Chapter One!

May 5, 2026

Chapter 1

We go through our careers and things happen to us. Those experiences made me what I am.

Thomas Keller

It was December 2024, and I was slumped in a San Francisco hotel lobby, feeling like a high-end piece of luggage that had been misplaced by the airline. I had just lost my job—a “lucrative” career in corporate law that had mostly succeeded in turning me into a person I didn’t particularly like. I was currently at that delightful mid-life intersection where my professional purpose had evaporated, but my capacity for “bad behavior” at home and work was at an all-time high.

Thankfully, I was congregating with my Board of Directors: Ginger and Kelly (friends since preschool) and Linda (since 7th grade). We were all hitting the big 5-0 in 2025. There is a specific kind of magic in friends who knew you when you had braces and bad hair; with them, there is no “bullshit” to maintain. We don’t catch up; we just continue a fifty-year-long conversation where the belly laughs are as frequent as the tears, and I can just be—without the fear that I’m being judged for having a meltdown in a lobby.

The itinerary was supposed to be a sophisticated palette cleanser for my soul. We hit Ginger’s “Rug Life” exhibit at the Museum of Craft and Design (she’s the talented one; I just show up for the snacks), and splurged on a dinner at a restaurant so fancy it shall remain nameless—mostly because the service was impeccable but every course tasted like a different shade of beige. Honestly, the real show-stopper wasn’t the “Michelin-adjacent” foam; it was a middle school production of Mary Poppins. Watching Linda’s son and those kids nail their lines was the first time my brain didn’t feel like a flickering lightbulb in weeks.

By the time we migrated North to wine country, the corks were flying and the truth was leaking out. It turns out, nobody’s life is a Pinterest board. Between the parents, the partners, and the existential dread, we were all dealing with stuff. I finally cooed it out: I was done with the law firm life. My beautiful home in DC, shared with my two cats, Fifi and Sabrina, felt less like a sanctuary and more like a very expensive, silent museum. I was purposeless, passionless, and dangerously close to becoming the neighborhood “crazy cat lady.”

Fast forward to SFO. Ginger and I were killing time before our flights back to Florida when she looked at me with the casual nonchalance of someone suggesting I try a new lipstick and said, “Why don’t you go to culinary school? I mean, you love to cook. Go somewhere cool and do that!”

I should have laughed. Instead, I did what any desperate, unemployed fifty-year-old with a smartphone does: I googled “best culinary school in the world.”

Le Cordon Bleu Paris was the first result. Maybe it was just superior Search Engine Optimization, or maybe the universe was finally throwing me a very fancy, marrow-filled, slowly roasted bone. Either way, I was seriously contemplating trading my laptop for a whisk to see if I could find my soul at the bottom of a stockpot.

I didn’t arrive at the decision to attend Le Cordon Bleu Paris in a single, cinematic moment. It was quieter than that—more of a steady pull than a leap. Still, once I said it out loud, it became real very quickly, and reality, as it tends to do, came with paperwork, deadlines, and a price tag that made me pause.

The application process itself was surprisingly straightforward—almost disarmingly so for something that felt so life-altering. There was no grand audition, no panel of chefs waiting to judge my knife skills. Instead, it began with an online application: basic personal information, proof of identity, and transcripts. Not to prove culinary genius, but simply to show that I could commit, follow through, and show up.

Then came the letter of motivation. This was the part that mattered. Why Paris? Why now? Why cooking? It forced me to articulate what I had been circling for years—that this wasn’t a whim, but a long-overdue alignment with something deeper. I wasn’t chasing a hobby. I was reclaiming a part of myself I had ignored for decades.

Once accepted—and the email came with far less fanfare than I expected—the practicalities began. International students must secure a student visa, which meant gathering financial documentation, proof of housing, enrollment confirmation, and patience. Lots of patience. The French system does not rush for anyone, and in a strange way, that felt fitting. If I was going to uproot my life, I needed to prove I could navigate discomfort before I even boarded the plane.

And then there was the cost.

Tuition at Le Cordon Bleu Paris is not subtle. Depending on the program—cuisine, pâtisserie, or the full Grand Diplôme—you’re looking at roughly $40,000 to $50,000 USD for the full experience. That number sits heavily when you’ve spent a lifetime being practical, building security, making the “responsible” choices. It asks a very direct question: What is your dream worth, really?

But tuition is only the beginning. Paris itself adds another layer—housing, daily expenses, transportation, the occasional glass of wine that turns into dinner. Realistically, the total investment can climb to $100,000 or more for the year. It is not insignificant. It is not something you do casually.

