Looking throughout this journey I have taken to become a chef…  I see the improvements I have made in regards to cooking..  I can honestly say, things changed when I decided to NOT be a chef and first become a great cook….

Once my vision went from the future to the immediate….  my skills did start to improve…  I jokingly say, from time to time, that my culinary school is currently my day job (JOB A)…  But, I discovered yesterday that I was wrong…  I will forever be in culinary school.  The biggest difference is, I am getting paid to do it versus paying some school to learn.

Going back to JOB B is turning out to be a much greater learning experience for me…  JOB A taught me how to cook…  How to manage my tickets while managing my line.  Made me a better cook mentally.  I won’t lie and I don’t mix words when I say this…  My first tour with JOB B was an utter failure…  I wasn’t ready for that level of cooking and it showed…  So much so that I got bumped down to pantry and I wasn’t very good at that…

Fast forward 6 months later…  During that time, I basically focused on the multi tasking aspect of it all.. Working lunch at JOB A helped greatly.  Returning to JOB B and being there these past three weeks…  The improvements have shown in spades….  Everything just feels much easier than it did in my first go round… 

To work the grill with the way their kitchen is set up (at Job B, every station cooks their proteins and does their own set ups/saute), work over 100 person nights, never feeling flustered or in the weeds, and bust out my tickets in under 20 (I did have a 26 minute ticket once) minutes with the types of meats I have to grill/saute/oven finish, and have customers come up to me and give me the compliments they have given me….  That has further boosted my confidence that I made the right choices up to this point.

So, now I am in training to learn the mid station.  Which is Saute…  I look forward to bringing the same level of good cooking, while becoming better, that I’ve been able to bring to the grill these past few weeks…  I also look to increase the quality of my cooking.  The chefs at JOB B have already given me some great advice to improve the quality while not hurting the taste…  So, I look forward to the challenge and the time I get to put into this….

I know I am guided by God in this endeavor and I should be more thankful than I have been.  Well, thank you Lord…  As you stand in Heaven, I thank you Father for opening the doors you have opened for me and moved me in the directions you have.  You have blessed the work of my hands and kept me thus far…  You have also kept me from being an annoyance on my family…  In Jesus’ name…