the reluctant temp…

so…my first post will be of right now, the present tense the trials and tribulations of the now. when my now is a little less interesting I’ll take those opportunities to fill you in on some more historic events..

My right now is I have just become a temp chef (a chef who goes where required to all the nooks and crannies of the food service industry) for maybe the 3rd time in my life and as a rule a fucking hate it.

From past experiences I know its not the thing for me, you get thrown into a new kitchen always of varying standards and cleanliness and they are nearly always in the shit or you would not be required!  I like to feel useful  and be able to help but most people in most professions are a bit rubbish on their first day.  the constant struggle to find a bowl, a potato masher a ladle a tray… you get the picture.  I also don’t like that by the end of the shift you finally start to feel useful and you leave, the next day a new kitchen and your back to useless.

So where will my current state of temping take me first you ask…. I have been tasked with a night shift in the Tesco staff canteen for two days (nights). I start at 9pm tonight and I’m filled with mixed emotions to be honest, I have to work, I’m unemployed and I’m going to become a dad for the first time in the next 3 months!  So of course I’m grateful to have work but did I every think that my 16 years of cooking and seeing some of the best restaurants in the world would ever lead me to the staff canteen of a supermarket chain….no no i did not.  I wanted it to lead me to getting my own Michelin  star one day maybe my very own restaurant and something I can be proud to tell my son about.

All I can really do is hope that my travels this week will introduce me to some new people and maybe I will see somethings that I haven’t seen before.  Friday I go to a huge hotel which is another type of place I’ve never been to work before and Saturday I will be in a care home.   All of these places are of course perfectly good places to work and all I’m sure serve good food to people  who need to eat and just because they are not places i have chosen to work in my career doesn’t mean I don’t respect the people that do these jobs…but I expect I wont see fresh Australian winter truffle or sea urchins on these days!

The question I must ask myself is whats next? I have been asking myself how can I bend my skill around my life to make it work for me instead of working 14 hours a day and never seeing my new born child.  I’m really not sure, I would like to cook restaurant standard food in my own home and invite guests in and see if they would like to pay me for it.  I can temp to pay the bills but I need a way to express myself in food and to surprise people with it I hope.  The more I think about it the more exciting it sounds, getting strangers all sat around while me being the common denominator gets to cook food I love and watch the reactions of the people as the eat it.

Then there is this blog, I see lots of blogs and people becoming well know simply for writing down how they feel…. I can do that, I love to write and I’m passionate about what I do (not cooking in Tesco but generally I am) so why not write about it.

wish me luck for the staff canteen…….