Cooking has been a principle distraction virtually all of my adult life. During the course of two successive twenty-year careers, one in the service of Uncle Sam and the other building an information technology business, my passion for food helped me maintain balance and perspective. You simply can't worry about your in-box while nursing a soufflé.

Now that I am mostly retired, I am able to devote even more time and energy in pursuit of all things culinary.

A year ago, as a gift, my dear wife, for whom I have served nearly forty years as personal chef, sent me off to the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park, New York, where I attended a one-week French cuisine 'boot camp'. It was a grand experience shared with more than a dozen other home-grown food enthusiasts. We learned about the regional flavors of France, refined and developed new cooking techniques, and gained some insight into the challenging environment of a professional production kitchen.

This year brought another gift and a second pilgrimage to the CIA, the food enthusiasts' Mecca. In April, I participated in a Pro-chef Level 2 class on Mediterranean cuisine. Having held a catering license at one point in life qualifies me as a member of the trade and therefore able to enroll in continuing education classes at the CIA.

The Pro-chef series is designed for professional chefs seeking certification of more advanced skills. Level 2 is the intermediate skill level, appropriately ranked as a two-Toque degree of difficulty, and produces a certified status of "Chef de Cuisine". The only certification standard beyond Level 3, Executive Chef, is Certified Master Chef. There are presently only 70 Certified Master Chefs in the United States.

My wife Sandy joined me for the week and we drove to Poughkeepsie, New York, on the Sunday before the class began.

Located on the banks of the Hudson River, Poughkeepsie is just 3 miles south of the CIA campus, and is a good launching pad from which to visit attractions throughout the region. A former Jesuit seminary, the CIA campus is stunning, despite major expansion currently underway to accommodate the phenomenal growth in the culinary industry.

The former seminary chapel now serves as the grand dining hall, where saintly figures stare down from stained glass windows on a congregation of young men and women in chefs' whites, praying for success in today's practicum.

The students at the CIA are uniformly attractive, polite, and friendly. There is no obvious unsightly body piercing and chef's pants are actually worn at waist level. This undoubtedly reflects the fact that students are graded as much on appearance and demeanor as on techniques. This is, after all, the hospitality industry.

By 6:45 on Monday morning, 15 minutes before the opening lecture, I was seated in classroom #1 of the J. Willard Marriott Continuing Education Center.

This gave me a few minutes to look through the program of instruction and meet a few of my classmates, all 14 of whom were professional chefs. Harvey works at a large country club in Memphis, Tennessee. Bob is director of nutritional services at a medical center in Rockport, Maine. Connie is a personal chef to the rich and famous.

Peter is the chief culinary director of the US Army in Europe. Dennis is a restaurant line cook who attended the class on a scholarship awarded by his employer…the International House of Pancakes! Caterers, restaurateurs, corporate chefs, hospital and nursing home chefs, the culinary industry was widely and well represented in our tiny student body.

About half of the students were pursuing Level 2 certification, and all of them were twenty to forty years my junior.

Any concerns I might have had were quickly dispelled as my new colleagues accepted me as a kindred spirit in pursuit of my own culinary development, albeit from a different, and somewhat belated, starting point. Whenever I needed an extra hand during the week, one was quickly and quietly extended.

Promptly at 7:00, Chef David Kamen, an Associate Professor of Culinary Arts, welcomed the class and described the week that would follow. A 1988 graduate of the CIA, Chef Kamen spent several years cooking in New York City restaurants and hotels before entering the education field. Prior to returning to the CIA in 1999, he was chairman of the culinary department of the New York Food and Hotel Management School.

Watch for Part II of "Cooking With the Big Boys" in the June issue of the Eccentric.