Choosing Sunshine

A few nights ago, I was standing behind the bar of the restaurant where I work, polishing glasses and chatting up the bar patrons. A couple of men about my age sauntered in, pulled up at the bar, and each ordered a whiskey neat with an Old German back. I knew they were cooks, mostly from the drink order, partially from the weary looks on their faces, but also because I've seen them on the line before at their hot spot of a restaurant.

I asked them how everything is, and one of them kindly but absentmindedly responded, "Great, thank you." Reminiscing on my own day and in spirit of small talk, I asked, "Did you get to enjoy the sunshine today?" I thought about the walk I took after my morning gig and before I came into the restaurant, strolling downtown in the sunshine and basking in the warmth after months of soggy, cold, gray wetness.

One of them looked at the other and mumbled, "Well, sort of, a little bit, this morning before I had to be at work today." The other one did a side-to-side shake with his head in agreement with the "so-so-ness" of the morning sunshine, squinting as if he was having to think really hard to remember. They sighed in unison.

It's subtle, but I know this tone. I know it because I've done it, probably countless times. It's the "I'm a line cook and I work really fucking hard, so hard that you have no idea how hard it is to work this hard, you behind the bar polishing glasses... I just got off a twelve hour shift, and I can barely recall what I had to eat today, much less what the fucking weather was doing twelve fucking hours ago, plus I don't need sunshine when I just killed it on the line tonight, so you and your sunshine can go kiss my ass" tone.

I wanted so badly to tell them, "I've worked hard too, I know exactly what it's like, I swear!" I wanted to give them a run-down of all the shitty hours I've worked and all the sunny days I've missed and how I truly understand exactly what they mean, even though they don't know me from Adam. I wanted to scream that I work hard now, and I was in fact just finishing the tail end of working a double, but I know it's pointless, because I'm not a line cook. Not anymore.

And obviously it's neither the time nor place, so instead I nodded and smiled and came back with more pleasantries about how nice the weather has been for business and how happy we were to be busy that night. "Oh, yeah, we were slammed tonight too!" The return to work talk is all it takes to right the ship, and they finished their drinks, regaling me and each other with tales of getting crushed on the line.

They left happy and tipped heavy.

Portland waterfront in its sunny Saturday glory

In flux

I've been feeling the itch to write lately. It's been five months since my last meager update, and so much has transpired since then that I almost don't know where to begin.

These past few months have me running around like a headless chicken (albeit a hardworking one), writing and executing menus for events for an amazing commissary kitchen and event space, working front-of-house in an awesome restaurant in town, picking up random catering gigs for friends in need, helping my friend Nong open up her second cart in February and then third location last month, basically being your typical BOH/FOH gun-for-hire. I'm lucky to get as much work as I do. Serving, bartending, bussing, prepping, grilling, menu-writing, sausage-making, pie-rolling, working cash registers, I've been doing it all. It's been sometimes crazy but mostly fun, and thanks to all these extra gigs, I'm able to round out my schedule so I'm paying the bills and I'm still able to go hiking with Jeff and the dogs when we feel like it.

Somewhere in there, I also managed to take a trip to Taiwan, my home country, and where almost all of my relatives live. There, I experienced the usual "So when are you getting married/having babies?" from all of my aunts and uncles, and my beast of a paternal grandmother, my sole surviving grandparent and an incredible woman. I also ate the shit out of some classic Taiwanese cuisine, from traditional breakfast fare that I've sorely missed to an incredible omakase sushi experience at Kitcho. And oh the shopping! I managed to squeeze all the eating, cavorting with family and more eating into five jam-packed days, and when I finally kicked the jet lag after getting home, I immediately got to work making shaobing, the classic sesame flatbread served at breakfast. I've been half-joking with one of the owners of the restaurant I work at (who happens to be Taiwanese-American as well) about doing a Taiwanese brunch with all the fixings.

Aside from my time in Taiwan, I've been working an average of two to three different jobs a week. As much fun as it is, in my heart, however, I know this isn't sustainable. One week I may work six days in a row of mostly doubles and some triples (like this past week for example), but another week may only see me working three or four shifts. I think if I were ten years younger I might be okay with this kind of inconsistent schedule, but frankly, I'm at a point where I'm starting to plan for a future, maybe a family, and having a solid career plan would be great.

So yes, even though I'm busy as shit most of time, I'm struggling with keeping really focused on a goal. I still don't have aspirations to be an executive chef of a restaurant, though for a while there while I was line cooking I just put my head down and went with the flow until I realized it truly wasn't what I wanted. So what exactly is it that I do want? I'd love to be a private events chef full time, but the demand for that isn't there right now, and I don't want to go into full-time catering either. I'm becoming more and more obsessed with the service aspect of this industry, especially working as a server and barback for the restaurant I work at, and part of me wonders where that could take me, as that is what got me into restaurants in the first place. But I still love working with my hands, touching and fabricating food, creating meals that people remember. I need something that will sustain myself, my future, and my health and well-being. Kitchen work on its own is not made for "futures". It's made for right here and now, and living paycheck to paycheck, and though I'm physically living that reality, in my brain I've moved beyond that. Like I said, unsustainable.

I wish I had something more focused and picture-perfect to offer you, readers, but this is what I'm thinking right this very moment. Things are really good on the day-to-day, but I'm doing an awful lot of ruminating on my future.

Since I stopped line cooking

I've gained ten pounds. Not being on my feet 12 hours a day + eating two or three rounded meals a day will do that. I've joined a gym to try and counterbalance this effect.

I've stopped having bad cooking dreams with unending ticket machines and order-fire everything.

The hair on my left arm has grown back.

I've worn heels more than once in two months.

I spent an amazing month with family and friends in North Carolina and 10 gorgeous and memorable days in New York.

I'm cooking more at home than I have in years. Lucky Peach magazine yielded a glorious ramen broth and noodles that we ate for days.

I wrote and executed my first menu for which total strangers paid actual moneys (8 courses!) and I didn't go down in flames.

I taught my first cooking class (also, no flames).

I've continued to keep my hands busy via catering gigs and helping prep for Jeff's awesome supper club.

I miss seeing my work friends, I miss the intense veg prep and butchery, I miss the butterflies-in-your-stomach buildup to service, I even sorta miss doing the dance. But I don't miss pushing out hundreds of covers with sweat burning in my eyes while running on coffee and a bad sandwich. Does that make me lame?


How I spent my summer vacation


Jeff in blue crab heaven in Folly Beach, SC


Some of the best tacos I've had exist in Greensboro, NC


We carried her outside because she loved the outdoors. RIP, Garbanzo


Mom on the Blue Ridge Parkway


Plating grilled squab with smoked cherry gastrique. See the rest of the pics and menu here


Making the Momofuku ramen recipe from Lucky Peach magazine


I make weird faces when I teach


In Jeff's parents' backyard in the Hudson Valley for his nephew's viking-themed first birthday party


Peels for lunch, where we met Shuna Lydon (thanks, David!)


Momofuku Noodle Bar. Pork buns were totally worth the hype


This avocado at Prune blew my fucking mind


Sylvia and Jeff mean mugging for dim sum


Embracing full tourist mode

Beyond Line Cooking

Truth be told, I never seriously considered becoming a line cook when I entered culinary school. I thought that I might be a caterer, or an event planner, or maybe a food writer. Then fate stepped in and off I went down the rabbit hole.

