Prong #1 - Catering
It's a short month, but I'm gonna get two posts in, dang it.
The first prong of the new plan of attack is I'm working for a caterer. I'm learning the catering business because I think my skills and temperament may be better suited to that than restaurants. It's still cooking, it's still a solid days work (when there are catering gigs), but it's more project oriented in approach, organization, and timeline. Quite a bit different than a restaurant, where they goal is to be ready for anything on the menu, and make it 75 times, exactly right and exactly the same, every night. Catering is more like make it exactly right ONCE, for 75 people.
There's an interesting stigma amongst restaurant line cooks that cooks that can't hack the restaurant kitchen do catering. But catering usually is better money, shorter hours, more creativity, and less wear and tear on the body and soul.
I'll take it!
The only downside so far is that it's usually not as steady as a restaurant gig. But I'm cutting down on my monthly overhead, so that should take a little of the pressure off during the occasional slow week. And I definitely can use a little more flexibility in my schedule than when I was working 75-80 hours a week at the restaurant.
So far, so good. Today we had a good chat about how to proceed from here. We're going to push ahead with plans to keep us busy during the gaps. Gotta keep bringing the pain.