terrorlynn | (no subject)

Current Mood: nervous

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I'd post pictures, but I dont have enough photographic ability to convey my fear. First week of culinary school, done. Its going to be very hard, and very fun. My excitement and passion for food are at an all time high...

...which makes my job all the more frustrating. Im not cooking...and neither is anyone else. We use premade sauces, canned/frozen vegetables just get tossed in steamers, meat gets grilled or roasted in giant batches. The closest thing to a creative cooking outlet was when I got to work the Seven Star (highest tier of player) Appreciation Dinner last week, where I got to sautee berries in butter and brown sugar, and then flambe them with cognac, right in front of customers. I was informed by EVERYONE I came in to contact with though, that this is one of the only events in a year that that sort of cooking thing happens.

I dont know what to do.

Im so excited about all the things Im learning about food. I'm so excited about my profession. This just isnt fufilling me. Hell, it doesnt seem to be fufilling any of the people I work with that have the same mindset. The only advancements that I'm able to look forward to are promotions to a sous chef position...which means I would never even get to see the inside of a pot again. The sous chefs at Harrahs are just supervisors. I mean, there's a picture of one of them actually cooking that one of my coworkers snapped on her phone last week, because it was like catching the Loch Ness Monster.

Im very afraid, and I dont know what to do.

At least my baby is home, and my new psychiatrist is pretty decent. Life is good, in general...this is just frustrating.

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Nature of the business, I'm afraid, sweetie. To do what you want to do, you'll need to open up your own restaurant... or become the head cook in a small family restaurant, like Vitale's here in Macomb (the head cook there married into the family -- he graduated the top of his class at a New York cooking school, which is why the food at Vitale's is usually so damned good and the specials are always worth trying).

Well, I certainly understand that no job will be perfect until it is a job I've created myself. However, this job was marketed as a COOKING position. Not a pan changer position, not a can opener position...so what I think Im going to do is keep an eye open and an ear to the ground for a job that is better suited to me, while staying here. The pay is good, and most of the coworkers are nice. It could be way worse.

It's easiest to find a job when you already have one. Start looking around to see if there's something you'd like better. Look at postings at school. Talk to instructors and see where they'd recommend looking. Good luck. :)

P.S. Don't waste your time moving up to line person or whatever if you *hate* your job, k?

Yeah, thats probably what Im going to do. Seems like a safe idea :).

And I will just continue to kick ass. No real attempts to advance, but maintaining my awesome. That way, if I need a reference out of this job, they have something to go on. And i dont HATE the job, im just disappointed in it.

I really don't want to butt in here, but have you thought about business school if you want to open your own restaurant? With cooking classes on the side?

Story time! I used to work at a rinky-dink catering place (not cooking myself, just delivering food, making it look pretty, etc). The primary function of our kitchen, however, was to make Meals on Wheels for the seniors in the area, which was essentially what you describe here -- using canned vegetables and pre-prepared meat and sticking it in a steamer.

Our cook, Derek, was a graduate of a "Le Cordon Bleu" school. And he was essentially stuck with the steamer and canned vegetables. He was miserable. The only outlet for his cooking was the catering, which was not exactly the kind of food that you would need a culinary degree for (meatballs, sandwiches, and the occasional Chicken a la King).

Derek had thousands of dollars of debt because of culinary school, but couldn't find a decent job (or open a restaurant what that amount of debt) and was living with his mom. He told me that anyone wanting to own their own restaurant is much better off going to business school then culinary school. If you love cooking and know what tastes good, culinary school isn't going to teach you anything you can't learn in your own kitchen with a decent book.

I really admire you for going after your dream. It's been sooo long since I've seen you or talked to you, but I'm glad you are pursuing what you love, and aren't miserable like you were in high school. I hope I'm not coming off like an asshole or something, but I just want to maybe give you another option, if you do get sick of steamers and cans. :)

I'm planning to take business classes over the next few years, as Travis and I would like to open our own place years down the road. However, I'm very lucky in the fact that my entire culinary education will cost me about $3,000. Hooray for an excellent community college!

And even as frustrated as I am with this job, I'm nowhere NEAR as unhappy as I've been in years past. I just want to be happier. I dont see the point in just floating along in life if I can help it.