Three years later, here I am, having landed my first lead line cook position under an esteemed Thomas-Keller-trained chef, for the re-opening of a classic Portland restaurant. I achieved my goal of working all the stations at my last restaurant, and when the opportunity came to take a leadership position and try something new, it was an opportunity I couldn't turn down.


Butchering whole King salmon at work. Fun as hell, and this particular fish was one of the better cuts I've made

I've learned so much at my new gig, from butchering whole fish and breaking down primals to actually having a voice on the line as kitchen-side expediter. My boudin blanc touch is getting better by the day. Although I am not officially a manager, my job includes some management duties, and it's been really educational to exercise that part of my self.

But I've recently found myself in this constant state of 'What's next?' I think there comes a time in every line cook's career, probably many times for some cooks, where he or she wonders when it'll get better. It's hard for me NOT to think about it, especially when the grueling services, long hours and hard physical labor have taken their toll. I don't kid myself in thinking I'm a young flower; I'm officially in my thirties after all, and keeping up with kids 10 years younger than me ain't as easy as it used to be.

There is a beauty in perfecting your craft, and getting your technique just right, finding focus and making it right every time, and I have found that beauty in line cooking. Romance aside, however, doing the same thing night after night, in the same physical space, hundreds of covers after hundreds of covers, can truly qualify as backbreaking, soul-crushing work. It's why line cooks tend to meander, and it's why a couple of years in any one kitchen seems like a lifetime. For a cook my age, it's hard not to question why you're working twice as hard as your cubicle-sitting peers for a fraction of the money and none of the benefits.

So it comes to this…

For the past six months or so, I've been feeling extremely conflicted about my work. I'm a cook, so why don't I love line cooking the way I used to anymore? Why would I find that when I sat down to write a blog entry, I couldn't write with the same gusto for what I do for a living? Where did my fascination for it all go? I would start to write, only to come up with some bitchy cook blog that I didn't actually want the public to read, lest I or my workplaces be judged to Yelp death.

I tortured myself with guilt over my lack of love for my work, and overanalyzed it all to a pulp. "Most of my coworkers seem totally happy being line cooks, and they've cooked for longer that me… why can't I handle this? Am I just being lame?" But in all that analyzation, I realized this simple fact: Since I started cooking professionally, I've been mainly working in restaurants that seat an average of 140 guests, with lunch, happy hour, dinner and late night. My current workplace has the clusterfuck of Sunday brunch added to that. 300-400 covers a night with barely a respite, thanks to my great luck with working in successful restaurants… it doesn't really seem like a puzzle why I was starting to burn out, or why I was starting to associate cooking with resentment.

My amazingly patient boyfriend will laugh at me for saying this now, but in retrospect the answer to all my conflict and self-questioning seems so simple. It wasn't cooking that I was learning to hate; it was cooking in this volume, in this environment, under this pressure. Certain cooks thrive under the pressure and live for the adrenaline. While it was satisfying for a while, I've come to realize I am truly not one of those cooks. And I'm totally fine with that.

I've had moments where I've thought, "Quit whining, Ingrid, you just need to pay your fucking dues like every other line cook out there." But what makes me think even more so that I'm totally fine with not being a line cook is the fact that at the top of this particular pyramid is the Executive Chef position, what most line cooks aim to be, and quite frankly it's not what I want for myself. I see how hard all of my chefs work, and how hard they've worked to get to where they are now, and I honestly don't think I have the willpower to work 16-hour days six or seven days a week, being pulled in a thousand different directions while being responsible for every plate that goes out. I love food, I love cooking, and I'm not afraid of hard work, but I don't have the drive to be that kind of boss.

So what now? This is by no means the end of cooking for me; I'm simply stepping away from this kind of cooking before I become the angry lifer that I've seen often enough to know better for myself. I'll be completely honest; there have been times in the recent past when I've been so frustrated I've thought about quitting kitchen work altogether. I've considered going the nine-to-five route, becoming one of the cubicle-sitters, collecting benefits and a retirement fund and the whole nine yards. But talk about soul-crushing; I've brought myself to tears just thinking about it.

I know I'm a cook, I know I can cook, and pulling off a seven-course wine dinner for total strangers (with the awesome exception of Brian Wilke, the Exec Chef of OCI, and his wife) while having a fucking blast last week only cemented the fact that I feel far more comfortable on the kitchen side of the pass than as a diner. But I'm ready for a change of pace. I'm ready to not push out hundreds of plates a night. I'm ready to take care in every single goddamned dish that reaches a diner without the crushing pressure of "just get it out, we've got a six-ticket pick coming up next!" To have work that fully interests me and engages me in every way.

I've been so lucky to work for some amazing chefs, and my current chef has been so awesomely understanding about my decision. When I told him what I've been thinking, he said it best: "I've always told my cooks, 'If you don't love it anymore, it's time to move on.'" I lost my love for cooking, and I'm ready to get it back full time. I'll be at my current workplace until August, but after that I'm taking a break to go back to North Carolina for a few weeks. There's a cross-country trip with my mom in the works, and some time to spend with precious family members.

I have some ideas marinating for my future with food, but just reaching this point of clarity is beyond satisfying. And I'm totally okay resting here for a minute.

To You, Restaurant Worker

It's well into 2011, and I can't help but notice that I let the yearly summary for 2010 fall by the wayside. It seems cheap to try now (o hai late March! Nice to see you!), so instead please let me take a minute here to give thanks.

This goes out to you, fellow line cooks, for keeping my spirits up day after day. We're in it together, and when one of us goes down, we all go down. We're a silly dysfunctional family, but we are family. So thanks for keeping your shit together, and helping me keep my shit together. Thanks for trying to make our workplace better every day. This is for all the times you finished my prep as I was deeply weeded in happy hour tickets. For the high fives and fist bumps as we trade jokes and talk shit. For the cooking protips you've given me, from faster grapefruit segmenting to better butter basting. For the music and books and great/bad movies you've brought into my life. For giving a shit, and for making this time matter. Thanks, line cooks, for having my fucking back.

This goes out to you, chefs past and present, for working harder than anyone else in the restaurant. For having the patience to answer my endless and sometimes dumb questions. For having my proteins properly butchered and portioned, and my sauces perfectly seasoned and ready to go. For guiding me through everything from vinaigrette prep to lamb butchery, slowly but surely, over and over. For walking me through that method again after I screwed it up while your precious food cost suffered. For not firing me every time I fucked something up, which was quite a lot. I swear I'm getting better. Chefs past and present, you've all made an impression on me, and I feel insanely fortunate to have worked under each and every one of you.

This goes out to you, restaurant owner, for having the best kind of energy a person could have. You walk in and energize the entire staff. How you manage to seem even more spritely as your empire continues to expand, I may never know, but you are an inspiration to every single one of your grateful-as-hell employees. I never feel like an underling with you; you manage to make me feel like an industry peer. That's badass.

This goes out to you, dishwashers, for keeping my shelf stacked with clean pans so I'm never wondering how I'll fire this next 12 plate pickup. For dealing with all the shit that gets put in your area. For letting all of us invade your space. For doing all the shit that no one else wants to do--scraping burners, mopping stairs, taking mats. For scrubbing out my burnt messes, for taking my dirty pans without asking, for keeping me stocked on ramekins and pint containers on the daily. For keeping an eye out for that one tall squeeze bottle or that particular whisk. For teaching me how to say "dance" in Spanish. The restaurant would not run without you, and don't think we don't know that.

