A New Year Means New Kitchen Beginnings

No one is born a cook or a baker—not even the world's best chefs. In fact, the road to becoming comfortable in the kitchen, just like in the pharmacy, is rarely straight or smooth.

While setbacks in the kitchen can be measured by scorched pans, burns, and flops, it is a little tougher to measure success in the pharmacy.

I have scars and many scorched pans to prove my ambition in the kitchen. Yet, I have to rely on my service, knowledge, and patients to help measure my success in pharmacy.

Every mistake is a lesson learned and a story shared. Much like your first day on the job in the pharmacy, making that brisket may seem like the worst idea ever.

Over time, however, you start to get more comfortable. You learn how to ask for help from real people and not just Google searches. You start to gain the confidence to handle those tasks and recipes that people rave about.

As a New Year's resolution, promise yourself to get into the kitchen to cook, bake, or pickle. Perhaps it will be a solo creative pursuit, and the steady chop of a knife against a cutting board will become a focused meditation.

It might be cooking a feast with friends. Better yet, a family affair with children helping prepare a meal.

No matter what, let the power of cooking work its magic, flops and all.

Over the course of the next few entries, I will share some of my greatest kitchen flops with you and explain how they have made me a better cook and pharmacist.

I hope you are able to learn from the stories that set off my smoke alarm, and even share some tales of your own!