As if that weren’t enough, I had two very important travel companions to consider—my cats, Fifi and Sabrina. Leaving them behind was never an option. They had been with me through too many chapters of my life to be written out of this one. So, naturally, they were coming to Paris too.

This is where things became less romantic and more… procedural.

Bringing pets into France requires precision. Both cats needed to be microchipped with ISO-compliant chips, followed by up-to-date rabies vaccinations administered after the microchip was placed. Timing matters—there is a waiting period before travel, and nothing can be out of order. Then came the health certificate, issued by a USDA-accredited veterinarian and endorsed by the USDA APHIS. It had to be completed within a very specific window before departure, which meant coordinating appointments like a small military operation.

There were airline considerations too—carrier requirements, in-cabin vs. cargo decisions, fees that quietly added up, and the emotional calculus of making sure they would be as safe and comfortable as possible on a transatlantic flight. Paperwork, approvals, confirmations. It was a process layered on top of an already complex life transition.

And yet, in the middle of it all, there was something grounding about it. While I was busy dismantling one life and building another, caring for them reminded me that not everything was changing. Some things were coming with me, intact.

Then, completely out of the blue, after two years of separation, my husband decided he was ready to make it official. Not quietly, not eventually, but now. The timing was almost impressive in its precision. Of all the moments this could have surfaced, it arrived exactly when every emotional and financial resource I had was already spoken for.

What complicated it further was his expectation that he was entitled to alimony. He had not worked during our marriage, and in his view, that absence of income translated into a claim on the life I had built—and was now in the process of dismantling. At the very moment I was preparing to invest everything into starting over, I was being asked to account for what I might owe from what I was leaving behind.

At the same time, I had made the decision to sell my house in Washington, D.C.—a place that had represented stability, success, and a version of my life that no longer fit. Selling it was supposed to be a clean break, a way to fund the next chapter. Instead, it became another variable in a negotiation I hadn’t anticipated needing to navigate at this exact moment.

There is no good timing for the end of a marriage, but this felt particularly ill-placed. It layered uncertainty on top of risk, negotiation on top of reinvention. And yet, in a strange way, it clarified something for me. If I was already dismantling the life I had known—career, home, geography—then perhaps it was time to fully release what no longer belonged in the next chapter.

By the time I wired the tuition deposit, secured housing, received my visa approval, and held a folder thick with documents—for both myself and my two small, bewildered travel companions—I realized there was no turning back.

I was no longer someone thinking about going to culinary school in Paris.

I was the person who had rearranged her entire life—financially, emotionally, and logistically—while navigating endings I hadn’t planned, to make it happen.

Now I needed to get my ducks in a row.

It sounds quaint when you say it like that—orderly, almost charming. In reality, it looked more like a table covered in piles: legal documents, passport copies, veterinary records, tuition invoices, sticky notes with half-formed to-do lists, and a growing sense that my life had become a series of tabs open in a browser I couldn’t quite close.

There is a particular kind of clarity that comes when everything is in motion at once. You stop overthinking. You stop waiting for the “right time.” You just begin lining things up, one by one, and trust that forward movement is enough.

Enter my divorce lawyer, Stephanie. Stephanie came into my life at exactly the moment I needed someone steady, sharp, and entirely unshaken by the chaos I was juggling. When I walked into her office in Lake County, Florida for the first—and, as it turned out, only—time we would meet in person until I returned from Paris, she said, “Oh, Liz Lockett, you’re Judge Lockett’s daughter – your judicial royalty!” which immediately made me laugh and set me at ease.

What could have been a purely transactional meeting between client and attorney felt immediately different. There was an ease to her and within minutes, the formalities faded, and it felt less like I was hiring a lawyer and more like I had found an ally. She was exactly what I didn’t know I needed—sharp, unbothered, and just the right amount of spunky!

Within days, she drafted a separation agreement and sent it off. Clean. Direct. No alimony.

It didn’t solve everything, but it gave me something I hadn’t had in weeks—a sense of footing. With that piece moving forward, I turned to something that felt entirely mine.

I decided to build a website—La Chic Chef. At first, it was practical. A place to document the journey, to keep track of what I was doing, to maybe turn this experience into something more than a personal reinvention. But as I started sketching it out, it became something else entirely. A narrative. A record. Proof that I had the audacity to change my life at fifty and not apologize for it.

The blog would follow everything—the decision, the chaos, the logistics, the inevitable missteps. Not polished, not curated for perfection, but real. Because if there was one thing I had learned, it was that reinvention is not a clean process. It is messy, inconvenient, and often deeply impractical. Still, I wanted to capture it as it was happening, before memory softened the edges.

And then there was the French.