This goes out to you, servers, for siphoning out most of the bullshit before it gets to the kitchen. Sometimes I'll find myself daydreaming about the money I made in my serving days, and sometimes I'll look at you across the pass and think of how good you have it while I'm drowning in pastas and fish and chicken. And then I remember the bullshit. The demands, the entitlement, the "allergies", the my-server-is-my-slave attitude. 95% of patrons are nice, but that 5% that isn't is the loudest, worst type of person you could ask to interact with, and you, server, do a commendable job of holding their hand and dealing with them without us ever having to be a part of it. Thanks for alleviating some of the already-high pressure for the kitchen.

This goes out to you, hosts, for pacing us out properly. For checking in on us frequently to see how we're doing, and to slow seating down if we're getting crushed. It's far easier said than done when you have hungry-slash-angry mobs at the door, demanding to be seated lest their blood sugar get any lower. They want this table, not that one. They don't want to sit at the bar but they don't want to wait. I've hosted in the past quite a bit, and it's a job that can make you hate people pretty quickly. The only job I ever walked out on without a proper resignation was as a host at a Beverly Hills wine bar and bistro. And boy did I walk out. At 7PM on an overbooked Saturday night. In hysterical tears. So, thanks, hosts, for being the most underrated employee on the floor.

This goes out to you, bartenders, for killing it night after night. You dance the dance just like we do, but you have the added weight of providing skilled service with a smile. You're the last one to leave the restaurant in the wee hours of the morning, and I know you know what it's like to pull long hours. Thanks for pouring me drinks after a crushing shift, and thanks for all the good talks and fanciful bar knowledge. I've learned more about cocktails and beverages in the past year than I have in all my years prior, and I have mostly you, bartenders, to thank.

And for everyone else that I've failed to call out specifically (and I know there are a lot of you), thank you thank you thank you. You know who you are.

Getting closer

The new dorade set: eggplant caponata and coriander tomato sauce. The fish in this photo was only the second one that I did with this set, which is why the saucing looks kinda wack. Still love this plate though.

One of the big goals I've had since I started at my current restaurant is to work all the line stations. When I was hired last summer, I started on pantry and soon after moved over to the grill, where I've been for almost a year. I have my good days and my bad days, but generally speaking I feel like I have a decent handle on grill station. I know my equipment, my technique is getting better and I fuck up my temps less frequently these days. I know the dimensions of my work space really well, and sweating over the carcinogenic fire monster from hell that is our grill every night has become normal. Which is, by the way, totally abnormal, but that's a whole other blog post.

At the end of the day, I love what I do, and I can't imagine myself thriving in another profession. But, like everything, it has its downsides. I'll be honest: I've felt "the grind" of line cooking recently, and though I am quite fortunate to be working at a restaurant with a seasonal menu that changes daily, being on the same station for almost a year had started to wear into my bones. A year is not a long time, really, just enough time to start to get good at a station. I didn't even realize I was coming up on a year until I thought about it yesterday--clearly, this year flew. Line cooking is all about repetition and practice, doing the same thing over and over until you're as close to perfect as you can be. And then you get a new set or a new pickup, and the learning starts over. I remind myself that line cooking is a step in the process to something greater, and that I'm building a solid foundation and skill set. And I'm learning every day. Still, doing 200+ covers with a three or four man line, working the same station night after night, and working an 6 to 8 hour service, not including prep time or cleanup... I'm only human, y'all.

I'm determined to work all the stations, however, and the one station I haven't worked yet is saute. Saute is a killer station at my work: it's fresh pasta and fish, as well as chicken and a few hot apps. You need to be able to throw down to work saute, and I've seen seasoned vets reach the edge of breaking point on that station. Some nights, everyone in the restaurant wants pasta and fish, and cooking the majority of the entrees for 200+ covers ain't easy. Needless to say I've been wary yet eager to try my hand at saute, and because of several factors it didn't look like I'd be able to make it to saute until after the holidays.

Due to some recent unexpected but welcome changes, however, I just learned that start training on saute next week. Next week! Just typing that makes my heart beat a little faster. I feel a renewed sense of pride in line cooking, and I'm that much closer to realizing a major goal. I'm feeling The Fear (you cooks know what I'm talking about), but somehow it feels... comforting. Like an old blanket. Welcome back, The Fear. Keep me on my toes, will ya?

My desire to keep up with this blog is still very pressing, yet these past six months have brought all sorts of upheaval into my life, mostly in good ways. I have some almost-finished blog drafts in the works though. In the near future, expect a couple of blog posts soon about the merits (or demerits?) of culinary school, and a little expounding on The Fear. Should be interesting.

The view from the kitchen

Summer in a hotel pan


Engraved Gray Kunz spoons and Togiharu slicer--gifts from my rad boyfriend for my recent 30th birthday


My mise en place


Herbs ready to go in the spring lamb set


Squid soaking


Baby octo stewing


That's a big-ass steak


My cross-hatch is pretty good these days


Kitchen short-hand labeling


The ubiquitous wedding gallette a la Jay-bar


Work snacks


More work snacks


Balls after 11


A busy Sunday night

Gastro-Recovery

One week later (and five pounds lighter), including three days of missed work, I can happily report that the gastroenteritis is almost entirely curbed. I'd say I'm at about 97% right now, the 3% being my body getting used to eating real meals again, and feeling a little tired still from rapid weight loss and lack of fuel. I inherited my mom's quick metabolism, and I didn't exactly have five pounds to lose before the illness, so I'm slowly working on getting back up to a normal weight.

My diet for most of the last week has consisted of mostly soup, applesauce, purposefully bland congee (rice porridge) and a few pieces of white bread. I know this sounds somewhat ludicrous and possibly pretentious, but it felt so, so wrong to not properly season my food when my cook's instinct is to make it right and balance it well. I forget that the primary function of eating is for energy, and I'm grateful that we've evolved from simply fueling ourselves into creative experimentation with flavor, texture and balance.

Another thought I'll take away from this whole bout with stomach flu is this: I'll never again take for granted the ability to eat, and the variety of foods available to me. Around day four, after my millionth or so bowl of soup, I started to dream in Technocolored gastro-porn: cheeseburgers, sashimi, mussels, mayonnaise, over easy eggs, carbonara, corndogs, lardo, burrata, French dips... everything that I physically could not stomach. It actually made me nauseous to think about food, but after a while I really couldn't help it. I am so, so spoiled by the riches around me and I'll never complain about having to taste my sets before I send them out.

I finally felt good enough on day five to attempt eating a real meal. Following a restorative afternoon relaxing in the sun (a nice change from my bedroom), I settled around the dinner table with my boyfriend and his roommates who had made perfectly barbecued chicken, potato salad with Walla Walla sweet onions, fresh-shucked Oregon peas with yogurt and mint, and grilled summer squash. Not a bad welcome back to gastronomy. Adorably, my boyfriend only served me about a third of what I'd normally eat of each, but he was right in doing so as my stomach seems to have gotten tinier with lack of proper usage. Worry not, it'll be back to right in no time.

Gastroenteritis can suck it!

I woke up yesterday morning feeling more exhausted than normal and with a dull stomachache that I automatically attributed to the previous night of gluttony with friends (sweetbreads, veal pate, chicken liver mousse and endless desserts, i.e. probably about five sticks of butter in total, not to mention a couple of cocktails). I was surprised, as I certainly didn't have enough drinks to be hungover, but I brushed it off as early morning queasiness that would go away by the time I got to work at 8AM. Doing my best to wear an "I'm doing fine" face and ignore the insistent aches, I tried coffee, ginger ale, bitters and soda, crackers, and several trips to the bathroom before I finally admitted to myself and my coworkers that the stomachache, weakness and nausea were not going away. I felt guilty about barely doing anything at work and leaving before service started, but the idea of working a station even for a few hours made me feel more ill than I already was.

