Downsizing.

The bad/annoying news: Daniel and I have to move from our current apartment because the new company jacked the rental prices.

The good news: we found a new place! We will be paying less money per month, but we will also be living in a MUCH smaller place.

We're getting back to the basics (plus a few nifty things to make sure we don't have to get rid of everything we own), and that is okay. At first I was stressed, angry and overwhelmed by the idea of getting rid of things that I love, but now I am at peace with the notion. I have come to realize, through this situation and my perpetual struggle to make ends meet, that I don't need "stuff". I mean, I'm a realist, and I know that everyone needs "stuff", but not ALL of the stuff. I am learning to let go.

All I need is my life, my Daniel and a job that makes me happy. Fortunately, I have all of those things. The spare couch, my favorite table and chairs and the extra bathroom all take a back seat to the things that I value most: the things that don't cost any money.

Is this growing up? Realizing that the most important things are fueled by love instead of cash? I certainly hope so. This epiphany has made me feel damn good.

Student Loan Debt.

I got myself into this, right? I signed up to go to the most expensive culinary school in the country, and off I went. Within two magnificent years, I had accumulated $80k worth of debt. That number didn't seem to phase me while I was still getting a small sliver of it sent straight to my bank account every semester during school. Now? NOW? That number rules my life. I want to try to explain that feeling to people who don't shoulder such a hefty blob of debt.

It's like kayaking in the middle of a shark-infested ocean, with no chance of a larger rescue boat. You know that inevitably you will be eaten alive.

It's like being a loan spaghetti noodle in the Congo River in Africa. Have you seen those rapids? A spaghetti noodle would not last long.

It's like being trapped in a really cold, damp cave with no light. You are stumbling blindly, hands out in front of you, praying for a single beam to illuminate your path, but it never comes. Everything that surrounds you is slimy and unforgiving.

It's like pounding away at a steel beam with a sourdough baguette.

It's like screaming at the top of your lungs for help, but there being no one around for miles and miles and miles.

It feels like trying to carry around a really large water bed on your shoulders, by yourself.

It feels a lot like suffocating, I imagine. 

Living with $700 loan payments on an hourly wage, working as many hours as I'm allowed (seriously, I get kicked out of work at the end of every week so I don't get too much overtime) means:

I cry at nothing. Literally, I started writing this post and now I'm crying.

I cry when I look at people's Instagram photos of nice dinners or evenings with their significant others. I can't have that.

I cry when I listen to Christmas music, because I just spent money on Christmas presents for my friends and family that I should have used to eat this month. I'm living off of Knorr noodle sides.

I have to really bite my lip when I go to the grocery store. I checked out at Publix the other day and cried the whole way home, because I don't know how long I can make this food stretch.

I cry because I get angry at my bunnies for eating too much hay, too many greens or pellets. They never know I'm angry, but the guilt that I feel for getting upset when I fill their food bowls pushes me over the edge. I mean, they're the cutest things ever. How can a good person get angry at them?

I saved a sandwich for four days because I didn't eat it one day at work, and I could not bring myself to throw away three slices of ham, a tablespoon of mayonnaise, a tablespoon of mustard, four pickle slices and two pieces of bread. Half of that sandwich was my lunch today. The other half will be for tomorrow.

I have looked into several options to lower my loan payments to fit my salary, and my options are basically non-existent. Government loans are a little more forgiving, you can lower your payments based on your income. I sent in a pay stub and they knocked $50 off of my monthly bill. The private loan company I used was very excited to offer me lower payments for a year, but then they casually mentioned that my payments would be even higher the next year. They said, "Maybe by then you'll get a promotion or find a better job!" I said, "Nice try, but bye."

The absolute worst part is that this whole thing is MY FAULT. It was my decision to go to the stupid CIA, nobody forced me into this horror except myself. I am dumb, dumb, dumb. I can't even channel my anger correctly because if I did, it would all be at myself. I don't regret going to school because there I met my Daniel and some of my best friends, and I also learned that I can be good at something and love to do it for a living at the same time. However, if I was going to do it all over again, I would have saved more. I would have waited until I could pay off at least part of every semester by myself. I may not have gone at all, but then where would my life be?

This time, right now, is both the best and worst part of my life. My personal life is so excellent, with my perfect boyfriend and our bunny children. I love my job and I love my coworkers. I love making cakes, cookies, candies and confections. I do not, however, love this black fog that constantly surrounds my judgement and my attitude. It's hard to feel hopeful right now. It's very hard.