Three months.

That was the timeline I had given myself to go from polite tourist phrases to something resembling functional comprehension in a professional kitchen. It was, objectively, unreasonable. Which, at this point, felt on brand.

Most of the chefs at Le Cordon Bleu Paris speak limited English. Instructions are fast, precise, and not repeated for the benefit of the overwhelmed American in the corner trying to translate verbs mid-demonstration. I knew enough to understand that “figuring it out when I got there” was not a strategy.

So I started where everyone does—apps, audio lessons, sticky notes on everything in my house. La porte. La table. Le couteau. I spoke to myself constantly, narrating my own life in broken French. The cats were unimpressed.

There is something humbling about learning a language as an adult. You are suddenly stripped of fluency, of wit, of the ability to express anything beyond the most basic needs. You become simple. Direct. Slightly lost. It was uncomfortable, but also oddly liberating. There was no room for overthinking. Only repetition.

And then, inevitably, I had to confront the question of what to bring.

Packing for Paris is not the same as packing for a vacation. It is not even the same as packing for a move. It is a negotiation between identity and practicality. Who do you want to be when you arrive?

I was determined not to look like a tourist. Not because there is anything inherently wrong with being American, but because I wanted to step into this new version of myself without the immediate label of outsider. Or at least, not an obvious one.

This led to an entirely new level of OCD-driven over analysis.

Color palette: neutral. Black, cream, navy.
Silhouettes: simple, structured, unfussy.
Shoes: practical but intentional. No running shoes unless absolutely necessary.
Logos: none. Absolutely none.

I edited my wardrobe like I was curating a collection, not packing a suitcase. Every piece had to earn its place. Every item needed to serve a purpose. It was less about fashion and more about discipline.

Of course, the irony was not lost on me. I was trying to control how I would be perceived in a country where I would immediately open my mouth and give myself away.

But still, the effort mattered.

Because this wasn’t just about blending in. It was about intention. About showing up thoughtfully in a place I respected. About signaling, if only to myself, that I was taking this seriously.

Next, I had to find an apartment. Finding an apartment in Paris that was furnished, affordable, and willing to welcome two American cats was less of a housing search and more of a psychological experiment. Every listing seemed to offer two out of three—charming and furnished, but no pets; pets allowed, but looked like it hadn’t been updated since the French Revolution; or perfect, but priced as if I were quietly acquiring a pied-à-terre for a minor royal. I spent hours scrolling, translating, second-guessing, and briefly considering whether Fifi and Sabrina could convincingly pass as “very small, emotionally complex roommates.” The French, it turns out, take both their apartments and their cats seriously—and rarely together. By the time I found something that checked all the boxes, I felt less like I had secured housing and more like I had successfully negotiated a small international treaty.

Somewhere between legal documents, language lessons, website drafts, apartment hunting and carefully folded black sweaters, my life began to take shape again. Not the life I had before. Not even a refined version of it. Something entirely new.

And for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t waiting for permission to live it.

Recipe

Why, of all things, am I choosing Chicken Cordon Bleu for my first recipe? It sounds unmistakably French—elegant, classic, entirely appropriate for this chapter of my life.

And yet, it’s a bit of a farce.

Despite the name, Chicken Cordon Bleu isn’t truly a classic French culinary school dish. The term “cordon bleu” comes from the highest order of French knighthood, later becoming synonymous with excellence in cooking. Somewhere along the way, that prestige was borrowed—perhaps a little too generously—for a breaded, cheese-stuffed chicken that feels French, even if it isn’t.

Which, in its own way, makes it the perfect place to begin.

Chicken Cordon Bleu with Dijon–Velouté Sauce

Ingredients (serves 4)

Chicken

4 chicken breasts, butterflied and pounded thin
4 slices jambon de Paris (or high-quality ham)
4 slices Gruyère cheese
Salt, white pepper

Breading

1 cup flour
2 eggs, beaten
1½ cups panko breadcrumbs
¼ cup finely grated Parmesan
2 tbsp chopped parsley

For Cooking

3 tbsp butter
2 tbsp neutral oil (I prefer grapeseed oil for every day cooking)

Lay the ham and Gruyère neatly on each chicken breast. Roll tightly into a cylinder. Wrap the breasts each in plastic wrap and twist ends. Chill 30 minutes

Mix panko, parmesan and parsley. Dredge chicken breasts first in flour, then egg, then breadcrumb mixture. Press gently for an even crust.

Sear breasts in butter and oil until deeply golden. Transfer to 350°F oven for 12 to15 minutes. Rest before slicing into clean medallions

Dijon–Velouté Sauce

Ingredients