Making Time

Why do we find time for the things that we find time for? That sounds a little longwinded and confusing. Why do I make time each afternoon to study German and Thai and write my blog and study food and do a little exercise (as yet not enough) but I don't find or is it make time to wash the car or tidy the house. Why? I don't know. 

Have you ever heard the saying that if we didn't have deadlines we wouldn't get anything done. I oven wonder at work why my intensity increases only as the deadline for lunch service approaches. Don't get me wrong I have gotten into work some days and tried to run like a crazy man to get things done as quickly as I can, but too often I burn out at some point of the day and much like a long distance runner who goes out too hard I hit the wall at some point (usually when the deadline has passed) and progress grinds almost to a halt. So basically I charge happily with awesome intensity through the morning only to hit the wall at clean up time and then struggle to the finish. Surely if there was any logic to life I should find the energy at the end of the day because the motivation at that point is an earlier departure and with the heading home my time becomes mine. And surely what most if not all of us are striving for is the opportunity to have more time to do as we wish. 

Why do I sleep in on the weekend when time is mine but set an alarm an get out of bed on work days? Surely I should be setting alarms on the weekend because there the day is mine to spend on me and for me. But alas the modern world for all its sophistication and talk of work/life balance this is not the case. Not even close. I started typing this 2 days ago and in truth didn't really have a plan, but thought if I just start typing it will come to me. Start it off and see where it takes you. 

In the 1800's people worked over 60 hours a week, they also slept or at least were in bed whilst it was dark. So take tomorrow. The sun will rise at 6.12am and set at 7.10pm. That is about 11hours of darkness. Prior to the advent of electricity that meant that most people would have been asleep or at least in bed for 11 hours of the day. 7 x 11 is 77 plus the 60 to 70 hours of work. Lets make that 65 hours. That leaves a mere 26 hours in the week for yourself. Less than 4 hours a day. Are we better off today? Short answer yes. How much better? Most of us claim the 6 to 8 hours sleep a night. 49 hours on average plus working 38 hours. That's 87 hours, giving free hours to do as we please (some of that spent in transit) of 81 hours a week. How are we using those hours? Maybe for some, during Covid they have spent more time around the house getting some projects done. Maybe in normal times nights out with friends and family or just a just a dinner for 2 at a local restaurant. For everyone it is different. How much time is 81 hours a week? That's over 11 hours a day on average even if we do an extra hour at work Monday to Thursday. As I type that I realise that your lunch break at work is not included there either. 

That thought set off a mental alert too. That half hour for lunch is still ours to do with at least to some extent as we please. How best to utilise it? If my workmates over the past few years are anything to go on it will be spent staring at a mobile phone whilst eating lunch. Now that mobile phone connects to the world via the internet as we know so we could do any number of things with it. Most likely though we scroll through social media feeds and if asked what we looked up we will be unable to recall within an hour or more. Why don't we use that time to read or do some language study through an app or meditate for 15 minutes? It doesn't have to be dead time. 

I guess my point is that it is your time to use as you please. I am a fan of audiobooks and podcasts which I listen to whilst in transit. Yes I consider this to be a reasonable way to spend my hour and a half daily commute but by getting the right podcasts on I could be using the time more wisely. I could be using it to be better informed. Having said that we aren't robots and do need some downtime every day. 

I guess the point I am making is that we do have a fair amount of time for ourselves and need to be better at making good use of that time. Balance is important though and no one can work 17 hour days, at least not for an extended period of time. Are we working to live or living to work? The choice is yours to make. Let me just finish off with a quote I heard some years back whilst listening to the Tim Ferris Show and his interview with Wim Hof. Wim has some wild ideas on icebaths and the like. The memorable quote was "easy choices, hard life or hard choices, easy life". Feel free to let that one roll around in your head for a while. It's time I put a fork in this one because it is done. Happy living people!!

Flying under the radar

I sometimes think that my simple lifestyle affords me some kind of immunity from the world around me. So far at least, the effects of a global pandemic which has impacted many millions of people around the world has in some way passed me by. Yes, over the last few months whilst waiting to find out if I still had a job it caused me stress and my wife was without work for 6 months and stressed out by the possibility of catching the virus which could have had serious ramifications due to her lower than normal immunity due to having her spleen removed a few years back, but the actual impact has been more mental than actually impactful. Sure we have eaten out less and maybe tightened our spending a little, but really I am actually in a better financial position now than I was this time last year, or at least will be if things work out with my new employer and my old employer comes good with my redundancy pay-out over the next couple of weeks. 

