Skip to main content

MyPlate...Not The Government's Version

I'd really like to be able to post today about some amazing food thing I've done or learned recently.

But alas, I won't be able to today.

In typical vaudeville-esque fashion, I am trying to keep the spinning plates aloft in the air.

Plate #1 - The Educational Plate: I finish the last of my two six-week classes TODAY.  I will be giving a presentation on the business I have developed.  This project has consumed quite a bit of time and energy, as the instructor wants specifics regarding what kind of equipment we need, food inventory, floor plan, employee job descriptions, and the like.  I also sat for a comprehensive Culinary Exam on Tuesday...which required a little studying and preparing for as well.

Plate #1.a (or #2) - The Internship Plate: After today, Plate #1 will no longer be part of the act, but it will be replaced by #1.a or #2...Getting Ready for Internship.  I leave in less than a month for the shores of Lake Huron.  I will be gone for six months.  Important questions include:  What books should I bring?  How many tubes of toothpaste?  Who's bringing the plasma-screen TV: me or the roomie?  How am I going to adjust to sharing a living space with someone that is not my husband?  These are the things I lose sleep over.

Plate #3 - The New Job Plate: My winery job ended in early March, and I started another restaurant job the week after that.  While I greatly value my time at the winery, I am learning about line cooking at the new place...which I'm sure I'll need in Michigan.  I'm also discovering that nobody cares if I'm a la-di-da Culinary Student...they just want to know if I can work and if I can work fast.  It's been humbling to say the least.

Plate #4 - The Parenting Plate: I have a very intelligent 14-year-old living in my house who, all of a sudden, has been beset by a bout of un-ambition and laziness, especially when it comes to grades.  In fact, he has recently been quoted as saying, "Work is stupid.  I want to have fun."  And while I'm sure he didn't mean it quite as strongly as that, and just chose his words very poorly, the sentiment behind the words is the disturbing thing.  We can't quite ascertain if this is really how he is feeling or if this is some teenage-angst-dilemma we are dealing with.  Teenagers are aliens, people.  I believe this is the why we have found no other life-forms out there in the universe...they're here, living amongst us in the forms of teenagers.

Plate #5 - The Self-Educated Plate: I am trying to read.  Read for fun, read for education, just READ!  I'm current at work on this piece of fictionalized biography (correct word for genre unknown at the time of typing) Under The Wide and Starry Sky...the narrative that tells the story of the romance between Robert Louis Stevenson (author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped, etc.) and American Fanny Osbourne.  But I'm also scouring this cookbook, Beef and Other Bovine Matters...and now, I just really want to try carpaccio sometime!

Plate #6 - The Philosophical Plate: Still trying to answer those big life questions: What am I supposed to be doing?  What's my passion?  Where do I want to go with this life?  What next?  These answers need to come to me before I come back home in October.

And that's it, readers.  No gems of kitchen wisdom or hilarity today.  Just real life attempting to smack me in my face.  Repeatedly.

But, like Max Ehrmann says, the universe is unfolding.  Things are happening.  It is good.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

(She) Blinded Me With...Citrus

Excuse my attempt at tying today's blog entry with an iconic Thomas Dolby song.  What a terrible pun-ishment. Har har har. So, we're on the backside of Winter Vacation/Christmas Break/Holiday Hiatus here.  The kids return to school tomorrow, the freshman and I start back to our respective colleges next Monday. The clock is ticking and suddenly, I am whipped into frenzy to Get Work Done.  I suspect this phenomenon happens to many, many educators who try to avoid that panic-stricken night before they go back to work. And believe me when I say, I had the deepest, most earnest of intentions to write lesson plans, write quizzes, and generally prepare for the restart of my classes next week.  Like, really. And then...I was distracted by...citrus.  This happened. Okay, so....the lemons on the far right are no big deal.  They're available year-round.  But Meyer lemons...MEYER...I only find around here in the winter.  I first read about them i...

Keeping It Short, Keeping It Real

Today marked the penultimate day of Cake Decorating...and it was by far the most stressful of the last three weeks...and I mean, to quote the youth, I was a hater . But, that time is done and gone.  Here's what happening right now: A glass (which may turn into a bottle) of a Riesling I have not had in quite some time (read about that here ), and a episode (or more) of AMC's The Walking Dead . Let me clarify...quickly because TechMeat's got the Netflix cued.  School friends of mine went on and on about this TV show, so I got nuts one night and watched the first episode (with Brent, natch)...and now, we're kinda interested.  We're on episode 4 of Season One, so yeah, a long ways to go to catchup. Honestly, the last time we had this much interest in a TV show was Spin City and Dharma and Greg in the early 2000s.  For real.  We don't do a lot of TV around here.  Movies, yes.  TV, no. I'm going now.  To recover my strength and gear up for t...

The Salisbury Steak Haunts Me...

Let's jog the ol' memory tonight. Nah...let's more like shake the crapness out of my memory until it wets itself and surrenders any and all information I ask it for. If you read between the lines (not the Blurred Lines) on my Kenny Rogers-related post, you'll get that my childhood family meals were pretty Amurican.  Beef stew, pot roast, pan-fried pork chops.  I do recall cans of La Choy Chop Suey and chow mein noodles, and in the later years, tacos (and that was ethnic food at our house).  But, for the most part, Hamburger Helper (and this was long before Tuna, Chicken, or Asian Helper) and Swanson's made up the bulk of my childhood eating. And here's where things get even more murky: What in world did I eat for lunch when I was a kid? Take a moment to ponder this very question for yourselves.  Are you having as much trouble as I did answering this question?  Or am I just getting old?  Or have I repressed it? I know I did not get the cafeteria ...