It Starts With Quiche
Presented by WeldWerks Brewing Co.
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By Serena Olsen
My food and culinary experience growing up was unremarkable. I’ve arguably not “really” worked in food service. Unless, you count my very first job handing out lunches in my high school cafeteria and putting in at least a year at a Baskin-Robbins, which alone should give me some “cred,” they had a special brutality all their own. I went on to put in a few years at a Kinko’s copy center, which is basically fast food—the customers can be just as dismissive and demanding, fast turnaround is the goal, and you go home every night with the oil of the machines all over your skin.
It wasn’t until I began examining my relationships to food, that I started to dig deep for its influences, and—it all started with quiche.
Relationships to food and happiness, in a blog of the same name “It Starts With Quiche,” led to examining familial and other food influences that got me to: middle age, unemployed, losing all of my spoons, trying to make sense of a radically new reality amidst a global pandemic like everyone else, and trying to figure out how to get into food service even as many have been jumping ship while the industry struggles like never before to get staffed.
This shift began quietly when I learned to make quiche as a young adult, which presented itself as a clear pivot point during my Peace Corps service in 2015.
I had gotten all dreamy-eyed and academic, and just wanted to travel and do good things for people. I went to college (for way too many years), did a fair amount of traveling, and piled on the volunteerism. I landed square in the “Non-Profit Industrial Complex,” which chewed me up and spit me out as of December 2020. I worked in more than one burnout factory, and was devising an exit strategy well before the pandemic descended, like featuring food prominently in my projects and programs. I was on the verge of that exit—when COVID-19 made it difficult to pivot into the food business. I endeavored to endure the turmoil of 2020, though my stepfather passed in February and my mom followed just 10 weeks later. She was a level-4 hoarder and I inherited a messy and complicated estate that is still unresolved, and has unleashed a mountain of generational and other traumas. So, career burnout, the world shuts down, my parents die, and I quit my job. Check, please!
Managing mental health is at the top of my list every day, and I enter this new chapter staring the stress of food service in the face (acknowledging similar effects on Anthony Bourdain). Between a little pile of savings I was able to put away for this occasion and leaning on my spouse’s income, my job in 2021 has been to clean up my parent’s affairs, heal myself, and lay the foundation for getting into my happy place—a kitchen where I can play with food. Food is healing, food is therapy. Quiche, where it all started, showed me that food is more than a vehicle for nutrients, it is a valuable tool for transformative change.
Established in 2015, WeldWerks Brewing Co. is an award-winning craft brewery located in Greeley, Colorado recognized for brewing an array of beer styles including Juicy Bits, one of the most highly regarded IPAs in the country. WeldWerks has garnered numerous medals and acclaim on the way, including being named the best new brewery in the country by USA Today in 2016 and multiple medals at both the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup. The brewery’s charitable arm, the WeldWerks Community Foundation, is a 501c3 nonprofit that supports local nonprofits through events like The WeldWerks Invitational.
Serena is a frugal foodie pursuing adventures at the intersection of food and happiness in the San Francisco Bay Area. She thinks a lot about minimizing food waste, food preservation, and food as a vehicle for healing and transformation. Her superpowers are repurposing leftovers, getting creative with what’s available, and loves sniffing and tasting. While working through a ‘Mojo List’ of culinary curiosities, her long-term goals revolve around coffee and a cafe, or a B&B. She fully embraced #KitchenTherapy in a moment of existential crisis in a small, scrappy kitchen in her Bishkek apartment as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Find Serena’s work online at It Starts With Quiche, on Facebook at It Starts With Quiche: Finding Your Happy Place, and on Clubhouse @blindbroad.
Opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of Best Served. To achieve our mission of bringing more voices to the table, we are committed to sharing a variety of viewpoints across the industry.
