Perks of the Job

First, a quick brag: I got an A (for both theory and practical) in "Prepare Salads & Appetizers" Yay me (so what else is new, right?) I told my family about this and they said, "Yeah? So?" I told my ABF (Australian Best Friend) about this and she said, "So what else is new? You always get A's." Harumph! See if I share my news again with you unappreciative sods. At least DH had the good grace to give a half-hearted "yay you...but we knew you would."

Secondly, yesterday I went to the Fine Food Show. I got in for free (yay) and it was a 'trade only' event - meaning no people in search of cookbooks autographed by crappy TV chefs (only crappy because I am jealous of them). It was enormous. It took up the entire Exhibition Centre (which is 1 km in length) and it was endless rows of everything culinary. There were food suppliers, packaging suppliers, people with interesting new food products, various state and international tourism/food promoters, people selling all sorts of industrial equipment, cooking demonstrations and competitions - the entire thing, literally, was heaven on a stick for me. I saw some stunning sugar showpieces, tasted some very unusual things (some things just shouldn't be in a meat pie...), drooled over some seriously cool machinery (like this AMAZING dumpling making machine thinga-majig), fitted out my fantasy wedding cake shop (with the amazing refrigerated displays I saw) - in short, had a blissful few hours. I walked my feet off and satisfied my inner hunger with the 7,249 types of free food offers (but I avoided trying the Israeli CousCous on the notion of been there, done that.)

On my way home I realised that this is one of the major perks of my job. It was really, really frickin' cool to be wandering around this enormous space with thousands of other people (about 30% of which had their chef's uniforms on) ....and KNOW what I was talking about and looking at. For so long I've felt like a bit of a sham, a pretender, a fakey-fakey la la at this cheffing biz. I know I'm good at it, but in my heart and soul I've had a hard time convincing myself that I am one of THEM, a GOOD one of them. Wandering around this trade show, I finally felt like I belonged. It validated (again) my choice to change careers. It IS my real job.

Chef emzee, it seems, has arrived.