What ensued was the worst short bike ride home ever and a subsequent few hours of laying in bed sweating and half-sleeping with frequent interruptions to visit the bathroom before my boyfriend arrived to take care of me, flowers and several Gatorades and ginger ales in hand. The fitful, sweaty non-sleep and bathroom trips continued throughout the day, but having some company to rub my back and whine and moan to certainly made things a little better. My boyfriend spent an entire gorgeous and sunny Saturday laying around indoors with me, watching action movies on Netflix, making me tea and dutifully waiting out my miserable stomach flu. Good man, that one.

As of this morning it's quite persistently sticking around and I've called in to work sick again, despite my instinct not to. It's ironic that of all the industries I've ever worked in, food service is the one where I've consistently felt the guiltiest about calling in sick. The irony comes from the fact that food service the most likely work environment that you can pass on a contagious illness to a lot of people. The fact of the matter is in a lot of kitchens, there is no such thing as being sick. The common practice is unless you are quite literally dying, you show up to work and stick it out like a good boy. I've known cooks and chefs who've injured themselves quite severely on the job and refuse to leave to get the stitches they need. In my first month of working at my first restaurant, I stabbed myself in the hand with an oyster shucker during service and I just wrapped it up with a giant icepack and went back to work. I figured I still had one good hand!

But I've had some serious health scares in my past so I try to listen to my body when it says "PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME DO THIS." And still I end up feeling guilty.

I know I do it to myself mostly, make myself feel guilty that is. All of my bosses have been extremely cool and understanding about this, but in the back of my head I imagine them thinking that I'm weak and unreliable, even if this isn't the case. Or that they would never call in sick. I'm pretty sure that they know it'd be a bad scene for me to be working my station whilst running to the bathroom every 10 minutes, but it's that lingering machismo and "strong like bull" testosterone-y attitude that hovers over a lot of kitchen environments that's got me feeling hyper-aware of my "weakness".

I normally have the constitution of a linebacker when it comes to my ability to eat a lot and frequently without being bothered, but apparently gastroenteritis ain't picky. I seriously can't remember one time in the last 10 years that I've had something like this. One thing I've learned about the stomach flu: it's TOTALLY BORING. And there's nothing you can do but drink lots of fluids and wait it out. Total bullshit! Two of the most beautiful days of summer so far and I'm stuck in bed, waiting for my innards to quit misbehaving. And blogging about it, apparently.

In the meantime I'll be staving off the boredom by watching more Netflix and flipping through my newest Powell's purchase: The River Cottage Cookbook by the adorable Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Just look at that book cover! Piglets!

I'm still alive.

My hopes of blogging more frequently seem to not be coming through as much as I'd like. Suffice it to say that in addition to my jam-packed work week (two and a half jobs and the resulting exhaustion), there have been some pretty dramatic changes in my life as of late, all for the positive. I've been thinking a lot about the future, and these changes have really affected my outlook on a lot of things, my work being one of them. When I get my words together a little better I'd love to share what exactly I mean.

In the meantime I will leave you with the most ridiculous 25 seconds of your life. Leave it to a cat lady to post something so ludicrous on a food blog:



(Thanks to my dear friend Tonya for sharing this one with me!)

Now if only this rainy, cold weather would give up... c'mon Oregon, it's June, dammit!

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Why do we, as culinary professionals, as line cooks especially, do this to ourselves?

I think about this a lot, especially on those days when I'm nursing my shift drink at 1:30AM, sticky with dried sweat, grill smoke and fryer grease and thinking about how hard we got rocked, how much my back hurts, and how poorly I'm gonna sleep before I have to peel myself out of bed and do it all over again. How big my prep list is for tomorrow, how perpetually dirty my cuticles are from scrubbing the grill grates, how much it sucks that even though I'm dog-tired at the end of the night I won't be able to fall asleep for another two hours at least. How I wished I hadn't missed a certain concert or birthday party, how badly I need to do laundry and clean my house, how I haven't been on a date in months, how my last relationship deteriorated in no small part due to my work schedule. Try explaining to someone who gets home from work at 6 or 7PM that waking up at the ass-crack of dawn to an alarm clock that snoozes for over an hour is neither normal nor acceptable to someone who gets home from work at 12:30AM at the earliest.

Then I have days that are nice reminders of the work we do, the world we live in, the people we can proudly call our colleagues. I do this because I love my crew, I mean I love them, really. I can be myself wholly and completely, in all my nerdy, foul-mouthed ridiculousness and they'll just shake their heads and say, "Yep."

I do this because as much as I hate to admit it, I'm an adrenaline junkie. I get a crazy high from pushing out ticket after ticket on a busy night, the one where I can feel my jugular pulsing in my neck when I'm on top of my game. I'm juggling 10 things on the grill, pirouetting to the sound of expo calls, talking with saute with just a nod or an eyebrow tweak, and, despite myself, letting out a "yessssssss!" when I slice a steak and hit the temp dead-on. I've stopped looking at the clock for how many more hours of service we have left and instead I'm keeping an eye on the minute hand to pace my fire times.

I do this because I'm tickled by the customer who interrupts me during a three-ticket fire to tell me that the steak I cooked him was incredible, one of the best he's ever had, and made his trip to Portland worth it.

Because I'm stunned by the amount of work that made that steak possible: The cow farmers, the butchers, the purveyors. The farmer who grew the lettuce and raised the hens that laid the eggs, the time it took for the artisans who made the balsamic vinegar and cheese, and my chef who portioned the meat and made the marinade. It's easy to get complacent in the everyday life of a line cook, and I find it helps to put things into perspective.

Because I get to help do this every week:


Whole lamb being broken down for brochettes of loin, braise, lamb belly for breading/frying, and stock

And be proud of the little things:


Soft-boiled, 5 minute and 15 second eggs. I usually break a couple per batch, but this was the perfect batch--no breakage, perfect consistency

And admire gorgeous handiwork close-up, seeing the man behind the curtain:


Javier, our pasta man, working his magic on our buckwheat cavatelli

Because I have moments every now and then where I think I might actually know a little something about something. And then I'm completely bowled over by how much more someone else knows about that something. It's humbling and inspiring all at once.

Because I love the look on some people's faces, men especially, when I tell them I'm a line cook. And because I can't help but be proud of the places I work, and the places I've worked before.

Because the people we meet, the people we feed, they had a memorable experience and we were part of that. Every day, I am a part of someone else's experience. I make things with my own two hands that people eat and (if we did our job right) enjoy fully, tell their friends about and come back for more.

Because I can go to an event with my restaurant where there are nine other awesome restaurants representing, and you can feel the love and respect. I've met so many great cooks and chefs in Portland, and worked with a lot too, and it still stuns me that I can even consider myself in any way remotely associated with that talent.

The IACP annual conference kicked off today in Portland, and as frightened as I am of mouth-breathing chef groupies, the roster is legit (Ruth Reichl, Kim Severson, Michael Ruhlman, Madhur Jaffrey, Dornenburg/Page, et al). While I couldn't (and probably wouldn't) pay what they're charging for tickets to the event, I was fortunate enough to tag along to help set up, serve and break down our station at the opening reception for the conference. A giant ballroom was packed to the gills with hundreds of eager guests, all of them friendly and mostly knowledgeable about food. We scared off a couple of folks with the mention of the words "pig foot" (and I judged them for it, I admit), but by and large we were a hit. The feedback was awesome and I always have a lot of fun interacting with people through tasty morsels.

