Welcome

Welcome!

Le Petit Lapin is a start-up bakery run in the kitchen of my home in Stowe, VT. I'm in the process of applying to various farmers' markets in Vermont to sell my products. S0 far I'm a fill in at the Stowe Farmers' Market and am waiting to hear from the Williston Farmers' Market. I created this blog to document the birth of Le Petit Lapin and all the adventures, sticks of butter and baking induced incidents I encounter along the way.

How did I get here? I graduated from Wellesley College in May 2009 with a degree majoring in Biology. The plan was straightforward. I would work in a research lab for a few years to build my resume and study for the MCAT, then apply to medical school and become a doctor. I was working as a research technician in a lab studying lung cancer, but I found myself increasingly unhappy. I was depressed by the mouse work which was essentially breeding mice, giving them cancer, and treating them with drugs until they died. I hated the fact that virtually no one around me spoke English and didn't even bother to speak in English in my presence. I hated the protocol-dictated method of the work I did and the fact that tiny alterations would ruin an entire experiment. There was no room for creative thinking and the sterile, lifeless workplace was depressing.

My decision to leave the lab was difficult. Everyday as I walked through the lobby I saw sick patients hooked up to oxygen, arriving in ambulanes and sobbing loved ones waiting in the lobbey. On one hand, I wanted be a part of my research team to contribute to the search for novel cancer treatments. I have the upmost respect for everyone I worked with in the lab and appreciate the hard work they put in everyday. But the difference was that they were facinated by what they were studying and enjoyed the environment. I, on the other hand, was becoming so unhappy that I couldn't justify sacrificing my own happiness. Seeing the sick patients every day made me wonder, what if that's me someday? If I become sick and my life is cut short, how would I have wanted to have spent my life? In my heart, I knew I was unhappy in the lab and that the work was not suited for my more free-spirit personality. Life is too valuable and fragile to spend trudging through something mediocre dreaming of what you would do if you could do anything. I figured I'm young and this is the only time I can take major risks like this and try to follow my dreams.

So I left the lab. I have always loved food, cooking and baking. I love looking through cookbooks, reading the recipes and looking over the ingredients. I love shopping for ingredients and exploring grocery stores. I love creating healthy meals and beautiful desserts for my friends and family. I also love foreign recipes, especially the complex and exquisite pastries of Paris. Perhaps cooking and baking is not as noble as curing cancer, but I think that everyone has a special purpose in life, and curing cancer is not mine.

And so I'm on my way to reinventing myself and creating Le Petit Lapin, coming to a farmers' market near you, in the northern VT region.