What do I put this relatively unscathed yea
r down to? It’s quite simple. Low expectations. If you aren’t biting off a giant piece of the pie you don’t have as much to drop down the front of your shirt. Life is always going to knock you down and if you’re standing at the top of Sydney’s Centrepoint Tower then you have a long way to fall and just as far to pick yourself back up again. However, if you are just plodding along above the water level then it’s not so hard to get back there or even climb a few rungs on the ladder. 

As I said above I am hoping my old employer, as of last Wednesday, comes through with my redundancy payment then I’ll be sitting pretty for a few home improvements and maybe an upgrade on the old car too. To be truthful, whilst many are struggling I feel like I’ve had a small win. That win eases some financial pressure in the short term and hopefully with a large chunk of commitment from me I hope that in six months time I’ll be breaking free of the rat race to launch my own small food based business. Sure it won’t be easy but if I can pull it off I’ll be setting myself on a path to a better life than ever before.

Most people working in hospitality would say that the life of being free from location is impossible for a person working in an industry where the customer is right there in front of you. I am hoping to utilise the internet and the socials to generate income. How? Well, initially I want to commit myself to 30 minutes of blogging a day and see what comes of it. As well as that I want to start a vlog. I love the youtubers who take deep dives on particular foods or restaurants. Maybe I can do the food review thing, or try to make the best ever homemade pizza or make brie cheese at home. Go deep food nerd and see where I come up for air. 

Podcasting also has a strong pull. It's another thing you can do from anywhere. What do you I talk about? How often should I do an episode? Special guests, where do I find them and so many more questions need to be answered. I guess some serious brainstorming and then a trial run or pilot episode. Can you do more than 1 pilot episode for a series? If I am making the rules maybe I can do a few pilots before official kick off. The Sporkful Podcast is one of my current favourites. Dan Pashman, the host started it in his home and now pays the bills with his income from podcasting. At least that is what I heard. That is the dream.

So we have blogging and vlogging and podcasting. And, have you heard of drop shipping? That buy and sell thing where you buy a product cheaply from, usually China and sell it in another online market for a profit. I like the idea of creating a small food equipment business. The goal isn't to get rich but to find products I think would be useful to me, test them out myself and then if of good enough quality sell them in my little online store. 

Once I have written up enough recipes and the like I could possibly think of writing a cookbook too. That however is a long way off. There is however one other element to the business and that would be manufacturing, on a small scale, products such as peanut and mixed nut butters as well as preserved chilli sauces and so much more. I have currently got my first apple cider and raisin vinegar batches on the go and am keen to make a really high quality product that can also bring an income. 

Life theory number 8,000,007. When you ever seek advice on investing you are almost always told to diversify your investments. The reason being that if you put all your eggs in the one basket then if it goes pear shaped you lose all you investing capital. If however you diversify, that is, invest in a number of areas and one goes badly, hopefully some of the others will be able to support the weak investment. Have you noticed in life how most of us humans gain almost all of their income from one job? So, as we have seen over the last 9 months in particular if you lose that job then you will have no fall-back to support you in your time of need. There is in most peoples cases no spreading of income that can make up for the loss of your job. This is something I would love to overcome. 

My first cooks job was with a fantastic chef who ran a bits and pieces food business with a number of small income sources which together made the business tick the financial boxes. I would say that most of the pieces weren't enough on their own to support the business outright, but in combination with the other elements formed an important part of the business. There was also the possibility of putting more energy into particular elements of the business if extra income was needed or even because the owner simply enjoyed working in that particular part of the business. 

Anyway I thing I have waffled on here quite long enough and have hopefully made some sense at least at times. Time to leave this here and continue to chase the dream!!

Language learning - my current methods for learning both Thai and German

 Hi. It's been some time since I have written about my language learning, though when I look through my posts the one on learning Thai was one of my most viewed. When I look to the title of my blog I see that it is Learning My Way Through Life and for the last 8 or 9 years I have been chipping away at acquiring a second language, in this case Thai. As my Mum was born in Germany I am also attempting to learn German by using Duolingo. This post is about my methods of learning these two very different languages and the very different methods that I am using to achieve the goal of being able to communicate with native speakers at some time in the future.

