All ye oul wans and oul fellas out there! Wakey wakey, rise and shine!

Chucken wrote: »

Hello everyone!
Long time no see

/Double locks the drinks cabinet
Missed you. Lovely to see you again.

Jellybaby1 wrote: »

Oh, trundling along as usual. Like most here, good days and bad days. At the moment we're experiencing a little bit of what Looksee is going through. Some of that stuff she's thrown out sounds strangely familiar here except for the kayak! How you doin'?

I'm doin great. Was a crock there for 3 years but getting better. Long story, but basically hurt my back badly. Was literally housebound for a year.Took another year to get back to semi normal & now nearly a year on physio...but you know yourself...be grand!!

Oh yes. In the year running up to that I had landed a dream job which may or may not have included making .....SOUP!

OldGoat wrote: »

/Double locks the drinks cabinet
Missed you. Lovely to see you again.

Oh I see some things never change!
How're you doin OG?

Ahh not a soup kitchen! :pac:
I actually had a real job in a kitchen & was loving it. That's all over now sadly...

I spent my student years and most of my wifes student years working kitchens from big institutional size to very small and cramped. I really loved it. Having a love of food and cooking helps. I learnt so much watching and assisting chiefs of all calibre. Also, I have scars.


Anthony Bourdain likens chiefs to pirates.

"In the kitchen, they were like gods. They dressed like pirates: chef's coats with the arms slashed off, blue jeans, ragged and faded headbands, gore-covered aprons, gold hoop earrings, wrist cuffs, turquoise necklaces and chokers, rings of scrimshaw and ivory, tattoos-all the decorative
detritus of the long-past Summer of Love.

They had style and swagger, and they seemed afraid of nothing. They drank everything in sight, stole whatever wasn't nailed down, and screwed their way through floor staff, bar customers and casual visitors like nothing I'd ever seen or imagined. They carried big, bad-ass knives, which they kept honed and sharpened to a razor's edge. They hurled dirty saute pans and pots across
the kitchen and into my pot sink with casual accuracy. They spoke their own peculiar dialect, an unbelievably profane patois of countercultural jargon and local Portugee slang, delivered with ironic inflection, calling each other, for instance, 'Paaahd' for 'Partner' or 'Daahlin' for 'Darling'.

They looted the place for everything it was worth, stocking up well in advance for the lean months of the offseason. A couple of nights a week, the chef would back his Volkswagen van up to the kitchen door and load whole sirloin strips, boxes of frozen shrimp, cases of beer, sides of bacon into the cargo area. The speed racks over each station-containing bottles of cooking wine, oil, etc. for easy access during service-were always loaded with at least two highball
glasses per cook; Lydia liked to call them 'summertime coolers', usually strong Cape Codders, Sea Breezes or Greyhounds. Joints were smoked in the downstairs walk-in, and cocaine-always available, though in those days very expensive and still considered a rich man's drug-was everywhere. On payday everyone in the kitchen handed money back and forth in a Byzantine
rondelay of transactions as the cooks settled up the previous week's drug debts, loans and wagers.

I saw a lot of bad behavior that first year in P-town. I was impressed. These guys were master criminals, sexual athletes, compared to my pitiful college hijinks. Highwaymen rogues, buccaneers, cut-throats, they were like young princes to me, still only a lowly dishwasher. The life of the cook was a life of adventure, looting, pillaging and rock-and-rolling through life with a
carefree disregard for all conventional morality. It looked pretty damn good to me on the other side of the line."
Source: https://archive.org/stream/Anthony_Bourdain_Kitchen_Confidential/Anthony_Bourdain_Kitchen_Confidential_djvu.txt

Goodness someone threw glitter on the cobwebs and called it Christmas!

Sorry folks, very glad to see someone in here, but Christmas!!! I have a couple of pressies ordered from Amazon (books) for the grandchildren but they haven't arrived yet. Otherwise nothing done. I am still up to my eyes in painters and the place is a total heap but I may be half civilised for the event. Everything else is done' just the painting to finish. Then boxes to unpack and furniture to redistribute and curtains to make. Oh lord, curtains.

Fortunately I can depend on my lovely dil to make dinner - be my turn next year!

I am not sure if it is the imminence of the festive season or the ongoing disorder of renovation but something has me as scratchy as the cat. Be glad when it is all sorted. Or of course it could be paying all the bills