I've always craved connecting with people, which is what made me gravitate naturally toward hosting and waiting tables. I was never truly fulfilled by front-of-house work, however, and it was my thirst for being in the trenches, cultivating skills and knowledge that seemed to belong to an elite few, that eventually won out. Turns out that through line cooking, a job that people have historically turned to specifically because they don't care to interact with other people, and a trade that has a reputation for harboring some of the surliest and least personable workers around, I've connected with more people on a more meaningful level than any other work I've ever done.

Since I started cooking for a living, I've worked the hardest I've ever worked in my life, and with all the triumphs have come major downfalls too. But I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. I won't be a line cook forever, and frankly I don't know where this will take me, but for now, right now at this very moment, despite all of its downsides and the ridiculous life that comes along with it, I'm pleased as punch.

Finding balance

Today I feel grateful for the balance in the universe. Lest you think I'm going down a Burning Man path, allow me to explain.

Tuesday night was one of those nights where I looked at the clock at about 5:30, right before the happy hour burger pile-up began, and before I knew it my rail was full. Suddenly the place is packed, there's a giant pool of people at the door waiting for dinner tables, the a la carte table of 15 right in front of the line is drunk as hell and singing "happy birthday" repeatedly and clapping in unison and I'm literally yelling to be heard, having to ask two or three times for ticket calls because I can't hear my chef on expo. I came into work with a sore throat, and now I've nearly lost my voice. I'm hanging on by a thread, struggling to keep up a good pace, checking and re-checking my tickets, and at one point I remember squeaking a pleading "no" when chef squeezed a new ticket into my already-full rail. I'm literally grunting out loud, and every move I make feels like a wasted motion. Why does that shelf have to be so high? Why the fuck is the grill so fucking hot? Who in their right mind orders well-done anything? Every request is suddenly a personal attack and I'd simply lost control.

I finally clear my rail, and I look at the clock again. Suddenly it's 10:20 and my eyes are blurry and I barely have the energy to stand up straight. Were people coming out of Easter hibernation? Did Tuesday become a new holiday? I'm looking for excuses as to why I felt so bad during service, and simultaneously feeling like shit for letting myself and my chef down. He gives me a pep talk, tells me it wasn't that crazy of a night, and that loud party was the biggest problem, but it only makes me feel worse that I couldn't handle my shit.

I put out generally timely plates, my temps were good and the food looked nice, but it was like pushing a boulder up a mountain getting there. So much of the job of cooking is the means to the end, and (at least to me) if the means isn't good then it doesn't really matter what the end product is. I worked with a cook once who could put up good-looking plates in a reasonable period of time, but it couldn't make up for the fact that that cook was messy, lazy, non-communicative and unwilling to work alongside the rest of the crew without telling everyone else how to run their stations. I don't want to be that cook, ya know?

We managed to break down dinner, cook happy hour, and do our big Tuesday cleaning project (break down the front and back ranges, change out the drip pans and scrub the burners with highly caustic grill cleaner) and still get done before 1AM. I indulged in a whiskey with a Pilsner back, ran for the bus, and found myself falling asleep to Gillian Welch's gorgeously depressing album Time (The Revelator) through my good headphones.

Wednesday morning I woke up, every muscle in my body aching, feeling dehydrated and nursing a wicked pain in my neck, jaw and temple thanks to my TMJ acting up overnight. Wednesdays are the days I go into work and trail the AM kitchen manager on my own time, and for a moment on Tuesday night I thought about calling off for Wednesday. But I felt I'd just be further letting myself and everyone else down, so I dragged myself out of the house and found myself back at work.

My first task upon arrival was to clean and dice two large Lexans of rhubarb for jam, and it turns out there's really nothing better to soothe a frail and scrambled soul than cutting something easy and gorgeous over and over again, watching the dice pile get bigger and bigger.


hearty stalks


pretty pile

I also tasted raw rhubarb for the first time and it's as if a light bulb "dinged": I suddenly got why people were so into rhubarb. I stood in the prep kitchen, cleaning and cutting and dicing, imagining where these hearty stalks grew, running my hands through my pile of clean cuts. I felt like a kid in a playground, discovering worms in the dirt and finding shiny rocks.

We did the math on the rhubarb-orange jam recipe, and since I know you were wondering what 39 cups of sugar looks like:



I have this overwhelming desire to sit in that bowl, preferably down a snowy hill.


Macerated rhubarb is the jam, y'all!

Once the rhubarb was put away, we pulled out the whole lamb we get in every Wednesday and chef broke it down into primals in a speedy fashion, as always. I'm just now getting to the point where I'm breaking down the legs without having to ask where to start or what to do every time. I'm slow at it, but it's starting to feel more natural. Butchery is so visceral and physical, and I love it for that.

I left work yesterday afternoon feeling uplifted, something I had almost forgotten cooking could do for me. It's positively lovely to have that balance.

Pushing through, with apologies in advance for rambling

Has it really been a month and a half since I last wrote? I feel pretty sad about that. Dear neglected blog and whoever is out there reading this, you deserve better.

I notice that besides the times I feel inspired to write positively, I always turn to writing in times of frustration or unhappiness. So it's no coincidence I'm here since today could qualify as the worst day I've had in a long time. Service itself was totally fine and I honestly felt good about the food I put out, but sometimes all the other elements of the day just pile up and pile up until you've just about had it. I'll spare you the minutiae of this really lame day, but you could say I'm learning to push through the shit, function properly for service, and not take whatever bullshit I'm feeling out on my coworkers. At least I'm hoping that's the case. If we continue to stay as busy as we have been, I definitely need to hone the marathon-readiness.

And can I just say I feel really fortunate to be working at a place that's staying so busy? It's always a good thing to be busy, and I love a fast service, but when you're selling double the amount of every dish off your station of what you usually do, there's a lot of hustling involved to make sure you're not cutting corners or shorting people on a good dining experience. Add to that a lot of really dumb shit and I come home feeling like I want to sit in a hot bath for a week. Or cry. Or both.

It's been a pretty unusual month for me, actually. My sister just moved to Brooklyn a few weeks ago, and in the weeks prior to her move I took my weekends to visit her in Seattle and help her pack. I also worked a couple of days at my old restaurant since they were a little short-staffed, and I have to say it was really fun to be back in the old joint. The front of house staff is virtually the same, and there were plenty of people in the kitchen with whom I was already familiar. It was great to be around all those familiar faces, and I loved seeing what the new executive chef is up to, and the differences in the way the kitchen is run now. They're doing a pretty killer job.

Speaking of killer jobs, I recently added a once-weekly shift at another great restaurant in town on top of my current job. It's a totally different kitchen, and I'm working a day shift that starts at 8AM (gasp! I know!). Though I've only been there a few days, I'm really happy with the change in pace and the fact that I'm learning new stuff on top of the stuff I'm already learning at my current place. Can I say "stuff" again? What is "stuff" anyway?

Okay. This incoherent rambling probably means my ass is ready for bed. I promise I'll make more sense next time.

Burger Redemption

My relationship with burger cookery got off to a rocky start.

One day last spring at my old job, right before happy hour started, my sous chef decided on a whim to move the very popular burger pickup to my station. Though I was cooking steak, lamb, pork and poultry at that point, I'd never temped a burger in my life and, frankly, I had no desire to. Burgers were cooked to order in saute pans, so the far more skilled saute cook had been picking them up for the more than six months that I'd worked there. I'd watch him fire several 10 burger pickups in a row at peak happy hour rush, holding it together but starting to break a sweat, and I'd be so, so happy it wasn't me.

