As I previously blogged my love of being a Chef has started to wane over the last month and if I could get an easy uncomplicated divorce from the wonderful relationship I have had for the last 9 years with it I would gladly walk out on it today. It could have full custody of anything it wanted including my set of Wusthof knives and my prized Global spatula ! Just so long as it lets me leave and painlessly!
Unfortunately I think its going to be a messy divorce.You just cannot retrain for another career midlife, spend 9 hard long years working your nuts off to become a good Chef and then just walk away. Plus no matter how little enjoyment the job now gives me I have commitments to keep for a while. The other problem is unlike when I finished being a photographer I knew I wanted to learn to cook, but now I don't really have any dreams or another challenge in mind to focus on.
Yes I know we all work hard and being a Chef is not the only tough profession out there.
12-14 hours of standing on your feet in a hot environment and sometimes working a lot of that time on your own makes it a job though for the truly dedicated. You spend the day prepping food that was once a labour of love. At the moment the thought of making a warming creamy Celeriac and Rosemary soup or even a simple Leek and Curry Coulis to go with a Chicken dish you decided to put on the menu used to make me rush into work early of a morning eager to get started. But not at the moment. I still produce good food and it tastes good but that's because that's been ingrained into my cooking Psyche but the sound from the waitresses on an evening of " CHECK ON...!" now makes me sigh and wonder just what time will I get home tonight which is not the right mind set to have as Chef.
I am 43 which in life is not old but in kitchen service age terms it makes me a dinosaur.
I am not sure if I am slower during service it is just that their are younger models running around me making me appear slower !!!
I think I still want to cook buy really I want to spend some time living again and as they say I want to work to live and not live to work ! I think I got that the right way around !!! ha ha !
If you want to have a little virtual go at a kitchen service I downloaded a game from iTunes a while ago called Happy Chef where you are in charge of the kitchen during service. I am only on level one where you run a burger bar. The customers come in and you prepare their virtual food on the virtual grill and then try and serve it to the customers before they walk out because you take too long ! Its fun but I am rubbish at it which is another sign its time to hang up my service apron ! Ha ha !
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| HAPPY CHEF on my mac ! |
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| The customers come in and order their food and you cook it on the grill as quick as you can. |
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| If your taking too long the customers get annoyed and then walk out. The woman in the picture is angry because I asked her out though ! ha ha ! |
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FAILED !
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| A Tree ! |
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| Deepest Northumberland. |
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| I love the sea, you all know that but Northumberland has many attractions. |
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| Chillingham Castle where they have wild cattle ! |
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| The beauty of the rapeseed fields will be gone soon. |
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| Roast "Burnt" crackling. I had another piece as back up and got 10 portions out of it. Luckily I only sold 10 Pork Belly portions on Saturday night. |
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| Not many service pics this week as a table of 12 people who wanted Steaks of various cooking stages were supposed to eat at 6.45 but didn't show up till 7.30pm putting the kitchen in the proper "S***e" but we got through it ! |
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| Sick of dishes ! |
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