Chefliness is next to geekiness?
Or not. In any case, for a variety of reasons, I'm off on a new track, entering culinary school to learn all the secretes of haute cuisine (aka fancy cookin'). Partly it's that I really do better with work that has more immediate feedback and don't do so well with weeks alone in a cubicle before anyone asks how I'm doing, although there are areas of computer work that are more immediate than programming, but I also like work that involves actually making things. So I'll be making food instead of software. Some food is very soft, though... never mind. Anyway, it's weird in a lot of ways, because culinary tradition is very meat oriented, and I've been a vegetarian for years. Not exactly one now, since I have to try all the dishes we make, but, I hope to eventually go into either a vegetarian restaurant or one that gets only humanely raised animals. It's really, fundamentally, the cruelty of factory farming that I object to. Well treated animals with plenty of room to roam, that's a very different story from the life of the average burger-cow or purdue-chicken. In any case, many people, including my parents, think I'm crazy. And yeah, I'm racking up a huge student loan to do this, and looking at less money than computers, at least in average salary. I think I may actually do better, though. It's easier to do well in a career if you're actually enthusiastic about your job (which working in TCL for someone with bizarrely unrealistic expectations was not really something to be enthusiastic about... any-way.)
So anyhow, I pulled together thanksgiving dinner for my cousin and friends, and that seems to have been a fair success, although I could've done better with the timing of the dishes coming out of the oven. The butternut squash and the rolls came out after everyone was already done, basically. Hard to cook everything in the one rack left below the turkey though, but, then, maybe I should have planned a more stove-top oriented menu with that in mind. Ah well. People enjoyed it, which is what counts, right?
So anyhow, I pulled together thanksgiving dinner for my cousin and friends, and that seems to have been a fair success, although I could've done better with the timing of the dishes coming out of the oven. The butternut squash and the rolls came out after everyone was already done, basically. Hard to cook everything in the one rack left below the turkey though, but, then, maybe I should have planned a more stove-top oriented menu with that in mind. Ah well. People enjoyed it, which is what counts, right?