...Until suddenly it was me. After a minute or so of angry silence and stunned shock on my part, I had about 10 minutes to rearrange all my mise and try to figure out what the hell I was doing. I was so livid about this last-minute change, I was on the verge of tears. It made me even angrier that the other cooks took to taunting me about it, and when they realized through my silence that I was genuinely upset, the sous helped me take my station apart and put it back together, somehow cramming six new 9th pans, a 6th pan and two 3rd pans into my already-crowded station.

Like anything in the kitchen, I just got to it. Fake it 'til ya make it, as they say. I started to get a feel for temping burgers, and fortunately my first day as burger lady wasn't insanely busy so I didn't go down in flames.

(I did, however, go home that night and cry myself to sleep. Don't tell anyone, okay?)

Even though I'm still convinced it was really shitty to give me the burger pickup with no warning, it was probably one of the best things that's happened to me so far as a cook. My sous chef was no dummy. I got better at multi-tasking real fast out of sheer necessity, and I was working harder than I ever had. The days when I cooked dozens of happy hour and bar burgers while firing dinner tickets at the same time and managed to do a decent job, I went home feeling pretty good about myself.

But I also had a fair amount of resentment toward the burger pickup. Maybe it was because it felt like an interference when I was already temping five proteins and picking up several other dishes. Maybe it was the fact that burgers were commonly fired at the end of the night. The countless number of times that we were on the verge of closing and a burger ticket came in, oftentimes after our official closing time... I let the resentment build up.

I had a lot of burger anger.

I bitched at bartenders who fired late burgers, as if they had gone out of their way to inconvenience me, which, of course, they hadn't. It's a fact of life as a cook--you'll get tickets at the end of the night, sometimes after closing time, and even though you're all wrapped up and ready to bounce, you have to stay and finish your job. I didn't see it that way for a long time, until well after I left that kitchen. Late tickets are never fun, but getting mad about it doesn't exactly help.

About a month ago, I moved over to the grill station at my current restaurant. We have an extremely popular burger that we grind in-house, and I used to come in all the time before I ever worked there to get a burger after work. It comes off the grill, so I've been working some burger action as of late. I was worried that I'd be out of shape for meat station, and I am a little, but I found that it's like riding a bicycle. Getting back to it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be.

I told myself one thing before I started on grill station, however: I would not let myself have burger anger. I volunteered for the job, I wanted grill station, and there's nothing worse than a cook who works from a place of anger. Seriously.

There's a reason that grill cooks tend to be the surliest of the bunch: They're standing in the hottest part of the restaurant for hours at a time, smoke wafting in their faces, maneuvering multiple proteins between the hot and cool spots on the oft-temperamental grill, and likely slangin' some major burgers. By the end of the night your skin has a fine coat of smoke and grease and sweat. It ain't glamorous, that's for sure.

But telling myself that one thing, no burger anger, has made the busy happy hours go pretty smoothly so far. Cooking without anger is something I never thought I'd have to make a conscious effort to do, as I'm not exactly an angry person, but when you're doing the same thing dozens of times a day, day in and day out, it's easy to see how the tedium and the constant buzz of the ticket printer can wear at you. I haven't been on grill that long yet, but I'm doing my best to watch my temperament this time around.

I don't want to cook out of anger. This job is too good to waste on that.

Finely Aged

I got a call from my mom this morning voicing some concern over my mention of her 60th birthday in my previous post. She was worried I was stating it in more of a "Wow, my mom is old!" manner than what I really meant: I think it's simply amazing and awesome that she's lived 60 years of life and she's still so young at heart. My mom is one of the wisest, strongest and most humble people I know, and I'm fortunate that I have a concrete role model to show me what it means to struggle through seriously unforeseen hell and come out on the other side more alive and vibrant than you were before. I doubt anyone would guess she was 60 upon meeting her.


Christine in the Blue Ridge Mountains in fall

I guess commenting on her age came so easily to me because I think about my own age quite a bit in context to my work. Last year I turned 29, and every day I'm surrounded by people who are many years younger than me, yet have been in the industry for many more years than I have. I've gotten used to most of my bosses being younger than I am, but it doesn't bother me because what matters in the end is experience. We joke about my age sometimes, and I'm amused to find myself explaining to my coworkers in their early 20's what Thundercats and the Care Bear Stare meant to me. It's quite a thing in our industry that some of the best chefs out there are 25-year-olds who have been cooking for 8 or 10 years.

Not that I was always comfortable with my age. When I first considered cooking professionally I was highly conscious about the fact that I was getting a late start. I looked around at the fresh-faced, straight-out-of-high-school kids in my culinary school class and I won't deny I felt a tinge of the weight of age. The thought crossed my mind, 'How am I going to keep up?' The harder I worked, however, and the deeper I got into the industry, the more I realized a couple of things: First, how glad I was to have had some years of living before I made a career choice. I've mentioned this before, but I'm certain I wouldn't be as put-together about my work life if I had started this insane job 10 years ago. And secondly: I feel young. I think this has something to do with the fact that my surgery was a rebirth for me. It was like I was given a chance to hit the "Restart" button.

I credit my mom with giving me context. Seven years ago my dad died in an accident and left my mom with a small business on the brink of bankruptcy thanks to an industrial depression. She literally became president overnight. She was thrust into the limelight and suddenly had the weight of an entire company and 20 years worth of my dad's work experience dropped on her shoulders. It was a ludicrously tough hill to climb that I will never fully comprehend, and to be honest there's a part of me that doesn't want to know. In seven years my mom completely turned the company around and then some; last year she was on the cover of a widely-circulated business journal as a success story in her industry, and was listed in the top 50 fastest growing women-led companies in North America. She looks younger and more vibrant now that she did 10 years ago.

The most stunning and possibly unusual part of it all is I've never once heard my mom complain. Not once. She's never been a complainer by nature, but if there were any excuse to complain, I think this would be a pretty good one. Not only that; she thinks it's weird that there's so much fuss over her success. Before my dad died she rarely met clients, never went on business trips, and took care of accounting and the behind-the-scenes paperwork. Three days ago she left the house at 5:30AM to drive four hours to a business meeting that ended at 2PM, after which she drove another two hours to the Charlotte airport to take a 6PM flight with a layover to New Orleans for an industry conference, flying back to Charlotte 36 hours later and driving another two hours home. This kind of travel is not out of the ordinary for her. When I talked to her this morning she was chipper as usual and praised the meetings and flights and drives for being smooth and on time.

Context, y'all. Context. If I have even half the strength that she does, I'm certain I can accomplish what I want to in my career and in my life.

She'll probably call me again after she reads this to tell me that she doesn't see what the big deal is. My mom is the youngest 60-year-old I know, and I wouldn't be where I am without her.

A New Year

Oh, my poor neglected blog. Thanks to a nudge from my coworkers, here I am at last. For whatever reason in the last few months I've suffered from a self-imposed, increased pressure to write quality material that people can relate to. Mix that with general blog laziness, being sick four times in five weeks, and a lovely Christmas trip to North Carolina where I did nothing but watch movies and eat pound cake and Chick Fil A, and ye here blog goes without company for too long.

Unfortunately, I really miss writing, so let that be my first resolution of 2010: Think less, write more.

