Time For a Rant

I always have my eyes open for job possibilities, even when I'm happily employed my eyes stay open for a new opportunity. There is the odd employer that realizes how much work and time those in the culinary industry put into their passion but the mass majority seem clueless. Why is it that people are posting jobs saying that you must have your Red Seal, formally trained with 5+ years of experience yet they are only willing to pay minimum wage or a tiny bit more than that? Do they not realize that culinary school is expensive? That most trained chefs have thousands of dollars of knives and other tools? How can anyone expect someone with all this training and these tools to work for minimum? Honestly if I want to work for minimum wage I'll go work at Burger King and get paid the same to make Whoppers all day long. Why should I waste my time and money to get paid the same as a high school kid flipping burgers.

One thing that sticks in my mind is an ad I saw a couple months back. The person was offering $700 to cook 3 meals a day for 10 people for 7 days. That works out to about $3.34 per person per meal. How is anyone supposed to even get supplies for that cheap let alone the cost of my time and skills.

I think a lot of people take cooks and chefs for granted, thinking we are all willing to work for pennies and don't have bills to pay. I guess what I'm trying to say is if you want good food be prepared to pay for it, not just for the ingredients but for the person in the kitchen taking time to make you a meal to remember.

Don't get me wrong, I love what I do and the industry I'm in but sometimes it can be a little frustrating to see all these underpaying job postings. I hope you all have a happy new year and all that stuff.

Gobble Gobble

So that time of year has come and gone once again. Smelling the turkey cooking all day, making the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, the yams, cranberry sauce, rolls and gravy. Christmas dinner, almost as exciting as waking up in the morning and opening presents. But why turkey? What did these awful looking birds ever do to deserve to be the focus of our gluttony on this holiday? Well in the Americas the answer is fairly simple. Back in the day wild turkeys roamed just as seagulls and pigeons do today. THey were everywhere so why not kill the things, stuff them and eat them? In Europe however there is a slightly different story. A few hundred years ago turkey was seen as an exotic bird and was therefore only placed on the tables of the well to do. As times changed and the birds became more accesible people continued to place turkeys on their tables as a sign that they were doing well themselves.

Now how about the size of the birds we place on our tables these days. Have you ever seen one of these mosters walking around? They look completely ridiculous. Since many people only like the white breast meat these birds have been bred to have gigantic breasts, so large in fact that they can no longer mate naturally. Commercial turkeys are now bred by artificial insemination. That signals a problem to me. Whatever happened to eating things as they naturally were? All these growth hormones injected into these birds and we are to expect no ill side effects? I'm starting to wonder if there is some corrolation between all these extra hormones we are ingesting and the growing average size of us. Something to think about for sure, but I'll save that for another entry.

To be quite honest I'm sick of turkey and turkey talk so I'll leave it alone until Easter, the next time I plan on thinking of one of these birds.

Don't forget to tell everyone you know, I'm starting to push my personal catering business "Dinner By Dan" and could use the help spreading the word. Big or small, I'll cook it all!

Breakfast Anyone?

As I said in my last post I left the burger joint and have moved back to the catering industry for the holiday season. I worked with this company all summer and had a great time doing it while learning lots. This time of year we do a lot of breakfast events for businesses meaning that if they want their employees to be served breakfast between 7 and 9am I need to be at the shop by about 5 am. Sure it's an early rise but I'm alright with that and the benefit is being hope by 2 or 3pm, which I am quite alright with. There is something almost relaxing about standing out in -20 degree weather a couple of hours before sunrise assembling hundreds of breakfast sandwiches and making thousands of pancakes. It's not something most people get to do and I'm sure most of the customers served don't think about us being there for hours before they see the food they are about to start their day with. I really enjoy being behind the scenes and making things happen. On that note I'm starting to push my personal catering business. So if you or anyone you know is looking to have a party or dinner or anything else catered feel free to get in touch with me for a quote.

Drama In the Food Industry

 So I've spent the better part of the past six years working in some aspect of the food industry.Weather it be slingin hot dogs at 7-Eleven, making cookies by the thousands, making mass amounts of pie filling or flipping fancy burgers I've seen quite a few things in different areas of the industry.

 Recently I started working for one of those high end fast food joints with the $10 hamburgers. I thought it was going to be a good job with some room for me to grow and learn. I was wrong.  The first couple days went by pretty decent, I was learning some new things and taking the advice of my new boss trying to get things right but I soon started to notice some things were just not adding up. For example we were using steam trays to keep certain items hot during service yet the owner insiste.d that they were to be filled all the way with water. Last time I checked I was pretty sure steam was hotter than water.  That may not be such a big deal but what kills me is the way the meat was cooked. Ground beef should be cooked to a temperature of 71C to be sure that it is safe to eat and the bacteria is no longer living. That will put the average burger to a doneness of well done. We were instructed to cook our burgers to medium well which I was not comfortable with so I left them on and cooked them to well and never got a complaint from a customer. About two weeks after I started an order came in for a medium rare burger. When I saw this chit come up I laughed it off and said no way was I cooking ground beef to medium rare for a customer. I don't want to make anyone sick and I don't want my name attatched to that in the least. After a squabble with the owner she took the burger off at medium rare and served it. Disgusting if you ask me.

We also have had customers bring back their medium well burgers and ask why they were undercooked and the owners answer is that is how we cook them. One customer asked why we don't have a sign up saying so and the owner said that the hea;th inspector wont let us put up the sign. One would think that would make them realize we are not cooking things properly but no, apparently the health inspectors are wrong and they are right. Did I mention that neither of the owners have any formal culinary training?

 It really amazes me how people can be so far up themselves and think that everything they do is right just because they own a restaurant. There is nothing that I could do to convince these people that they were making mistakes, I was just trying to help them run a better business but they wanted none of it. Because of that I decided to end my employment there and seek out something better suited to my needs. It was an experience but one I'm glad has come to an end. So next time you decide to put $10 of your hard earned money towards a hamburger make sure to ask for it well done.