Friday, November 29, 2019

The holidays make me thankful I didn't choose a career in food service. I can't think of anything more exhausting than spending all day cooking. Even physical labor. And I like to cook. But the holiday level of cooking is just a lot.

7 comments:

  1. "But the holiday level of cooking is just a lot ..."

    Oh, but it's Thanksgiving, you just have to make mass quantities!

    Culinary effort level: making lots of little Beef Wellingtons with homemade mushroom pâté (instead of duck liver pâté) out of seven pounds of chateaubriand-grade tenderloin, plus everything that normally goes with the traditional serving of chateaubriand.

    I ran out of clean frying pans and baking pans.

    This is not easy for me to do because I have two foot-tall stacks of woks and frying pans sitting next to the stove plus what's underneath and above the stove itself.

    I lost count of how much butter we'd gone through after I cracked open the eighth quarter-kilo brick of French butter.

    Apparently my idea of making garlic bread also starts with the butter and seasonings, after which I grudgingly add small amounts of garlic bread to each batch. :-)

    But what about the "traditional" Thanksgiving meal of turkey, stuffing, gravy, potatoes, carrots and other root vegetables, cranberry, etc.?

    Oh, there were some cranberries involved -- those went into the rice pilaf that I made for some people who didn't want the potatoes. But the heavy carb load plus tryptophan-rich turkey, that's a bit much to handle, especially if there's clean-up involved afterwards.

    Next year, I will probably be eating out on Thanksgiving, if in fact I am in a place where it's even celebrated (and is more likely just called "Thursday").

    So I figured I could pull out the stops (and all of the frying pans) this year ...

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  2. For someone who seems hell bent on leaving the country - you do seem to be taking your time. It's almost as if you don't want to leave. Just sayin'. For now I will move you into the "moving someday column". That column is pretty crowded BTW.

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  3. Capital of Texas RefugeeMonday, December 02, 2019 2:53:00 AM

    "... you do seem to be taking your time ..."

    Not my idea entirely ...

    There's paperwork processing at the speed of government.

    Plus once it's done and I'm able to go somewhere, there will be yet more of it.

    So while I am stuck with waiting on processes over which I have very little control, except perhaps to make things have a worse outcome, I can enjoy some things around me, make useful preparations, and so forth.

    Two timetables that were supposed to overlap with a third came out with the surprising result that I'm now waiting on the speed of bureaucracy.

    Besides, you are just jealous you were not invited for Beef Wellingtons.

    :-)

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  4. Interesting visual I have to say. But, I am about average.

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  5. Capital of Texas RefugeeMonday, December 02, 2019 8:32:00 PM

    Oh, yeah, something else is involved ...

    You are used to working at "a job" where your work is more or less subject to mutual agreement to continue, and so you can quit at any time.

    That's not what's involved when you create a company, run it for a long time, and have personal as well as business relationships involved with it.

    Which is why when it sold, there was an agreement that I'd stay on at least in a consulting role so I could help with the transition. It's a longer period than I'd like, but shorter than what some people have been talked into, and it'll eventually work out.

    A significant part of my pay-out is contingent on doing this.

    What's involved now may be as little as flying out to some customer so the CEO can talk with me one more time along with the new management, just so the CEO gets some kind of warm fuzzies about continuity and how he's not going to be left in a lurch by the new people.

    Never underestimate the power of showing up in person and inviting the head honcho out for a Delmonico or something like that just to show that people still give a shit after a management change.

    So I am not technically retired now except when it comes to being actively in the middle of everything. An ad hoc transition crew helped me with handing off all of the vital stuff, so I no longer get involved with approving anything or even day-to-day bullshit.

    But "regime change" is tricky, and some of your customers won't like it because it reminds them too much of what they may have to deal with but not under quite such accommodating circumstances.

    The main reason I won't shove my crap into a storage unit and travel while this is going on is that given the cost of decent insurance for one at the valuation of my belongings plus the storage unit's monthly cost itself, it's actually cheaper to continue to rent this place and to insure it.

    Besides, I've watched a video of some couple named Rachel and Jun who are in Japan, and they hired Japanese movers ... and wow, they just did everything and it didn't involve stupid burly people doing stupid stuff that means they break a percentage of your stuff nearly guaranteed, and there was no mountain of used cardboard box bullshit to deal with, and ...

    When the day comes, I'm going to hire one of those that also has an IT consulting group attached to them, just so they can take apart all of my networking stuff and rebuild it in the new location.

    Me, I'll be sipping the local equivalent of planter's punch out on a beach, or I'll be in some lodge sipping some kind of mulled whiskey drink on a mountainside.

    I'm still working out which, but I have plenty of time ... :-)

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  6. I haven't sold a business - but I've worked at a couple of start ups, so I get how this process works.

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