The Vicissitudes of Life

As I sit here drinking my tea, unwinding from my second day at my new job at the country club, I suddenly found myself in somewhat of a reflective mood, and started reviewing events of the past several years. When I recently went into my soon to be new boss' office, he actually asked me the dreaded question, "Where do you see yourself in five years." I of course shot something off the cuff about moving up the culinary ladder and eventually being at Sous Chef level, or perhaps even Executive Chef, something, something, blah, blah, blah, but then added that I would like to see that happen within two years as opposed to the five that seems to be so popular. Why five years? Why not six? Why not two? I just don't understand. Of course as I was answering his question, I was really thinking that I don't even know what I'm going to be doing in five days, let alone five years. How about that? Well, I exaggerate, but not much in this case.

I think of all the paths that I've been down, up, over and across over the past five years, and I wonder if there will be as many changes for me in the next five. Five years ago? Let me see. What year was that? Oh yes, that was 2004. It was the year that I graduated from culinary school in New York City. I lived with my then boyfriend in a horrible apartment in Astoria. I loved Astoria, but that apartment took sucking to a whole new level. The thing about it, though, was that it was cheap, at least by NYC standards. $1200 for a two bedroom apartment! Cheap, indeed. It was big too, because it was in Queens. Eight hundred square feet? Big, indeed. It was owned by an absentee landlord who lived in Kansas. In his absence, he had his completely insane Sister take over the "caretaker" duties. If I remember correctly, there were three kids, and there was a Husband of some sort too. She was nine times out of ten completely whacked out on some sort of drug, my bet being that it usually was some sort of pill. When you walked in the apartment building, it smelled of cat pee. Thankfully, you couldn't smell it once you passed our threshold, but just walking into the building was an assault on the olfactories. Oh yes, the reason that it smelled of cat urine was because she was one of those "cat ladies". You know, the kind of person that picks up every single stray cat in the universe. Fascinating, to say the least. I actually wonder if there have ever been case studies on such people, but I digress.

At the same time that I was graduating from culinary school, I believe I was working at a restaurant by the name of Riingo as a pastry cook. It was my first paid job in the industry, and I was working under the illustrious Marcus Samuelson of Aquavit fame. At the time I thought, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, but in the end, it turned out to be a complete nightmare. It was a brand new Japanese fusion restaurant, that was poorly organized and really dirty on top of it - at least behind the scenes. The front of house was very sleek and masculine. It had an Asian feel to it, but it also felt very European, if you can imagine. The man was raised in Sweden, afterall. I remember they paid me a yearly salary of $28,000, which isn't even close to being enough to survive on in New York. To add insult to injury, I was working fiteen to sixteen hour days, six days a week. It's a labor of love, I suppose, and I did learn how to make green tea filled doughnuts.

That Summer, I found an ad on Craig's List for a Seasonal Sous Chef position at Jewish retreat center in the Berkshires. It was about two and a half hours away from the city in a lovely little town called Falls Village. If you've never been to that part of the country before, I would highly recommend going to visit. It's absolutely beautiful up there. Everything is so green and picturesque, and all of the towns give off the air that you could have been sent back in time.

The guise of the retreat center was that it for the most part catered to Jewish seniors, but also was working on pulling in younger groups as well. The new Director (Adam something or another) wanted to promote sustainability and general earth consciousness, and started a youth group that stemmed from these principals. The group was called Adamah, and it consisted of twenty something Jewish kids from all over the country. They had an organic farm, and supposedly, all of the vegetables from the farm were to be used to feed all of the retreat center guests. All of this sounds just lovely, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't. The kids didn't know the first thing about farming, and they didn't get that seventy year old Marjorie from Poughkeepsie probably doesn't want to eat Swiss Chard. Seventy year old Marjorie from Poughkeepsie wants her frozen blintzes and her matzo ball soup, etc., etc., etc. And don't forget the gefelte fish, damnit! The whole reason that I was coming up there was because of this farm. This is the sort of stuff that chefs live for, but in this case, I wasn't even able to use the product that the farm was supposedly producing. This was all merely the tip of the iceberg. My boss, Ron something or another, who also happened to be my neighbor, ended up being a crack addict. He seemed fine at first, but as the months wore on, his crazy ways became more and more apparent. It would have been one thing if I just worked for the guy and then was able to make my merry way home and not have to deal with him, but that wasn't the case. He was going to be there twenty-four hours, six days a week, whether or not I liked it. At first I would hang out with him, completely unaware of the whole crack thing, but then the occasion arrived where he busted out the pipe and decided it would be a good idea to pop on some porn. Uh, sorry Ron, I gotta go. Well, there's a lot more to this story, and I could go on and on and on about all of the crazy things that happened while I was there, but I won't. I'll leave it at that. As they say, that that does not kill you...

To be continued.