So what have I learned in this past year? I'm well into my second year of cooking professionally, and things are only looking up. I've been going into work on my own time on one of my days off to trail the day kitchen manager, and it's been so eye-opening to see things from beginning to end. PM cooks are pretty spoiled at my restaurant, as a majority of the big prep gets taken care of for us during the day--butchering, portioning, braises, cures, terrines, sausages and other charcuterie, burger prep, breads, pastas, some sauces... nearly all of it is done in-house, and most of it is taken care of by the swift hands of the day crew, sous chefs and exec chef. There's definitely a good amount of prep for the evening cooks to take care of, but I think most of us would agree that we have it pretty cush.

It makes for a smooth system, but how do you learn and grow in this environment? One of the biggest lessons I learned the hard way this year was to never get comfortable. Comfortable leads to plateauing, which leads to complacency and oftentimes a shitty attitude. And, trust me, NO ONE wants to work with a cook with a shitty attitude. My point is, I'm learning to make a conscious effort to stretch my limits and my comfort zone.

Confession: Charcuterie intimidates the shit out of me. I don't even know why. Maybe it's the history of it, or how finicky it seems, or the fact that I've just been spoiled by working at two places that did almost all of their sausages, cures and terrines in house, and the people doing the charcuterie were crazy good. But I only see one solution: Learn to make it. Conquer the fear. Push my limits, scare myself a little, make some mistakes and move on. That's the only way we can get better, right?

Things aren't always what we hope for, but instead of complaining and doing nothing, I'm learning to make the best of it. I remember one of my classmates in culinary school who had this extraordinary ability to complain about everything. The kid clearly had raw talent, but he took complaining to some next level shit. Everything was always too much or not enough. Too easy, too hard, too much work, not enough to do; no matter what the situation, this guy managed to see the negative in everything. Worst of all, it was permeating--the attitude just ate at your nerves until you could cut the tension with a knife. This leads me to possibly the biggest lesson I learned this year: We can complain all we want to, but in the end we're responsible for ourselves. Getting bored on my station? Try different tasks, ask for more, trail another station. Giant prep list? Work faster and request help. Does shit suck? Then change it. It seems so unfairly simple to say, but there it is.

I'm no saint. I don't claim to be perfect, by any means, and I have my bad days. I've definitely fit the complainer description well in the past. But I'm mostly in what I'd call a happy place right now. Things are fluid and fun, my coworkers are pretty awesome, and though I get stuck in station tunnel-vision from time to time, the extra days and new projects help keep me flexible and challenged.

Other cool things that happened in 2009:
- My mom turned 60 (happy birthday Mom!)
- The third anniversary of my surgery, and I'm fit as a fiddle (despite the winter colds!)
- Bought a condo!
- Went to San Francisco and LA by myself, had an amazing time and ate some of the best food of my life
- Made some of the best food I've done yet
- Met some amazing cooking (and non-cooking) related people in Portland and elsewhere
- Obtained a 17-year-old cat named Whimpy, who was a friend's childhood house cat. Spry old guy, and a biggun too, but what a ridiculously sweet thing. I was already basically a cat lady before I got the cat, and now it's official.

This year, I'm hoping to narrow my career focus a bit. I'll let you know how that goes. I'm also hoping to travel: San Francisco is calling my name again, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Taiwan and/or Europe. And I'll write more, yes!

Things are good, friends, things are good.

Know Thyself

I had a thought the other day while getting ready for work, ruminating about the stage who trailed my station the night before and the new back-line guy who didn't know what mise en place was and who I've kind of taken under my wing:

I think I might have gotten to the point where I might actually know something about being a cook.

Which is also to say I don't know that much at all.

Lemme explain.

At some point in the past few months, maybe especially since my trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and definitely since the start of my current job, I started thinking a lot, A LOT, about who I am as a cook.

When I first started on the pantry station at my first kitchen, I was completely fascinated, if not overwhelmed, by the wealth of knowledge that my bosses and coworkers possessed, the experiences they had, and the energy they had to carry out the hours they were doing every day. It got to the point where the insecure control freak part of my personality would worry that I wasn't good enough to be in this industry because I wasn't _____ [reading enough cookbooks/ eating out enough/ working enough hours off the clock/ staying late enough/ reading this one blog and that site and the other thing/ sharpening my own knives/ talking enough about food/ thinking enough about food/ obsessing over food/ forsaking the other things in my life for this career path... ad nauseum]. You get the picture. I had nights where I went home and cried because I know I didn't give it my all, or I couldn't stop thinking about how I messed up a ticket and let it haunt me for the remainder of service.

Slowly, slowwwwwly, I started to ease up a little. I took work home a little less. I forgave myself a little more. I realized that the nature of our workplace is inherently forgiving in a way: You fucked up yesterday, but look! Here's a whole new batch of people and a whole new service where you can atone for your sins and show them what you're really made of!

And then I met and befriended more cooks and chefs and saw the range of personalities that float in and out of kitchens every day. Some I could relate to more than others, and some were just completely unrelatable. I've had (and keep having) great conversations with cooks about food and work, but found that there were cooks (and even foodies) who couldn't shut the fuck up about food and what chefs they admired and what they wanted and how badass of a line cook they were and how they deserved better and how they were mistreated or taken advantage of or this that and the other thing. They're unable to step outside of themselves or the industry for just a second and see this whole big world that's going on around them, with or without their stellar butchery skills. I came to realize that I didn't exactly fit in with this tunnel-vision, food-is-God worldview, but I got the feeling I wasn't a bad cook for it.

I also found my own level of comfort with the accoutrements of our industry. I got to know the cookbook section of Powell's a little more. On the advice of my first chef I bought The French Laundry Cookbook, and then I found The Devil in the Kitchen, and enjoyed my way through The Man Who Ate Everything and even re-read Kitchen Confidential (less scary and more silly this time around, FYI). My bookshelf found more company more regularly. I found cooking blogs I loved, and instead of being so jealous of food writers who were far more talented than I, I embraced them for their literary skills and their ability to capture what I could hardly comprehend.

I overcame the fear of sharpening my own knives on a stone, and though I still pretty much suck at it, I do a serviceable enough job and am slowly getting better. I made it a habit of eating out at restaurants on my days off, partially as a way of catching up with friends I missed with my insane schedule, but mostly to get a little inspiration and to see what chefs were coming up with in Portland. I came in to work a little earlier, worked a little later, tried (and am still trying) to complain a little less and keep my mouth shut a little more.

And then, somewhere in there, I started to see the everyday a little differently. The minutiae of the grind became something to love. The perfect sear on a steak, hitting the medium-rare beautifully, finding the perfect spoon with which to butter-baste, working faster, cleaner, more precisely yet more efficiently. Picking herbs a little faster than the day before, making the Bearnaise better than yesterday's, being one hundred and ten percent ready for service when the time came.

This is not to say I'm any less hard on myself; in fact I'm probably more so now than when I first started. I still don't consider myself a great cook, and I'm really young in this industry. I'm too slow still, I can work much cleaner, the color on my sear could be more consistent, I need to be better about remembering the six hotel pans I have going in the convex while portioning my pork belly and emulsifying my sauces. I get pissed at myself when I don't do something right. I get impatient, I get short with people, I talk too much, I don't focus enough. I've fucked up enough temps to know I'm not the queen of meat... yet.

But rather than harping on exactly how much I suck, I'm more willing to let a mistake go knowing that I'm making it a goddamned mission to not make that same mistake again. That, I think, is called learning.

