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.