Writer's Block: Local Favorite

[Error: unknown template qotd]ROFL...The fastest way to leave...
Not because I don't like having guests but because I hate my town.  Like, umm, here's a beach, and here's the ghetto, and here's a really awesome food store that belongs in Boston.  And here's the next town over that's really nice.  Let's go there instead.

Diary of a recovering line cook

I'd like to start a series of installments here.  If it catches on and I come up with a lot of material I may spin off into its own blog.  Let me start with some back story.

About 5 years ago, I went to culinary school and got a AAS in culinary arts.  My husband told me I was already a great cook.  I knew I was, but I thought I had to know "how to cook" in order to make it in the business.  I thought cooking school would teach me the concrete way to braise, stew, cut meat, prepare vegetables and roast the perfect chicken.  This was not the case.  I wish i had known that the ways to complete these tasks vary as much as the people running each restaurant.

I did my internship at a dog racing track in the area and after that was over, they hired me full time.  It was my most personally successful job to date, but I quit when it got boring because I wanted to be challenged, and do more with my degree than flip burgers and build towering nacho plates.  Plus, there was a small conflict of interest named Brian, who I will go into later.

After a few more brieft stints at jobs that would be demeaning to anyone, let alone someone with a degree in cooking, I landed a job that I felt was way over my head, but hey, they hired me, so they must feel I can do it, right?  I thought I was doing fine, to start.  After all, line cooking is line cooking.  Well, to some extent.

Soon I was hearing whispers and sarcastic comments along the lines of, "Oh Kate's here, now we're good to go!" (insert rolling eyes here)  But I was still thinking, if I'm that bad, I'll get fired, or at least spoken to, right?

And this is where I learned the lesson called It Is Easier to Keep a Lousy Worker Than to Train a New One.  I was going to have to rely on my own self-judgement on this one.  So I quit.  I didn't like being laughed at, told to get out of the way, and people having to fix my mistakes and pick up my slack.

It's not that I cannot cook.  I just cannot do this thing that seems to be an important skill in the culinary world, called "Thinking on your feet".  Some other things I do not like to do outside the home are "Cleaning" and "Organizing".  I don't flip out if the garnish is not pointing at a 75 degree angle, or if the plate does not look "sexy " or "gay" ("gay", apparently, is a good way for a finished plate to look, in the world of upscale cooking.  And you thought it was a derogatory term.

So that is where I am now. 
So you really understand, let me start us off on the reasons why I should have never tried to be a line cook.

1.  I am a girl.  This is not a jab at a woman's abilities to keep up with the men in the kitchen.  It's just that I am proud to be a girl.   (Even though I'm so low maintenance, you'd never know it.)  I was just not one of those girls who can pal around with guys, slap them on the back, and make off color jokes with the best of them.  Sometimes I even like to look like a girl, not some shapeless form in a too-big chef coat, unflattering black pants and clunky shoes.  And for some reason, I just do not fit in with the bunch of guys who are crowded around a cell phone, ogling some picture of a girl's boobs.  (I think that's what they call "sexting".)  I just did my prep, rolling my eyes in that "Ooh you guys are so silly" way, trying to laugh it off, not sure if I should be offended, or laugh, or just quit trying to fit my round self into this square hole.  I ended up doing a little bit of all three.