#cheflife — Public Fediverse posts

I want to reminisce. I've been a cook now for a decade. Two continents but I started somewhere and I want to talk about my Sous Chef the Metatron.

My sous chef generally looked like he bathed in the remnants of our fryer and smelled like he'd drunk out half the bar and subsisted on Alcohol alone. If he even tried to chew food he would likely lose another tooth. We made cash dollar bets on if he had lost another tooth. He was greasy and missing teeth and he was referred to as liking women with equally bad dental hygeine as they "didn't have to even open their mouths. Just slid right in."

Great chef, despicable human being. The job was a beginning job. It largely rhymes with what German Ausbildung is. Shit pay. Horrible hours. Learning the ropes of culinary technique and terms. Tested under the extreme scrutiny of a disapproving Sous.

We were running a half exercise, half meeting. The goal of the meeting was menu ideas, pricing, plating and process the exercise was to learn the chain of command. So anytime we directed our conversation at the Head Chef the Sous would reply with something like "The Chef is to be seen and not heard" or "His voice is the purest of melodies. You are unworthy to hear the voice of chef." and this head chef would just cross his arms and nod like he was the most beautiful peacock in the yard.

10 years ago you would walk into the kitchen and it didn't matter what your religion was. You could be Muslim, Christian, Hindu or a staunch atheist, you walked through those kitchen doors and your god was chef and his voice was spoken through the voice of his chief angel and metatron the Sous Chef.

Was he actually an angel, likely not but if a man that's bathing habits seem like the contents of a fryer, had breath like nail polish remover, walked through the kitchen doors and said "Be ye not afraid. I come with the voice of Chef." I would likely piss my pants because I was about to receive a mission I would not enjoy and his angel was more terrifying than any burning bush I've ever encountered.

#cheflife #memories #growth

I want to reminisce. I've been a cook now for a decade. Two continents but I started somewhere and I want to talk about my Sous Chef the Metatron.

My sous chef generally looked like he bathed in the remnants of our fryer and smelled like he'd drunk out half the bar and subsisted on Alcohol alone. If he even tried to chew food he would likely lose another tooth. We made cash dollar bets on if he had lost another tooth. He was greasy and missing teeth and he was referred to as liking women with equally bad dental hygeine as they "didn't have to even open their mouths. Just slid right in."

Great chef, despicable human being. The job was a beginning job. It largely rhymes with what German Ausbildung is. Shit pay. Horrible hours. Learning the ropes of culinary technique and terms. Tested under the extreme scrutiny of a disapproving Sous.

We were running a half exercise, half meeting. The goal of the meeting was menu ideas, pricing, plating and process the exercise was to learn the chain of command. So anytime we directed our conversation at the Head Chef the Sous would reply with something like "The Chef is to be seen and not heard" or "His voice is the purest of melodies. You are unworthy to hear the voice of chef." and this head chef would just cross his arms and nod like he was the most beautiful peacock in the yard.

10 years ago you would walk into the kitchen and it didn't matter what your religion was. You could be Muslim, Christian, Hindu or a staunch atheist, you walked through those kitchen doors and your god was chef and his voice was spoken through the voice of his chief angel and metatron the Sous Chef.

Was he actually an angel, likely not but if a man that's bathing habits seem like the contents of a fryer, had breath like nail polish remover, walked through the kitchen doors and said "Be ye not afraid. I come with the voice of Chef." I would likely piss my pants because I was about to receive a mission I would not enjoy and his angel was more terrifying than any burning bush I've ever encountered.

#cheflife #memories #growth

Sometimes I just feel like my life is an unending litany of burn out, burn wounds and stress. Othertimes I remember why I love doing what I do.

Some pictures from this week. These are mostly all things I plated and made myself or just made and someone else plated.

#cheflife

Sometimes I just feel like my life is an unending litany of burn out, burn wounds and stress. Othertimes I remember why I love doing what I do.

Some pictures from this week. These are mostly all things I plated and made myself or just made and someone else plated.

#cheflife

I hear you all like filthy girls in uniform. Well I am a girl and this shirt was fresh from the wash today and now is filthy. Three Christmas parties this evening led to a little bit of filth. Now I smell like the swine I cooked XD

#cheflife

One of the first things you learn in Culinary School here in Germany, like first day, is that some outrageous number of cooks are going to develop an addiction. It's around 75%, I don't know the exact number. High stress, limited ( if existant ) breaks, ridiculous hours, work weeks illegal in most industries, inhospitable environments, low pay, burns, cuts, bruises and a lack of human decency and respect, leads to cooks seeking an out. I was an alcoholic in under two years and this is how it started.

It was 2017, I had been working at this job as a dishhand to make it through college, then my wife sued for divorce, so I needed something full time. I pushed with my chef and was promoted to a very low tier cook.

This was also the year that I came out, and the first year of Trump's first presidency. The discrimination was immediate and intense.

We had a vibrant diverse work team with a great boss. Then everything went to shit. At no real fault to the restaurant 5-7 cooks quit. That left me and my boss ( not head chef, general manager ) as the only people that could care for the kitchen. I was 1 year dish. 1 year a cook. Let's say this is not enough time to develop the skills to become head chef.

The work hours were insane. The obligations equally so. Even if I had the experience to be a head chef like I do now 9-10 years in, this would have been unmaneagable. I was drinking coffee mixed with protein powder as a meal as it was all I had time for. All with intense, increasing discrimination, and an ex devoted to ruining my life.

The stress was unavoidable. I could not run from the stress. I could not quit else be homeless. But the alcohol was free. Around the month of October 2017 I was an alcoholic. Driving Drunk. Working drunk. Lying to my friends and family. A few years later I got rouffied. Then I drove home drunk one more time and decided to quit cold turkey. The following weeks are a black point in my mind. I cannot remember what happened.

I was sober for about a year, then relapsed in a sous chef position under a shitty head chef. I sobered up again and now I have been dry for about 4 years. The issue is that once an Alcoholic, always an alcoholic. It's not that sobriety is impossible, it's that it always comes back. Up until Sunday last week I was shaking like I had parkinsons, the desire to drink was that high. I recently had a chef quit, which in such conditions in my industry right now left me with my boss and I alone, once again in October. So my brain said "ALCOHOL, worked before, may as well try again?!".

I stayed dry. But it required honesty with my boss and my now wifish and a great deal of self control. I tell you this because I find transparency is important and more than once the riff raff in my life has seen itself out when they learned my history of drugs and alcohol. I have a great deal of compassion and experience with addicts and addiction and a great deal of even leftists do not like this. Prosperity doctrine runs very deep in Western society.

Judge me if you will, I could not give less of a shit. I just think if this can help one person feel less alone, or less ashamed, then I have done a good thing.

#cheflife #addiction #alcoholism