I guess I just have to keep working and waiting for some redemption, I just hope it comes soon.

Past and Present.

This entry will be short, because it has to be.

Four years ago, my life changed drastically for the better. I left a situation in which I was dating a man who ended up stalking me, causing me to get a restraining order against him. He was into some extremely shady business, and I wanted no part of it. Since then, I have conquered many fears that I once had about life, and about my future. I have met a wonderful man with whom I live and share two bunny children. My life is on a direction that I am very proud of.

That being said, it has been brought to my attention that he has recently viewed my LinkedIn profile, and even this blog. I am here to say that I am not afraid of you, sir, and no amount of your presence could EVER make me regret getting out of the scariest, most devastating situation of my entire life. I am a happy, healthy, full-grown woman nowadays, and your desire to seek out information about me only makes me sad for you. I wish you no good fortune, as the hell you put me through does not warrant my encouragement, but I do wish that you would get back to whatever life you have made for yourself and stay the hell away from mine.

I will most likely end up taking this post down, but it feels good to put it out there, if even just for a little while.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support and love.

Opening a Restaurant.

Well, I have embarked on a new adventure.

In my last post, I mentioned that I would be starting a new position at The Luminary, working under Chef Eli Kirshtein. Well, I have begun! It has been a slow process, and the opening has been delayed by weeks, but it has been one hell of a ride.

We started last week by cooking the full menu for the staff. I went in this past Thursday and prepped up my station for 8 hours. Then, the following day, I came in and plated all of the desserts for our front of house group. We got some feedback from them and Eli, and we made adjustments accordingly.

After that, we had a weekend off. As I said, this process has been slow. I was having a conversation with one of my fellow line cooks about it, and he said, "You know how much it sucks to not work weekends? Well some people have EVERY weekend off!" We both laughed, because we know that neither one of us will know that luxury for many, many years. I guess, in our eyes, we didn't see it as a luxury. We saw it as an inconvenience, and a severely depleted paycheck.

So, yesterday, Garden & Gun magazine and Ralph Lauren Home bought out the restaurant, even though we aren't open yet. We served ~65 people, and it was fun! We started everyone out with gougeres, seafood towers, and beets with bernaise sauce. After everyone was seated, we served a bibb lettuce salad with a tarragon vinaigrette. The entrees were a choice of fish, steak frites, or the vegetarian option which featured some delicious chickpea flour fries (I'm not sure of their real title). I made sure to try a bit of each plate, and they were all wonderful. The dessert course was profiteroles filled with coffee diplomat, served with a hazelnut caramel sauce. SO yummy.

So anyway, after service, we talked to Chef Eli, and he told us that we are still waiting on our liquor license to be finalized. We will hopefully be back in the restaurant on Tuesday to start prepping again, and then we will most likely open later in the week. I cannot wait to work a full-time job again! I am immensely excited to work with this group of folks in the kitchen, but I'm ready for it to start already. I feel like part of me is missing every time I DON'T work a Saturday night shift.

Anyway, I snapped a few pictures during service, and here they are! I was so busy plating dessert that I didn't have time to take any pictures, sorry!

Bibb salad with tarragon vinaigrette and summer squash, fennel.

Vegetarian Option! Chickpea flour fries, squash, tomatoes, aioli.

Steak frites.

Fish with tomatoes and slaw. Sooooo good.

Spinning Plates.

For awhile now, I haven't felt like posting. I have been getting used to life outside of school, and everything seems boring, mundane, and not worth writing about.

Then I watched Spinning Plates, a documentary on Netflix featuring three very different restaurants and their day-to-day operations and goals. It has me thinking positively, for the first time in awhile.

I am PROUD to be a part of this industry. Whatever tiny part I play in the grand concerto of the food world, I am happy to be here, doing what I do. I may get paid terribly, worked too hard, and bullied, but when I prove myself, the joy that comes from a satisfied look on peoples' faces who are consuming my food reassures me. I may not be making much of a difference right now, but one day, I will. I just know it.

That being said, I want to catch everyone up on what has been going on in Atlanta since Daniel and I moved here. I began work at King + Duke in Buckhead, and am still currently a pastry cook for them. In April, I got a second job working for Anne Quatrano at Star Provisions. I worked directly under one of the most wonderful women I have ever met, named Zibaa.

I don't think Zibaa would want me to dedicate this entire post to her, but I definitely could. She is worth more words than I could ever express. Her work ethic is nearly insane, her positive attitude radiates throughout the whole building, and her desire to see people excel is just invigorating. I learned a lot working for her at Star.

