Cockadoodle Doo

It's been a long time coming since Culinary school.
Since then, I have:

• gotten married


• gotten a kitchen job


• had a baby!


• subsequently become a stay-at-home mom

As a result of my kitchen job, I had the supreme luck and honor of being able to cook for President Obama. I didn't get to meet him or even see him since security was so tight, and "cooking" for him is more of an overstatement, since I worked the cold station where hardly any cooking is involved. Nonetheless, I did get to help assemble some of his dishes. And also, when the evening was over, I took some sugar packets off of his table to add to my Presidential M&Ms souvenir. How's that for being a recent culinary grad? Not to mention six months pregnant!

While working at said restaurant- which, for the sake of preserving my job there(should I choose to go back), I won't name here- I learned an invaluable amount of things, which I'll share here. And, in addition to the prez, I got to cook for lot's of well-known folks.

I can cross cooking for Martha Stewart off my bucket list. As well as cooking for a handful of my culinary idols: David Chang, Eric Ripert, Daniel Boulud, and Wolfgang Puck.

I have seen what it's like to be in a kitchen where getting a New York Times rating means life or death. I never knew or guessed how much pressure there was. Food critics were treated like Gods. In the restaurant's early days, before the coveted review was published by the NYT, a cook was fired for serving undercooked chicken to a critic. The cooks were then given the mantra "check every chicken."

After we were accepted by the food world, it seemed like every night there were more than a few "VIP" tables, so the pressure began to wane.