1. I think the first thing that is important for success is to have a good answer to the question why? Why am I learning the language? Take Thai. My wife is Thai. Her parents speak little English and her friends, when hanging out speak their native language. Yes many of them speak English well enough or even fluently in many cases but to be included in the conversation I need to be able to speak and understand Thai. I can't expect that as the only native English speaker at a table of 10 people that the other nine are going to speak English for my sake. So the reason for learning Thai is quite simple, be a greater part of my wife's life and also grow my understanding of Thai people's life and culture. 

German is a little more tricky. Mum was born in Germany and moved to Australia when she was just 2 years old. No area of my life will be damaged if I fail to acquire German language skills. However, I would love to get a greater understanding of my German heritage and would love to be able to wander through the streets of Munich and chat over a beer or two with the locals and really get a feeling for that aspect of where I come from. 

2. Method of learning. Where do we begin to learn a language and I guess, what am I willing to invest in the language acquisition? Early days learning was a scrambled affair, mixed between book learning and youtube clips. Some gave me a little bit of basic improvement but didn't really get me anywhere to the stated goal of good Thai language communication. My current method is to complete one lesson a day on the website thaipod101.com, add their vocabulary list to the flashcards tab and work my way through the flashcards each day. I have also set up a YouTube account called gerardthailearning via a gmail address. I then use Thai script only to search and watch videos. As a result when I log in to this account I get recommended videos in the Thai language. I like to watch cooking videos which I have found to be a particularly good tool as usually in a cooking video the cook or chef will run through the ingredients that will be used in the dish. This teaches me how to say many of the commonly used Thai foods.  Another tool I use is sending text messages to my wife in Thai. In early days I used what we call Karaoke Thai or Romanised script but these days if I am not in too much of a hurry I use Thai script and jump onto the Thai English dictionary on my phone for extra support. 

For my German learning I use Duolingo. I notice that there are plenty of critics of this method for learning a language. I find it easy to use and as a base for my learning I find it a very good place to start your learning experience. I am currently on  a 183 day streak of learning at least one lesson a day. In fact my current method of learning is to complete one refresher lesson a day plus one new lesson each day as well. On the weekend I complete all outstanding refresher lessons and one new lesson. If no refresher lessons are required I will do 2 new lessons on the day. Do I believe that by just doing Duolingo each day that I will one day speak fluent German? No. But I do think that this method or most other good learning methods coupled with an outlet for using the language you have acquired can lead to conversational level of communication. And that brings me to my next and possibly most underrated component of the process. 

3. Using your language skills. If you don't have an outlet for your language skills then you will lose them. Use it or lose it. Obviously if you have a friend or in my case a wife who speaks the language you can use the language when communicating day to day. Even that won't be achieved without making an effort. This is especially so if you have another language you can speak together. If that is the case you can easily forget to speak the target language or just get lazy and lapse back into you native language when it is too hard or you are too busy with life. Something I do like to do is practice my Thai language skills out at the local Thai restaurant by ordering our meals in Thai. When I first started doing this I was a little nervous of my skills but am now much better at the task. The big takeaway - don't be afraid to get it wrong. Obviously it is important to pick your timing with this kind of thing. If the restaurant is massively busy and you are starting out you need to be aware that the wait staff may not have the time to show your budding language skills much patience. If however it's a quiet midweek night then he or she may be more responsive. Also, if the waiter is looking at you and expecting English and they receive Thai or other language you have to cut them a little slack as you have probably completely caught them off guard. Restaurants are great places for this kind of communication but also try searching in your target language on facebook or instagram. Something as simple as searching ช้าง (Chaang) the Thai word for elephant or other object that came up in your last lesson can be a cool outlet to reinforce what you have learnt. 

In this internet age it is so much easier to connect to people in your target language without even leaving home. I heard of a person who used Skype to chat in Russian. First they typed hello in Russian and then used the responses to their first conversation to connect to another Russian speaker and so on. I guess the tip is quite simple find an outlet. I live in an area of Sydney with a large Chinese population and if I decided to learn a Chinese language would have plenty of victims to test out my skills if I decided to learn. There are plenty of avenues available for this part of the learning process. You are only limited by your imagination.

Anyway, it's time to go. Happy Learning!!!  

It's been some time ....

 Learning my way through life has been on the back-burner simmering away for a couple of years now. A lot has changed in our world and in my life as well. I have recently been given a forced transfer at work which will in effect reduce my income by 10 weeks a year. On the surface this is something that will make things difficult financially but that may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. I am hoping to use the onset of a drop in income to force me to create a side business blogging both here about anything that comes to mind and also on all matters food on my other blog which I have just renamed The Arcadia Glutton. The name is a little nudge toward the great Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his fantastic life change British television show River Cottage and all it's spin-offs. From memory Hugh's catering company brand is called The River Cottage Glutton. Arcadia is the name of the street that I have lived in or is that on for the last 20 years and the home base from which I create my food. Arcadia is a word with Greek origins which refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. It's a nice street but the definition would have to be a little over the top. 

