and, this.

So this is what is cool right now. #puggleoverlord

*sigh*

Here's what I know: when you type my name, preceded with the word "chef" you get a shit-ton (yes, that's a fucking technical term, I am at wit's end here) of hits. when you hit the name of my replacement, who has ONE hot restaurant under her belt on her resume (and then a bunch of whatever PDX places AS IF ANYONE CARES) but nothing else. No community involvement (oh, look, not only did I work in some awesome restaurants in Fresno, but I worked with the farmers, participated in events, etc, etc, etc) nothing but gloss. But, oddly, I got demoted for not being creative enough, not firing someone, and near as I can tell: for not being a big enough synchophant. Whatever. I am at the end of my tether with this restaurant, and like ALL the others, it is at the 7 month mark. I have tried all that I know, and now spend my days being treated as if the decade I've spent in kitchens; not to mention the decade+ I've spent IN OTHER REAL LIFE JOBS AND LIFE EXPERIENCES NEVER EXISTED. I have literally been told how to tell if a cake is done by using a metal cake tester. I have watched a coworker (who graduated pastry school, a feat I did not accomplish) be told that a syrup "needs to boil to reduce" (it was citrus, generally, people who respect citrus let it go low and slow to avoid a horrible metallic finish) I have been treated AS IF I haven't had the honor to work with some of California's finest chefs (including serving fucking Alice Waters, etc) I am grinding my teeth currently, because I am mature enough to recognize what is going on: this is a high school-esque social strata thing - that is, I don't know enough "name" people here. The reality is that I have worked with some of the best people, here and in other, real life cities. Even when I didn't know I was into food, I was learning (points won starving on tour in Europe). But whatever. I will not cave. I will not quit. I will demand they let me go, if they thing I don't have the ability. I grant them: I don't want to work 12-hour days, I have a puppy I love and am sick of games. I like to learn, but refuse to be patronized. So we'll see what happens next. Will they have the nerve to actually fire me, after they've asked me to stay after bringing in a new pastry chef. in the words of the immortal Schmidt: "I can do this ALL DAY" The reality is: this isn't my first, second, or even third job. This is my second career, eighth job, fourth lead position, so....uh...as Bill Wallby would sing:" B_L_O_W_M_E" ("beeeee/elllllllllll/ohhhhhhhh/dubbbbleyooooooooooo/emmmmmmmmm/eeeeeeee :blowme!") (yes edited)

this, now.

Hello world. I have, as usual, made a huge life change that has kept me away from the keyboard (also, there was a bit of the whole "lack of keyboard" as well) - but I am now, once again the guardian of a canine. This is a Puggle, a beagle-pug mix that my mother had adopted before realizing 2 weeks in that an 8-week old puppy is a a pretty steep hill for a 70-year-old to climb, even if she is a self-proclaimed "dog lady". I couldn't bear the idea of having this pup go to the shelter, so I went ahead and fast-tracked my returning to Puppytown plans. It's been a much rougher ride this time around. Previously, I had the single smartest and compassionate (towards me, at least) dog ever. I was also 20 years younger, and much more socially active and had a job that mostly had me staring at a computer or standing in front of a machine. Not anymore. I spend 8-10 hours a day mixing doughs, shaping bread, doing intricate dessert prep, etc. I am a lot more jaded. This Puggle, on the other hand is the single happiest dog i've ever encountered. She loves everything. Everything is a game, except sleeping. Sleeping is for sissies, apparently. Anyway, today is the first morning I've had with her that she hasn't been camped in my lap, or demanding attention and that i could write a little. it's been good to have a dog in my life again, and the wealth of people who i've encountered has been amazing already. Previously dog-parks were pointless, the previous Grey Overlord merely needed open space where we could play frisbee, or miles of places to walk. The Puggle Overlord likes to meet her minions, will play with all dogs (even, god help her, Corgies) loves attention from passersby (we had one woman cross a street against traffic squeeing "ohmigod, she's so cute i HAD to come over - can i pet her??) and thus is a whole other dog handling experience. Also, as we inhabit an apartment on the 12th floor, trips outside are a bit more involved (including dodging the neighborhood ephemera) and that has thrown a bit of a twist into the narrative. Anyway, just a quick note to myself to maybe get back on track again here - there's much to dissect, and the job is approaching month six without much trauma, so i'm hoping to get back on track....right after i finish this New Girl binge....

Mamnoon. Welcome.

I havn't posted in a while for several real reasons (as opposed to the paranoid nonsense that has previously kept me from documenting my life, as it rolls along). The first is a technical thing: the band-aid laptop SG gave me for cheap finally died - the fan went belly-up, followed shortly by the screen. Its fine, but watching netflix on the iphone4 is making my head hurt. Additionally, typing blogposts on the crappy typepad is irritating. Many a witty post is lost to the ether because i gave up the big-thumb battle.