Unfortunately, I had to leave Star Provisions. I was offered a promotion within the Rocket Farms company, and for the longest time, I had planned to accept the title of lead pastry cook at The Optimist on Howell Mill. I had to leave Star to ensure that I could dedicate myself entirely to The Optimist, even though I would be making significantly less money having only one job.

However, because life is extremely unpredictable, I got a text one day from my externship pastry chef, Aaron Russell. He told me about a friend of his who is opening a new restaurant called The Luminary in an up-and-coming market called Krog Street in July, and that he had given him my contact information. Mind you, this is one of the first times Chef Aaron has ever complimented my skills and aptitude in the kitchen. Chefs are not notorious for their excessively complimentary demeanor, no matter how well you feel that you are doing. Usually they express their gratitude just like this, by a verbal recommendation to one of their highly-ranked colleagues that you, in fact, do not suck.

I did some research, only to discover that Chef Eli was on Top Chef season 6, and that he has worked for Michelin star restaurants in NYC, and also that he is a CIA Graduate, just like myself. I was intrigued, so I went to meet with him. After the first interview/conversation we had, my interest had been peaked. I love the style of food that he wants to serve, I love the atmosphere of the new restaurant (even though it is just now coming together, there is barely any furniture in the building at all), and I enjoyed talking with Eli. He is a no-nonsense guy whose wife is a pastry chef at another restaurant in Atlanta. In other words, he has respect for pastry people, because he is married to one. That is a rare quality to find in chefs, because most of them think pastry people are weird, quiet, nerdy, and prefer extremely shiny sheet pans to well-seasoned cast irons. All of those things are true, by the way, but it is one thing to think that about a group of people, and it is another thing entirely to respect us for our strange qualities.

Anyway, after much deliberation and advice-seeking, I decided to put in my notice at King + Duke, and to move over to work at The Luminary with Chef Eli. I am off on a risky, but exciting culinary adventure. I am so grateful for the opportunity to open a new restaurant with a group of people that I already respect. I think that opening this place will guide me in my future aspirations, and will also teach me a lot about how a restaurant should be run.

For now, though, I am working at King + Duke, and trying to hold my own by working six day-weeks without any overtime. I appreciate the very little downtime that I have, and I am using it to finish reading my Chocolates and Confections book, as well as doing research on how to know everything there is to know about the culinary world.

The one thing I love most about this industry that I work in, is the constant evolution. There is always someone out there doing something new, and trying to keep up with the new trends is almost like having a second job in itself. Watching Grant Achatz in Spinning Plates made me realize, more than ever, that things are always changing in the food world, and that a casual jog is not going to catch me up to the big names in this industry. At this point, I need to start out at a full sprint, and learn until my brain explodes. And when my brain explodes? Put the pieces back together in a new way, and maybe I will be the one who comes up with the next big thing.

Until that happens, I'm going to keep reading, keep studying, and keep working towards my end goal of knowing everything possible about everything. I'll let you guys know how it's going.

Why Not?

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my situation. Where I've come from, where I've been. I'm different from a lot of people in this industry, as I've never been to jail, never gotten into any sort of financial trouble I couldn't wriggle my way out of, and I'm involved in a stable, healthy relationship. I contribute my success to how my parents raised me; there is not a chance I could have failed with them as my backbone.

I also realize that, even in a year, my mentality has entirely changed. I'm here to question WHY this has happened. When I started culinary school, I had panic attacks and anxiety through the roof. Every time I felt sick, I would throw myself into a panic that would cause fainting spells, heavy breathing, and inevitable tears. I experienced these attacks while in school, while tossing and turning in my bed at night, and in the dining hall surrounded by friends. There was no escaping the feeling of walls caving in, and, obviously, my imminent death. (That's what you tell yourself when you're in the midst of a panic attack.)

Currently, I have not experienced a panic attack in nearly a year. Post-externship, I returned to school as a different person, even if my classmates didn't realize it. I would never have let them know about my panicking; I would never show weakness to people that I had to work with every day. Before I moved to Atlanta the first time, I would call my condition pretty debilitating. I was always thinking of ways to avoid feeling sick or too hot or claustrophobic or too spontaneous. It was like a never-ending cycle of questioning whether or not I would make it through class that day.

After I finished my time at Restaurant Eugene, something changed. I left with a sense of confidence that I could make it through almost anything without spazzing out. Why? What has the restaurant industry truly DONE for me? It proved to me that I could live in extreme conditions (no food, no water, no place to sit, not a single comfortable place to stand, elevated temperatures....) without failing. No longer was I afraid of what I felt I could not complete.

