Bipolar Chef

I could easily do a food blog here in Steemit, as it is a huge part of my life even if I hate it every once and a while. But that never really was my intention. Partly because that is something I do as a profession and almost daily and Steemit is something I do for fun, and partly because my relationship towards cooking is a bit lot bipolar.

Hardcore professional

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I take food seriously. Actually, I take food and cooking away too seriously. For me it is form of art and talent that takes time and practice to master. I use infernal amount of time to thinking about food related things, new techniques, how to update old ones, how things work and how would them work even better. When photographers go to the extreme we call them pixel peepers, I’m like that when it comes to food. I’m never happy with it, there is always something I can make that it would be better. To make it be more something, bigger, better, extravaganza! You know, over the top.

When I’m at work food is not just a thing you have when you are hungry, it’s not fuel. It is experience. The type of food I like to cook at work is unnecessarily labyrinth. I think that sometimes food needs to challenge you and surprise you. I like simple ingredients, but prepared in a intriguing way. So the finish dish is something extremely simple and complex at the same time. Everything needs to seem effortless even if I had use days to master it. I need people go WOW to be even somewhat happy to my work.

Provider out of love

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There are also other personas in the inner chef of mine. The pixel peeper I already told, and other one is loving and caring persona. I like to cook for people I actually like and care about. I also like to cook with them.Okay, mostly I just let them watch or keep me company but you know! With friends and family the outcome doesn’t matter that much, if the process of making the food is enjoyable and time spend together have been fun.

I cook with friends way too rarely nowadays. Maybe because we all work, or used to work in restaurant business and we all are kind of fed up with it. So when we actually have time to spend together nobody wants to end up washing dishes. Good food is nevertheless a big part of our rare gatherings. Food has never been subject of money for us, we feel that the balance in the end is there among us even if we don’t count every penny.

With the family food is act of love even more than with friends. Even if cooking with family gets on my nerves almost every time it still is something we all honor and respect. As we are all adults and live in our own households the family meals are exceptional treat, usually only one or two times a year. But when the whole family gathers around one table the food is something that we prepare together and we put some thought in it. There are some traditions we try to sustain, but every often we come up new ones.

Our family have always known how to throw a party and organize big gatherings. We invest a lot in the food when there is family and friends having it, and I don’t mean only money, but also time and effort. Our family gathers a lot of the food we are having. We pick berries and mushrooms Okay, I try to avoid it if I can, sometimes is manage to do that, other times not…. And all men in our family hunts a wild game. So you might think it is ”free food” but as we already know, there is not such thing in life as free anything. It needs a lot of time and effort, even if you don’t have to pay from the berries you pick.

When you have used a huge amount of effort in something, you honor and respect it very differently. And when you honor it you don’t want to waste it.

It is only gasoline

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The saddest part of my inner chef is the one that hangs around when I’m all by my self. Or more like don’t hang with me at all.

When I’m all by my self I don’t cook. Ever. Food is something that keeps me running, and I try to eat somewhat healthy so the engine keeps running smoothly. It is kind of easy when you work in kitchen, so I try to do the eating at work so I wouldn’t have to do it at home.

Okay, I have to do some eating at home too. But it is mostly something that need no effort what so ever. By looking my eating and cooking habits at home you would never guess that I have sacrificed more than 10 years from my life for cooking. It is gross and I admit it! I’m not kidding when I’m saying I’m the person who considers coffee with protein powder mixed in as a ”meal”, there is kinda everything you need to keep engine running, but is it something I enjoy is totally different thing.

I don’t feel like I need to enjoy food in daily basis, I would love to live on only by eating take out, would be fine by me, but because that would be expensive as fuck I won’t. As a chef I have quite high standards for food when I want to REALLY enjoy it. So if I wanted to actually enjoy from every meal that would mean that those standards would only go higher and higher. And the bar is already somewhat high. @eveuncovered knows I have enormous passion towards bread, it is funny, because damn good bread has made me cry. That is something I mean when I’m talking about pixel peeping with food, that something is so perfect that it makes me cry out of joy. And that is not easy, no sir, not at all!

Passion makes it a bitch

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When you feel passion towards something it makes things hard and kind of bipolar. You feel joy, and when you get that feeling of joy out of something it is amazing! It makes you feel like you were high, it is like a drug! But the passion has also a down side. After a while nothing is enough anymore. To get that WOW feeling you need every time a little bit more, you build up tolerance towards it. It doesn’t even matter what is the thing you feel passionate about. When you learn more, you see more mistakes, and that makes you study more so you can correct those mistakes and be better. But more you know, the more you need to get high from it. It is bottomless rabbit hole.

I’ve reached the point where I don’t get high from food anymore, or extremely rarely. It eats me alive a little to be honest. I miss those times when I got that dose of endorphin daily. Oh, how I miss those times….