That said; the other reason is that i genuinely like where i work. I'd say love, but i don't want to jinx it. As i reiterated to Chef today, it is an amazing pleasure to be working with people who are CONSTANTLY trying to improve. How can this taste better? How can the production be better, simpler, more consistant? What if we do this? How about this? This didn't work, what should we do next? This is an issue, how will we deal with it? What is this? Who is taking this on? All these questions get answered. I've never been a part of a team so willing to solve problems. My first 4 weeks, I'm now realizing I was in a state of shock. Now, everyday I thank these owners for givng me the chance to do awesome stuff every day, for the challenge of a cuisine I am unfamiliar with, for a team that is supportive, but not enabling. For a place to go every day that is welcoming, challenging and creative. And, it should be said, on the surface, I never expected this to be a good fit, and oddly, it turns out to be the best fit ever. I really, very much enjoy working for these owners, and with this chef. Long road travelled, but SO well worth it.

sprung

So, it's been a minute. I've let this venue go quiet - as I am want to do these days. It's been a couple of months of introspection, of trying to regain some interest, passion, and most of all, focus. Hasn't completely worked, but I've definitely set myself a bar. A while ago, while visiting SG, he mentioned how "proud" he was of me, walking away from a tech-y, graphics-y "career" (and I use that term as loosely as it is draped over that ramshackle debacle that was my life back "in the day") and choosing to go into cooking. That he didn't know if he'd have the courage to do something like that. I was flattered, and it set me to thinking. Why was/am I doing this? The pay is uniformly crap for someone who started as late as I did, and isn't in a management or corporate setting. There are no real vacations. It's physically taxing almost in every instance, (I have taken forearm scarification to a whole new level) and I am in my less-than-physical-prime-of-life. On that note, there's rarely health insurance, though I suppose the one upshot of TV chefs inspiring more people into the industry is that it is being offered more often after a certain amount of time of service. The list of challenges goes on: inflated chef egos, demanding customers, deluded owners, a marketplace that demands constant change and patrol.... So why do I do this? My plan was to spend my working hours doing what I enjoy. To be paid to work with food. I did as much due diligence as I could in the beginning, trying to make sure that I understood the repetition, the cleaning, the pressure, the schedule, the most mudnane parts of working in a kitchen. I wasn't a silly high-school kid with visions of Nigella Lawson in her head. Nope, I was much more a disgruntled thirty-something looking for a place to call home. That's how this thing started, me just wanting to find the place that I had read about so many talented people finding their calling at. I listened to people speak about why they cooked; was inspired by working with people who were starting new restaurants, who were becoming executive chefs for the first time; with people who had years of hard-core line-cook experience, who all still did it because of a certain jolt it gives you, a certain feeling you get feeding people. Which is why when I landed at 'zino after returning to Seattle it seemed aalmost perfect, the pantry-pastry gig, which morphed into a sous role. For a good year, it offered all I needed, but ultimately, the ownership, and inevitable sale of the business took it's toll. I floundered: do I go back to baking full-time? Am I too old for working 6 nights a week, arriving at 1pm, closing at midnight, and quelling the noise in my head for the next few hours with booze, only to get back on the treadmill again the next afternoon? Were the accolades of in-person guests a couple times a week enough to compensate for a wage that left me at basically poverty-level? Is this what I had envisioned? I decided baking has always been more profitable, more manageable, and thus my strength. I can't return to general managing anything, because to be honest, I am not one to wrangle someone else's cats anymore. So, I took a job with an old pal, thinking I'd learn more about breadmaking. I ended up working the fry station at brunch. Too old to waste precious more days of my life making fries, sauerkraut, and pancakes, I left and took a job at what seemed to be an adorable, successful, quirky cafe-restaurant-bar to lead their baking and pastry department. That ended up with me being told, more than ever in my career, that my shit isn't good enough. And by shit, I mean muffins, cookies, cakes and scones. I am good at that stuff. Hell, I'm great at scones especially.I dealt with a completely unorganized kitchen, an owner whose vanity exceeded everything I'd ever seen before (and I've seen some shit), and watched amounts of just not my food, but the executive chef and other cooks being trashed (not just verbally, literally, thrown in the garbage) on a whim. Cookies "too crisp" sandwiches where the mustard was "too spicy" it went on and on, and the staff was clearly weaned on dysfunction. I let my moral compass tarnish. Badly. I found myself saying "If they don't care, neither do i" and "Well that's how they want it" - things that made me feel bad inside. Made me feel like a failure. Made me forget all the postive feedback I have had over the years. I was convinced that I didn't have the skills I thought I did. Over fricking muffins and coffee cake and biscuits. Ridiculous. So, I, even though it was well under the six month line that i try to hold with new jobs, started sniffing around for new ones. It happened. At the risk of jinxing it (and I'm writing this in late-mid-may, but may not post it for a bit longer just in case): I found a home. One I would have never seen coming. A beautiful kitchen, amazingly humane owners, seasoned professionals with the highest levels of ethics, a walk-in with a floor you could eat off of, an executive chef who was once an exec pastry guy, so he doesn't discriminate his baking team...all of the things I had let go of dreaming about. I go in there, and I am back in the zone: what is the correct thing to do? Everyone cleans as they go. They all taste things, they talk to each other. There are hijinks, but it's in relation to getting stuff done. The chef freaks out about the right things, not perceived personal affronts. He doesn't spend hours arguing about a salad with the owners. There is a level of trust in this endeavor that I have always wanted. Granted - I work baking hours (a very sweet gig, now) and don't have to deal with service, which can be stressful - but overall, I am reinvigorated with the love I have for fine dining, for giving people the very best food they can have, and in this instance, because it is a cuisine that is new to me - it is exciting to taste and grow and create. Plus, I am working with an executive chef that can give me the pastry/baking guidance I have pretty much had to provide for myself, whether it was from my own research, or paying close attention to talented people around me and taking notes. This is the first time in a long while I have had someone hand me a bit of paper with the bones of a recipe on it, talk me through the method, and let me have at it: and be thrilled with the results. Twice in the last week, actually. The Namoura cake and a Mahlab-chocolate ice cream. The moral of this story, and one I hope not to forget by noting it here is: if you are unhappy, change something. Do not settle for less-than. Certainly, I could and should apply this to all aspects of my life - but for now, in this instance, this will do.

