On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 21:41:19 -0500, "Julianne"
wrote:

Hello Jul...

to put the sweet potatoes in the crockpot at noon? Will the sweet corn be
caramelized or just plain yucky? How horrible it is to have your food laid
next to someone who is very accomplished!

I have to smile at this one. I see it from the other side of your
postion. I have often been asked at social gatherings to go in the
kitchen and do the meal. Most of the time right out of the blue while
I am attending one. I have agreed many times with the stipulation that
I only help and not do the whole meal alone.
During those prepreations I have had to take a few minutes out and try
to talk to the co-ladies who are in there. I have to give them my
little cooking speech.
All recipes are subjective. There isn't any such thing as one which
isn't right for someone.
When I first began to cook I worked under a German Chef who had been
cooking for over fifty years. And this man taught me more in those two
years then I have learned in the past forty.
One of the first things he taught me was that tastes were as far left
as they are to the right.
Once I over baked some calzones.. They were as dark brown as one could
get them before they turned black in ashe. Smile. I was going to toss
them out when Chef Otto told me: "Nein, erlauben die Leute haben sie"
(no, allow the people to have them)
I set those "over baked" calzones out on the line. (steam tables)
beside some others which I felt were baked perfectly. The dark ones
were chose faster than the light tan ones were .
I was surprised but that point has been proven over and over again in
the following years. Everyone has a different taste. There isn't one
taste for anything.
Once in my first year of cooking I worked extra hard and long over a
large pan of mashed potatoes. I made absolutely certain there were no
lumps in them. At the end of the meal I had five or six people tell me
they felt my potatoes were NOT right. As there were no lumps in them
as their mom always had. Smile.
So I tell the co-workers to relax and fix what ever they are fixing
the way they like them and it will be "correctly fixed"..

I don't know of the number of entrees, vegetables and starches I have
learned to fix which I wouldn't eat as it is not of my taste.
I do not mean it isn't good, it just isn't my cup of tea.
When a Chef gets hired on a job. He is either hired as a Chef or a
cook. There is a difference. In a kitchen there is a main chef. He/she
is the one who decides on all of the recipes.
If there are six cooks in a kitchen and the menu calls for meat loaf.
If one were to allow each cook to cook a meat loaf you would have six
different meat loaves. So there has to be a leader. In some places
he/she is called The lead Chef.

My point, is that I always cook my food the way I like for me. But
most of the food I cook now is under Chef Tom. He tells me how he
wants the recipes to be. We will discuss them and after a few months
of working together one learns how he wants it fixed.

I love to watch others cook. I love to watch the cook shows on the
food network. I learn so much. It is one of the facts of cooking which
I have always found interesting. One will never learn it all. No
matter how long one cooks there is always thousands of different
recipes to learn.

My cooking at home is totally different than cooking for the public.
I cook and eat as healthy as I can figure it out to be. At work I am
required to cook it for taste which comes from grease and oil.

I would love to cook for a living but frankly, I have invested so much into
being a nurse and I really do love it.
always welcome

Yes, I see your point. How nice to have a double intense feeling for
different things.
I have always admired people who have dedicated themselves to the
medical outreach of others.
I have a sister who was the lead nurse for transplants in a large San
Francisco Hospital for years. She took me with her once and I sat in
this room and watched about six operations she was involved in.
It was amazing. But I felt so bad for those sick people I don't know
if I could do that.
I was a photographer for the corners office for thirteen years. I had
to photograph all the deaths in three counties which were classifed
not natural. Most of these deaths were violent. I never did get
comfortable with it. I was always upset for hours after we left the
scene. While many others there didn't seem to be bothered at all.

Glad to see you here I hope you always have as much fun as you are having
now with your job. I hope the women in your life paint it with color and
drama the way that men are leery of recognizing.

Yes. I hope so too. I have found that moods come and they go. I have
woke up from my sleep and discover a mood or feeling which seems to
just have come on it's own. I can feel wonderful for no particular
reason or I can feel sad for no reason. But I have discoverd that I
can control my moods to a certain extent by forcing myself to think of
the positive things in my life.

I have discovered that if one waits long enough, a few days at the
most the bad moods will go away and contendful ones will come.

I think hope plays an important role in my life. I have hopes that
something nice will happen. I have hopes that tomorrow I might find
something which will make my life have more meaning and maybe find a
purpose to it.

I was a husband and father for most of my life that I find it most
difficult to find a deeper meaning to my life without it. I do alot of
thinking. I lay on the sofa, and I turn off the t.v. computer or
anything which might be a distraction and I lay down and think about
things. I do this on purposes. I look at things in my life and I try
to evaluate them. If I need to make changes etc.

I kind of believe that we have time tables. We do certain things in
our lives at certain times. I was a father until my children were
raised. I am not a father in the same sence as I once believe that
role to be. Actually my grown children have kind of taught me that.
Smile. (Father I would rather do it myself!)

I did that work (rasing children) when it was time to do it. And now I
must push onward and find another role which might be of value for me
and my self worth in the remaining years I have.

I don't know what the future will bring. But I do know that I need to
take an interest in my state of health. And that dieting is very
important to that end. I know that the human mind with its many moods
can play an important part to a person's motivation towards their
health.

I certtainly believe I could have remained in that state of depression
and a state of just giving up from the American Dream. It was
dangeoursly too close for me. I could have stayed there and lost many
good years of my life. I get chills thinking of how close I came to
just staying in that defeated state of mind and allowing my body to
live under those unhealthy conditions.

Thanks for the nice chat..

Monte