When I returned to school, I did not suffer a single panic attack, even working in an environment where I was constantly in and out of a deep-fryer, working in a tiny kitchen that easily made it up to 90 degrees on a slow day. I never thought to myself, "you will not make it through this." I always KNEW that I could and would tough it out through any situation school could throw at me.

Now I sit here, facing reality (in a distorted sort of way), and I'm feeling EVEN CALMER than I was before. Sure, there are days I spend fretting over how the hell I'm supposed to pay all of my bills on $340/week, but other than that, I'm living on a friggin cloud. My mentality has become centered around the idea of "Why Not?" I still deal with pretty extreme social anxiety, and an occasional desire to run away from everything, but most of the time I ask myself, "Why not?" before making decisions. Why not work 15 hour days? Why not work harder than most of my coworkers, doing prep for other stations and cleaning up areas that no one even notices are dirty? Why not ask every question that comes to my mind? Why not try new recipes, even if they are strange? Why not eat at a new restaurant, and try the oddest thing on their menu? Why not apply for jobs in France, or England, or Spain? What could possibly go wrong if I stretch myself past the breaking point? I can do this. I always could do this. It may have taken me longer to realize than most people, but I have an ever-tightening grasp on who I am, and what I can and cannot do. And as far as I'm concerned, I can do anything.

Inspired Bunny-Parent.

Well, this is it. This is real life.

I am working to earn a wage to support myself, and I am no longer waiting around for loan checks to be dispersed to me while I attend classes. I can't really explain how it feels, because it's not anything very exciting or fun to read about, but I feel like I've achieved something, finally. I graduated from school, and got a job using my degree. I am excelling at that job, and my peers and superiors are starting to notice that I am good at what I do.

For awhile, I will be living paycheck-to-paycheck, as most cooks do for their entire lives, but I have bigger plans for myself. One day, I want to be in charge of something. I want to work my way to the top of the pastry kingdom, but for now all I can do is wait, and put in my time on the line.

My job is going very well, I work for a great company. There are always problems within the restaurant industry, but Rocket Farms is doing a great job to try to correct common problems. Most cooks feel under appreciated and over-worked, but not with this company. Here's an example: When I first started, there was only one dishwasher. There are two large dish pits that have to operate for the entirety of service, and it is physically impossible for one person to maintain both stations. Well, I say that, and then Jeff did it all by himself for WEEKS. He worked every day, by himself, scrubbing pots, changing dishwasher water, running glasses, putting away dishes, and sweating from the steam. He never stopped smiling. He maintained the BEST attitude of anyone in the kitchen, even though the rest of us weren't even working half as hard as he was. Now, at a lot of places, they might make you a cake, or have the staff clap for you for a minute, but Rocket Farms heard about how well Jeff was doing, and they took it a step further. Jeff got promoted, he is now training to work in Garde Manger, and he received a copy of the "Food Lovers Companion" , which all of the staff signed. The company really REALLY wanted him to know how much they appreciate him.

I loved every moment of the speech that Chef Stafford gave about Jeff. It was truly inspirational to see that someone who starts at the very bottom can work their way up to a higher station in just a matter of weeks. All it took was a little positivity, and a lot of hard work. I can succeed in this environment, just like Jeff did. I stayed with him most nights until 1 AM, helping him try to close up dish stations that were constantly being bombarded by plates and 9-pans. My efforts did not go unnoticed, Chef Stafford is working on adding "points" to my file this week, so hopefully I will be eligible for a raise pretty soon. What a great feeling.

Other things going on in my life? Not too much. Daniel and I rescued a bunny from Young-Williams Animal Shelter in Knoxville a few weeks ago, and we love her company. She truly is a light in my life. We named her Macchiato, because she is the color of coffee, and she's finally gotten comfortable enough with us to come flop down by our sides when she wants head scratches. That girl is a fiend for head scratches. We're working on trying to find her a younger sibling, because bunnies really need companionship more often than we can give it to her. For now, though, we're converting our second bedroom into an ultimate bunny playground, so that she can have a happy life. I love the process of learning about a pet, especially what makes her happiest. It has been a fun few weeks with her.

Daniel feeding Macchiato some kale.

Right before the flop.

Anyway, I knew I hadn't posted for awhile, and it may be awhile again before anything interesting happens, but I thought I would leave a short update for my family and friends that I haven't spoken to since graduation. I miss all of you terribly, and can't wait to hear from you. Much love, friends.