Yeah, I can cook. Really well too. In fact, that's one of the reason I'm not happy at my job. Sure, I love the people I take care of and I still love cooking, but my co-workers (and management included) have gotten extremely lazy and haphazard over the past few years when it comes to the food we make.
I work at an Assisted Living building. For those who aren't familiar, an assisted living community is a facility in which elderly and reliant people live. Our staff assists them in their daily routine (hence, ASSISTED living), but they get their own apartments and have total free will (with few exceptions which are only implemented when someone has a serious health or mental issue). Anyway, our facility honestly has the nicest kitchen/food service I have ever seen in our type of facility. In fact, we were the first assisted living community in the entire United States to offer a full-service restaurant-style menu AND room service. Cool, right?
Anyway, when I first started, we served nothing but frozen, pre-made meals that came straight out of the freezer. The head cook at that time was super lazy and ended up being the worst co-worker I have ever had. Not an exaggeration either - she was crap. I HATED serving that crap to our residents, so I quickly pushed for changes. Shortly thereafter, we served pretty much all homemade, freshly prepared food each and every day (with few exceptions). And, for a while, our facility's food was AWESOME. I was proud of it. Now? Not so much.
Long story short - we're back to serving bullshit that comes out of the freezer and pre-made shit that we don't even make ourselves. It's embarrassing. AND, the people who live there deserve better. Now, I've had meetings with management recently in regards to how lazy our kitchen has gotten (and no, it's not me - it's my coworkers who have been given more control over the years - it's their fault our kitchen is suffering because they are allowed to make menus, take inventory, place orders, etc) and I'm hopeful changes are coming, but I'm still unhappy there.
When I worked in restaurants before my current job I was PROUD of what I did. I made badass food that looked and tasted great. It was super rewarding and made me feel good about my skills. Now, I feel worthless because all I'm doing is opening a can of this or pulling a tray of that out of the freezer. ANYONE can do that, you know? There's nothing special about it. I want to feel special again. I want to be able to make badass food again.
What I WANT to serve...
- Pan seared scallops served on a bed of sauteed spinach, topped with roasted garlic cloves and honey-butter, served with a side of crisped potato rounds
- Grilled tuna steaks with a side of ginger mayonnaise, rice pilaf and pan seared brussel sprouts tossed w/ caramelized brown sugar, butter and bacon
- Crispy coconut oatmeal chicken breast served on a scoop of pineapple/mango rice, served with a side of wilted collard greens and both raspberry and boysenberry purees
- Freshly prepared eggs benedict (a soft-poached egg resting on a freshly toasted English muffin topped with pan seared Canadian bacon, coated in a warm hollandaise sauce) served with a warm, freshly baked coffee cake
What AM I serving?...
- Premade salisbury steak that came from the freezer, served with premade mashed potatoes that come from a fucking bag, topped with gravy that's made by opening a fucking can and heating it up
- Scalloped potatoes that are dehydrated, boxed and ready-to-go (JUST ADD WATER!!!)
- Canned fruit (fucking CANNED FRUIT, dude)
- Grilled cheese sandwich served with a pickled and a bag of potato chips
- Pies that come from the freezer (thaw and serve!!!)
- And, MY FAVORITE - Cornbread (that is made by mixing a boxed mix with water) with hot dogs cooked in it, topped with my coworkers' chili that literally looks like dog vomit
It's fucking embarrassing.
/RANT
On a side note, I lost another two pounds this week. I WAS going to have a cheat night last night, but I ended up not having one. I don't know, it just didn't feel right last night. Tonight, I'll probably cheat a little, but not terribly. I'm not patting myself on the back, but I'm doing good by sticking to watching my calories, so having a cheat night here and there isn't bringing me down. In fact, other than the drinks I had last weekend, I honestly haven't even gone over my calorie limit at all since I started getting back on track. Jen hasn't either really. Which is good for us. We're both eating stuff we WANT to eat, we're just not overdoing it. We're being good AND we're both seeing some pretty good results so far. I'm happy.
xoxo
