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Chef Stephen Sands, Owner, Culinaria Cooking School

COLUMN = COOKING SCHOOL

Stephen Sands (pictured first, left, with his team) began his culinary career in 1989 as the lead assistant for Francois Dionot, the director and founder of L’Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, MD. Stephen assisted both L’Academie chefs, and visiting guest chefs, ensuring the execution of classes for the chefs was seamless, and he assisted students in the participation classes with instruction and techniques during classes.

He graduated from L’Academie de Cuisine’s part-time professional program in 1996 and began teaching as a chef/instructor at the school. There, he developed curricula and original recipes for classes he taught at L’Academie. Stephen taught both demonstration and participation classes, and also instructed L’Academie’s private parties and team building events.

In 2004, Stephen formed Capital Food Partners, LLC, along with his business partner Pete Snaith, as a cooking school and catering company. He left L’Academie de Cuisine as a chef/instructor in the spring of 2009, and retired in March 2010 after working for 35 years as a nuclear engineer working for Westinghouse, Exxon, and NRC to pursue the development of the Culinaria Cooking School.

Many people prefer to play it safe when it comes to business matters. Are you willing to take risks in the pursuit of entrepreneurial success?”

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Success is about finding a livelihood that brings joy, self-sufficiency, and a sense of contributing.”

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To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

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Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading.”

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Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”

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The best reason to start an organization is to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”

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In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

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Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

– Robert Frost

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”

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Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow.”

– Langston Hughes

Never never never never give up.”

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If people like you they’ll listen to you; if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

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The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.”

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You must have chaos within you, to create a dancing star.”

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Tolerance and patience should not be read as signs of weakness. They are signs of strength.”

– The Dalai Lama

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

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Death is to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.”

– Thomas Wolfe

I can’t go back to yesterday—because I was a different person then.”

– Lewis Carroll

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

– Abraham Lincoln

If you want to be busy, keep trying to be perfect. If you want to be happy, focus on making a difference.”

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Anything not worth doing well is not worth doing.”

– Warren Buffett

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more.
 If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”

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Why am I whispering when I have something to say?”

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Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what nurtures creative thinking.”

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Letting go of expectations is a ticket to peace. It allows us to ride over every crisis—small or large—like a beach ball on water.”

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Do not be afraid of mistakes, providing you do not make the same one twice.”

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As each woman realizes her power, she transforms the world.”

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If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. 
Now put foundations under them.”

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When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.”

– Henry David Thoreau

You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”

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Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.”

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Part of your destiny is to live in the zone of maximum satisfaction.”

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Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.”

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Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.”

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There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

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The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.”

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Don’t follow, lead. Don’t copy, create. Don’t start, finish. Don’t sit still, move. Don’t fit in, stand out. Don’t sit quietly, speak up. (Not all the time, sure, but more often.)”

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Let us seize the day and the opportunity and strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.”

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The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.”

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Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

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You may ask me for anything you like except time.”

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Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

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Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”

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‎That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

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When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

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When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

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‎The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

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Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

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Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

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If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.”

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