I'm not a real chef, I just play one on TV.

I miss old school cooking shows, before the whole food thing got popular. When I was like 6, I would get up super early on Saturday and Sunday morning to watch TV. Not cartoons, but cooking shows. Jacques Torres was one of my favorites! He would make these chocolate cups with blown up water balloons. I always dreamed of the day my mom would let me make them, but of course it didn't happen till my advanced baking and pastry class at culinary school.

Even though I had never made them in real life, I considered myself a pro at it. How many times had I seen that episode? Far to many to count. Tempering the chocolate is always touchy, blow up the balloon, dip deep in one side, then the other sides to create a flower like pattern, shake and let it drizzle off so when you set it down on parchment it doesn't create a large foot at the bottom. When fully set up and hard, pop the balloon and hope for the best.

I have been working 6 days a week since 2011 hit, and It has really opened my eyes to how many people are in the food industry that just should not be in it. Why would you open a restaurant and then complain the few days you do come in about having to make food for it? And then thinking it's acceptable to serve something you messed up on because you "didn't feel like" making another batch correctly? If I did that, I would be fired. I try not to complain about working so much, when i'm tired because I had a hard night sleeping, just want a second day off, or not being able to go out late with friends. I try to just be thankful I have a job at all.

With all of this, super popular bad food tv, and people not giving a care about what's being served in their restaurants has renewed a fire in me, to want to make sure I can put out the best food I can possibly put out. To just grit and bare it, do it right from the start or do it over again until it's the best I can possibly do.

In my next post I will be talking about my trip to Ghirardeli Square, Crown and Crumpet Tea Room and Kara's Cup Cakes. Which fuels my fire even more, such a let down everything was!