Fire, knives, and tundra

Sunday, June 9th, 2013
10:55 p.m. local time

Wow, it's been a long time.  So long, in fact, that I can't even find my old blog, those bastards at google musta' deleted it or whatever.  NO worries, I needed to start fresh anywho.  

Started my new (for the summer) job at Sandy River Camp today; it's a fishing/hunting lodge very near Port Moller and Nelson Lagoon in the eastern Aleutians, Alaska.  Landing this job, in fact, is what in part enabled me to come home to AK.  I'd been looking for work in a kitchen (any kitchen!!) since I'd graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Portland, Oregon, last May (2012).  But let's face it, with THREE culinary schools in town, competition was majorly fierce.  So much so that out of ALL the job postings I responded to (and I've serially lost count of how many there were...), I only received one working interview, and that was last December.  A "working" interview is where you show up and essentially participate in the kitchen as if you already work there, doing tasks the chef asks of you.  No problems there, in fact I totally outdid myself by creating a pumpkin pie spice caramel sauce for the chef's roasted pumpkin dessert that hadn't come out quite the way he'd wanted it to.  Chef seemed very appreciative of my work... until it came time to go home, and suddenly he's dodgy about what time he wants me to come in next.  He basically told me "don't call me, I'll call you...".  Whatever, I made $100 off it, and still had my bartending job at the Lebanese place in SW downtown Portland.  

But bartending was not what I wanna' do any more.  Like, EVER.  O.k., there was the painfully brief cooking job on board a fleet of tugboats that I was uber excited to land... and I mean painfully brief, because it only lasted 11 days, 5 of which I spent discovering just how seasick I get by heaving my guts up on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.  And I was totally looking forward to traveling with that job.  

But, WHATEVER!, I'm cooking on dry land now, and loving it, thank you GOD!  We tried flying in yesterday, but the fog ceiling was only like 200 feet, and I really prefer my pilots to be able to SEE where we're landing, thank you very little.  We got through the cloud cover today no prob, and suddenly there's Bristol Bay, like, I could see waves breaking onto the beach below us!  Another first for me, YAY!  I was kinda' expecting this to be like where I'd cooked in Lake Chignik four summers ago, but this is pretty much tundra and there's not a tree in sight.  As it's only early summer, everything is still fairly brown... except the little red fox who trotted into the courtyard between the dorms and my kitchen.  I watched him through the window over my sink, he got so close I could count his individual whiskers.  I hope he comes back; I didn't getta' snap a picture of him!  

It feels really good to be gainfully employed again, like, I'm not cleverly 'disguised' as a responsible adult anymore; I actually am one now.  I know that sounds silly, but I can totally relate to adults desperately searching for real work at a point later in life they never expected to be in.  It's not fun.  And because of that, I'm gonna' make this one of the most awesome jobs I've ever had, however temporary it is!