This is ultimately about the fact that I'm reconciling with myself who I am as a cook and what my capacity is for the idiosyncrasies that come along with being a cook. In a way I'm glad I came into cooking at the age I'm at now, because I'm surer of myself and what I want than who I was 10 years ago. I've heard chefs and cooks say "Cooking comes first; everything else is secondary," and I simply don't subscribe to that philosophy. I'm not willing to forsake my relationships with friends and family to have a successful career, especially considering what my family and friends have done to help me get to where I am now.

I've heard cooks say "You're not a real cook if you can't hold your liquor." I'm not a party girl and I rarely drink to excess, as I need to take care of my body and I have a very low tolerance for alcohol (what can I say, I'm a cheap date!). I'm very, VERY lucky to be able to even work in a kitchen in the first place and I don't take that for granted. I don't make it a habit to pick up every new hot cookbook, but that doesn't mean I don't have a few in mind or that I'm not paying attention. I'm not sure how many more years of line cooking I have in me, but I'm pretty certain it's not enough to want to make it all the way to the top of this particular chain. I know how much time and energy it takes, and while I want to give it all I got, I don't got enough to be an executive chef of a four-star restaurant.

What I do know is I want to keep cooking for people. I want to keep line cooking, at least for a while, get techniques and moves under my belt, and LEARN. I want to continue to be surrounded by cooks who are better than I am, who know more than I do, knowing that simply watching them and working side-by-side with them every day is making me a better cook. I'm figuring out my own pace, my own style, my own preferences. I'm working with what I have, yet I'm pushing myself to be better, faster, more efficient. I'm not mouth-breathingly obsessed with this career and this lifestyle, but I love it and I love that I get to live it every day. I want to be really fucking good at what I do. I have ideas in the works, and I don't need to be the kind of cook that a lot of cooks aspire to be.

And I'm really okay with that.

Resurrecting Five Things

I'm about two months into my new job and things are really good. I've even trained someone else on the station already, as my previous station partner moved onward and upward. I've been having a bit of difficulty shaping my work experience of late into words, so instead I thought I'd resurrect the Five Things I Learned This Week theme. To be fair, some of these have been culled from longer than a week ago, but let's just play pretend, okay?

1. Having a Forschner as a line knife is the way to go. I really don't know why it took me so long to catch onto this idea; you think having my Shun Elite 8-inch chef's knife dropped and tipped TWICE (both times not by me) would be enough to make me run to the store for a cheap-o line knife. Then about three months ago my friend Morgan and I won first place in a grill competition at a zinfandel event, and one of the prizes in our gift basket was a sizable gift certificate to Sur La Table. We finally got around to shopping at SLT last week, and while I don't exactly enjoy browsing the endless amounts of useless products or small-talking with the wide-eyed Food Network-philes cluttering the aisles, we had free money to blow. So along with some other goodies I picked up this handy little Santoku to keep on the line. Forschner makes a good quality product for a great price, and it's been an insanely wonderful difference--not having to babysit my knife, especially since my station is in a high-traffic area.

2. A helpful way to roast squash: Adding white wine and water to barely cover the bottom of your hotel pan before it goes in the oven keeps the squash skins from sticking and burning. Plus the white wine adds a nice aroma.

3. A mis-cooked terrine can go a very long way in family meal. A little baked ziti in earthenware dishes (consuelos?) never hurt anyone.



I threw these together on a slow night one evening, and they did not suck. We snacked on the leftovers for a few days afterwards, and I made my way through a quart of it in my fridge at home. Also: Why use breadcrumbs when you can have buttery baguette croutons? I'm just sayin'.

4. Family meal can make or break a night. A good family meal goes beyond simply feeding everyone; it can bring home an awesome night, and bond the crew together in quiet revelry as we sit on the stairs and regain our energy. Alternately, a bad family meal can be downright disheartening, even demoralizing. It's hard to tuck into a half-thought-out pile of something-or-other and feel like you're ready and charged up to get back to the grind. I don't take the fact that we have family meal every single night for granted, and bad family meals have been very few and far between and usually occur under already-strained circumstances (insanely busy nights where everyone is buried); it's just that a little care and attention go a long way.

5. Wearing a button-up shirt and tie on the line is totally awesome. My current kitchen, like my previous one, is an open kitchen, and we've resurrected Tie-Day Fridays--basically the opposite of Casual Fridays. Seeing our entire line in button-up shirts and ties is both hilarious and swagger-affecting. You really move differently when wearing a sharp get-up, and it always puts a smile on my face.

Starting fresh

My current workplace was amazing enough to give me time off right after I started working there to sit my ass on a beach in North Carolina for a week with my lovely family. Besides doing a lot of lounging, napping and catching up, we cooked every meal and ate and drank like spoiled kings thanks in part to the fact that my aunt owns two restaurants and my cousins are the front of house managers and wine buyers for one of them. I've surpassed my filet mignon quota for the year.

Also on hand, thanks to the great fishermen of the East Coast and the most amazing shanty of a fish market on a dock in Topsail Island: blue crabs. Lots of them. Cooked in beer and Old Bay. Maryland would be proud.



The only dreaded part of the trip was the actual traveling; 8 hours on planes and in airports is totally not awesome. I touched down at PDX at 11:30PM on Tuesday and got right back to work Wednesday. In a way it's been great to jump right back into it, but I'm just now kicking the last of the jet lag. Hitting a wall at 9PM during dinner service is far from ideal.

What has been great is knowing I'm finally on a solid schedule. While I was extremely fortunate and happy to take this time off, I like having set hours and days that I can rely on. Is it part of getting older, craving some stability? While the job itself is refreshingly unpredictable in many ways, knowing where you're going to be and when you're going to be there is a small comfort.

Not to say it isn't a little rocky at first; I remember when I first started working at my previous restaurant, the most frustrating thing about the first few weeks was figuring out where everything was located, and my new restaurant is no different. The hotel pans, the China caps, the pint containers, all your various and sundry utensils and every individual ingredient you needed for your station--like an old cat lady who keeps her hair pins in tidy rows on the bathroom counter, every kitchen has its small idiosyncrasies into which you eventually step in line. Most of all, I hate pestering people to ask where things are, but as they say, it comes with the territory.

I can report that even though I'm still very fresh meat, my new job so far has been refreshing and fulfilling and slightly terrifying; in short, all the things I was hoping it would be. I miss my old coworkers a lot, but in my humble opinion, opening the doors to new opportunities and experiences is one of the best parts of cooking.

I'm on vacation, dammit!

I know I've been awfully slow about writing up the rest of my SF trip, but I have some things for a new blog post in the works that hopefully will come to fruition in the next few days. In the meantime, I've been relaxing with wonderful friends in LA and eating just as much as (if not more than) I was in SF. Can I just say it's a funny feeling to be sitting down for rounded meals on a daily basis? 'Cause it totally is.

I'm working on getting my photos and notes all put together so I can share the rest of my trip with ya'll, including a visit to Osteria Mozza from which we just got home. Holy effing raviolo. Stunning, really.

Los Angeles has been a mix of nostalgia and newness, along with realizing how far I've come since I last lived here, three years ago. The inception of this blog was during that time in LA, and it was a formative time for me. I've loved being here during this visit, and seeing some of my best friends in the world has been amazing, but I'm not gonna lie... I'm getting homesick for Portland.

I can't wait to officially get started at my new job, and in celebration of the new place, I bought this necklace that I found at Popkiller in Little Tokyo. I still can't believe I found it, it's so perfect, and it may give you a hint as to where I'm working...


meat cleaver as seen by Osteria candlelight

See ya soon, Portland. It's been too long.