Student's future is cooking

Page 9

Pam Vargas Solis, 38, is back in school after a 20 year break, but the mother of two from the Red Pheasant First Nation in Saskatchewan didn't go back for 'readin', writin' and 'rithmatic. She went back for her own special three "R's." Vargas Solis is back at school for Recognition, Responsibility and Recipes.

She is in her last half of the SAIT one year Professional Cooking program and said the experience has been gratifying and a little stressful. The course, which used to be a two year program, was recently shortened to one year. Add that to a 20 year absence from school, and . . . "I stressed myself out the first term," she said of the program which began last August. "I was crying all the time."

But that didn't stop the dedicated woman from maintaining an 85 per cent average in her classes.

Cooking isn't all that new to the returning student, and she modestly professed to making "the best bannock," something she has improved on with her own mobile concession business. She got the taste for learning more about cooking and food preparation from the travels and pit-stops she made with the cafeteria on wheels.

"We would do the powwow circuit with it, and that's what got me into it," she said.

With the help of classes dealing with cold and hot food preparation, refrigeration, presentation, meat cutting, baking, pasta and vegetable preparation, sanitation, and kitchen management, Vargas Solis hopes to, one day, open her own restaurant.

She plans to incorporate what she has learned in school with her own knowledge of traditional Native cuisine to open a Native-style restaurant.

Her bannock burger specialties would undoubtedly be on the menu along with other Native items and a good sampling of traditional western cuisine.

The budding entrepreneur figures she is still at least two years away from any grand opening.

"With research and everything else I'd have to do - it would take a good year to do the research - so in two or three years I could open it up," she said.

With her goals already in mind, Vargas Solis is entering the last half of the cooking program with optimism, despite the big course load and the magnitude of information she must learn.

"There's so much you have to learn - and fast," she said, adding that the pace isn't for everyone. "They teach you well enough, but if you don't know it, then you shouldn't be doing any of it."

She has realized how important a good education is to her future.

"I was working three jobs for a couple of years. I got tired of working my butt off, so I made a plan to get an education and get really good at one thing and get paid good money for it."

In order to get her name and her talent into the market place, Vargas Solis has entered competitions which showcase her work.

Most recently, she presented a wedding cake at the 1998 Culinary Arts Salon in Edmonton on Feb. 21. She was competing against talented cooking students from across the province, including the other 15 people in the SAIT cooking program.

She knows she has to be unique if she wants to stand out, and that was the reasoning behind her entry in the competition.

Choosing to make a wedding cake was a decision she made as carefully as the selection of the ingredients in the multi-tiered cake.

"I'm doing something totally different from anyone else in the cooking program," she said.

Being unique is a part of being popular and well-known in the industry, she said.

Holding down two jobs as well as going to school and taking care of her family, Vargas Solis said the pressures can be overwhelming, but it has to be done if she wants to make something of herself and her talents.

"I didn't have much time to make this cake," she said, "but if I want to get known in the industry, I have to go to these things. If I don't, I get bypassed."

Her wedding cake got a lot of notice at the show, and she is sure to be making more impressive and tasty pieces before the cooking program is over.