Thursday, September 11, 2008

Catching up

It's been far too long since I've written, and it's not for lack of interesting goings-on in my life. In fact, things are going even faster at work and at school now that I'm having difficulty finding the time to just sit down and write for longer than two minutes. Now that we're in the restaurant full time at school (with no class lecture), I'm currently doing between 65 and 75 hours a week on my feet between work and school, and somehow I still don't feel like I'm working hard enough. I think it's because with something like cooking the amount of knowledge and skill you can gain is endless. It's a great motivator for me, especially when I'm surrounded by people who are so much more skilled and experienced than myself, but it can lead to frustration for me as my nature is to want to know everything and to be really good at everything right off the bat. Unrealistic, I know. So sue me.

On the upside though, the biggest news in my life recently, besides moving into the OCI restaurant, is that I'm currently training to move up to the hot line from pantry at my restaurant. I got the news about a month ago that my exec and sous wanted to start training me on the hot line. This initially struck me as absolutely bonkers as I've never cooked anything to temperature order prior to culinary school, and everything at my restaurant that can be cooked to temp order is: scallops, game birds, fish, steak, pork, everything. Add on the plating sets ("set" = the other stuff that goes on the plate) and it's the ultimate in multi-tasking. There's no doubt that things can get hairy on the hot line, and it's a lot of pressure. I'll admit I was slightly scared and a bit timid about the step up, but after a few weeks I'm feeling pretty confident that I can "handle the heat," as they say.

I have a billion observations, updates and news items I want to share, but sleep is calling for now. I'll get to them sooner than later, I promise.