It always comes back to this for me.

"Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it." - Buddha .

marketing your emotions

Well, that'll teach me to be all posi-emo and see things as half-full. 'Tis the season for remembering how happy everyone seems to be with their post-me partners. I'm furious, even though i know that it's a waste of percious moments of my life - but kyle being a luthier, being happy in love - that was all via me. i enabled that shit, and it pisses me off. meanwhile, i'm wrangling Jared who goes back and forth about digging me, then it's purely lust based. lately he seemed to be making  more of an effort, but of course then i'm sick, and then bleeding. argh. and soooo fat. unbelievably so. plus new job, though hip, is still a bit of a challenge, but i try to remember how hard branzino seemed at times. yeah. and then the delightful (and by delightful i mean not at all amusing lately) uriel is pushing all my buttons - because he's easier in bed than jared, likes to snuggle, but is a 25-year-old partying player who is literally a foot shorter than me...and this week he bailed on hanging out with me, and i....care only in the most abstract of ways for the same reason i can't go hang with Jared, i'm coughing up phlegm all the time, constantly blowing my nose, and need to not drink. (after two consecutive bottles of evan williams after no hard booze most of last month) - but fuck. i need to find a doctor. i need to get new contacts. i need to pay for parking. i need to pay my cali debt (am a month behind on that) plus my license is suspended, my tabs are expired - i need to get an id, but as usual am broke. i am skating on thin ice every time i get behind the wheel. to be honest, the least of my problems is my lack of a companion, and yet it's all i can think about: mike, kyle, graham, smitty, darren (dorothy), spencer, tom, fuck it seems like each and every male i've been involved with in the last 10 years is totally hooked up and happy. and me? i am, as always, adrift. whatever. fuck it. i'm gonna die soon anyway, dunno if it's a brain tumor, or cancer, or MS, but it's something, and it's happening. i guess i just wait until the catastrophic issue presents itself. i dunno. this is tedious. whining is tedious. i just wish someone would fucking show just a little appreciation occasionally. but i guess it's cause i don't? dunno.

Friday the 14th.

'tis the season, and all that.

notes from mid-stream

So, yeah, 2014. I'm not gonna give in to my typical inclination to say "another year of this mess." I do honestly feel like this year will be different. Not sure how, yet, as it's starting as so many of them have in the past: new job (or new home), old ghosts being laid to rest (another damn child brought into this world without a plan, but my hopes for The Stray are that this sets him on a path to achieve what I know he can), and new ones surfacing. I'm starting a(nother) new job on Saturday - and it's a better fit, at least I hope. It's keeping early hours, which has so far proven to (pretty much) keep me out of trouble. Unless, of course I make plans to "do" something, and then it all blows apart when old paths are traveled, and I ignore the lessons I should know by heart by now (stop drinking Beam straight up out of tumblers with guitarist/vocalists you harbor massive unrequited crushes on). Whatever. There have already been some angelic interventions, and my final days at the Pretzel Factory are of course lovely, which makes me panic and wonder if I'm making the right choice - but I know I am, because I need to be back in a place that has a manageable production schedule (like, not 800 people a night) and where what I do is noticed, not just by the morning kitchen manager, but by the guests. So: get up at 3:30am, and make stuff happen 4 days a week, and the other 3? Make stuff. Enjoy stuff. Enjoy the town i love. All of it. Gonna listen to the right voices this time :)