I didn't realize that you were going to culinary school at a community college. I didn't even know that community colleges offered culinary classes. At least mine didn't. Shows what I know. I'll keep my big nose out of your business.

I'm glad you're happy. Before I found you on facebook, I wondered about you and how you were doing. As much as Campus Life drained my will to live, our small group was fun. :)

Remember the Squishy Ball?! I just threw that away before Travis and I got married, when I was cleaning out all my old stuff. Campus Life was, to be honest, the only thing that kept me alive for a little while. I was so screwed up in the head, that I just wanted a place where people thought I was worth something, ya know? *shrugs* Didnt really pan out the way I had hoped for, but then again, neither did religion ;). I thought of you a lot too over the years. Im glad we've reconnected, and that you're happy.

And as for your nose and my business, its totally cool to sniff around. I wouldnt have added you here if it wasnt okay. :)

Oh god, the squishy ball. And the doll with no arms and no legs! And A-A-A-Alberquerque!

Campus Life actually made me more suicidal than I'd like to believe. By the end, I realized that all the staff and many people there were assholes (excepting a few lovely people) and just wanted asses in the seats and didn't give a rat's ass about me. I hope you made it out of there with more self esteem than I did. Joe and Joel did more to make me want to kill myself than anybody else has ever done.

The God thing (obviously) didn't work out for me, either. I'm happily living in sin with another lapsed Christian, and we don't believe in God together. :)

Oh, Albequerque. How I love thee.

Yeah, Campus Life was really just a propaganda machine for an invisible man in the sky that knows everything and loves you except for when you're bad...oh, and the fucker never seems to have enough money. I felt like I always fell short of their expectations, and they didnt hesitate to remind me of those failings. My self esteem was never awesome, but it was way worse after them. I remember when I went in to the mental hospital...and NO ONE visited me, NO ONE would talk to me about it...bastards.

I guess it doesnt seem like I dont believe in god...just more like he/she/it never believed in me. There's a big reason Travis is an atheist and I'm agnostic. I dont really think its possible for us to know whether there is a god or not, but I figure that if I try to leave the world in a better place than I left it, no one or nothing can be all that pissy at me. Seems reasonable ;).

Im so glad you're happier now. I always find it strange when I reconnect with people from my past and it seems like they havent changed at all...how can people go through life without changing? I mean, AT ALL? Very odd.

After I graduated, I decided to cut ties with everyone that pissed me off. I moved in with my dad and didn't give anyone except Rey and Lan my new address and phone number. That ended up biting me in the ass, because Rey turned psycho, but Lan is still my best friend. She's on LJ as journaloflan (friend her if you want, I know she'd love to hear from you). I guess I unintentionally cut ties with people I still wanted to stay friends with; namely, everyone who didn't graduate in my year. :(

I still kind of know what's going on, because my friend Kristen (remember her? skinny, big boobs, used to do skits about Britney Spears at club?) stayed on as a staff at CL after she graduated HS. Some people never did change, and some got a lot creepier.

Where are you at cooking school? It doesn't sound right that you wouldn't actually be cooking anything as part of the curriculum. My husband's cousin went to cooking school somewhere in Chicago and she did a lot of cooking.

No no no...I'm cooking OODLES at culinary school, and its only the first week :). Joliet Junior College is where I'm at for school. I'm not cooking at my JOB. I work at Harrahs casino, in the buffet. Sadly, even after extensive talks with cooks in the other restaurants in the casino, they dont do much more cooking than we do :(. We'll see what happens.

Someday you'll look back....while standing in some fabulous kitchen some where with a rare bottle of sherry in one hand and the most perfect egg plant in the entire universe in the other...and you'll laugh deeply....with those standing around you, their eyes full of abject awe and admiration...and you'll say, "Oh my, I remember when I had this cooking job that wasn't a cooking job AT ALL....and...."

Pay the dues now, build up your karma bank, keep your eyes peeled for other opertunities....

And invited me to dinner soon. =)

-emily

All of those things will happen. Someday. Soon.

And COME TO DINNER ANY TIME. Please?

Can I come up on the weekend of the first or the fifteenth?

-emily

I added you, great party last night!

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