida Kahlo costume on my head and a glass of wine nearby, I never imagined the road ahead, what waited for me beyond the barn with the two black angus steers and the goat pen, beyond the bees in clover.

I thought I was in the mountains just to volunteer for a friend who's a devoted baker for her community, population less than a thousand. I could playfully channel Kahlo while rolling dough, or Julia with my nip of wine, but I never played "let's make believe you're a Le Cordon Bleu student." Never saw it coming, never sensed it. It was not up my sleeve or in my heart to do.

Then we came to the end, which is a title for a book about getting "freed up" in the ad agency world, which is just what happened to me when I came down off the mountain. Suddenly I had too much time and empty hands, but no more kitchen in the Grand Tetons. Before I could think it through, I enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Dallas as a baking and pastry student - because there was no one to stop me, not even myself. I knew if I thought too much about it, I'd talk myself out of it. Even the great Southern hospitality queen Paula Deen told me that it was "just courageous" to start on this journey (she meant at MY AGE), and she's right. She would know.

A year later, I have done the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the unbelievable leap into the unknown. This is bigger than Wyoming, bigger than baking school. I have applied for the BasqueStage Sammic Scholarship. Know what that is? A chance to work in the restaurant Martín Berasategui, which has three Michelin Stars, in the Basque region of Spain. A 6-month commitment, the chance of a lifetime you look for all your life.

Have I gone mad? (You might have thought so after seeing those Kahlo flowers on my head.) Surely it takes a special kind of imagination to see yourself living in Espana, taking direction in another language, soaking in the exquisite culture, cuisine and new life (at your age). What's more important even than applying for it, what I embrace, is discovering that when you toss your sombrero in a ring like this, you declare yourself to the world that you are a candidate - for whatever comes, whatever waits, wherever you go, and why.

I wish myself luck in this endeavor, I wish all the candidates the best - and there are some very good candidates. Everyone deserves the chance to stretch the imagination wider than the strudel dough, beyond where they thought they could go in one terrific leap of faith. We all deserve the right to believe in the outrageous behind every good fortune.

Saludos!