As well as blogging I am keen to have a crack at Vlogging about life and food. The first step in that process is to spend some time giving the home kitchen a deep, deep clean and then setting up my little kitchen to invite in the world. 

The final and most important part of the plan is to turn my home cooking into a profitable food stall and eventually food truck  business that I can take on the road and hopefully, when running successfully, give me more control of my time and life in general.

The other avenue of income is to create a website to sell my sauces, nut butters and other products. Of course the key to this is to create multiple income streams which when combined together bring enough money to fund an enjoyable life. 

So, how does it all work? How do I make time for all the components that make up the whole? For now I need to commit to sitting down and typing for at least a half hour every time I find myself with a day off from work. Starting is the most difficult part. I was listening to an audio-book the other day which spoke about the writing process. It mentioned that one accomplished writer has the approach of sitting down to write at least 1 page each day. Doesn't matter if it is absolute rubbish as long as they write that one page. Starting is the hardest part. So many areas of our lives can carry this message through in creating successful routines. Take the simple task of taking out the garbage. The task itself might take 2 minutes to complete but often firing up to do the job will take many times as long. Do you ever find yourself with a problem in your life which you push aside and think "I just need to relax on the lounge and watch some TV and then I'll get to it." The only problem is that when you are watching the TV you can't relax because your mind is still thinking about the problem. It's only when we take action that we can settle the mind and really relax. 

Another area I wouldn't mind having a go at is running a food podcast. This is in a really early phase of thought on the matter. I listen to a podcast called The Sporkful which has the catch phrase "it's not for foodies, it's for eaters" and covers aspects of American eating and deep dives in various areas of the culinary landscape. The guy who runs it, Dan Pashman said he started it in his home and now makes a living out of it. Amazing what can be achieved in our modern world. 

I believe there is a market here in Australia for more local content in the digital space and am hoping to cash in and by having an enormous amount of fun exploring the possibilities. 

Act as if... Act as if you already have the life you want. Free yourself from the 9 to 5 and do something awesome. If fact just do something that eases the financial grief enough to enjoy your time on the planet. And of course remember to do as the good people at Nike say "Just do it"

Have a great day talk to you another day.

What's for dinner? Pea and ham soup

A couple of evenings ago, I headed into Aldi search of some German sausages. I grabbed 3 packets. I was looking for the sausages to go with the Sauerkraut I had leftover from Sundays pork knuckle. I've had their sausages previously and again they did the job.
However, whilst I was in Aldi I saw a packet of green split peas. The first thing that came to mind was pea and ham soup. I headed straight for the refrigerator isle to find a ham hock. No joy. They did have a piece of smoked speck though. I thought it should do the trick.
So, this afternoon when I got home from work, nice and early for a change and with a slight Autumnal chill in the air, I thought today is the day.

Did my lazy google search and found a pea and ham soup recipe on Taste.com.au. Had a quick glance at the ingredient list. Had everything except carrots. Walked up to the local veggie shop and bought two carrots and whilst I was there got a cut watermelon and some yellow peaches.


Into the kitchen now. I gave the peas a good rinse as you do with rice to rinse off the excess starch. I think starch is the right word. Anyway, I turned on the pot to high heat, my stove-top doesn't reach to a massively high heat, especially with some of my thicker, better quality cooking equipment. I added a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. I only have extra virgin ( buy it when it's on special, use it for most non Asian dishes). Then I started through the ingredient list and chopped and added to the pot. Started with carrots, whilst I was cutting them the oil became fragrant and wafted in my direction, only the addition of a little garlic could make it better. I didn't add garlic, at least not yet.I popped in the carrot, celery, onion and then the garlic. All ruff chopped and into the pot. gave them a stir after each addition and then added the peas and smoked speck, seasoning followed by 6 cups of water. Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer and then get on with your afternoon.

In my case getting on with my afternoon involved a little reading from Culinaria Germany to try to increase my knowledge of the food of my Mum's country of birth and a little of McGee on food and cooking. In Culinaria Germany they covered a little on potato dumplings which were said to be an essential part of Sunday roast in the region of Thuringia. In McGee I covered a couple of pages on Ice Cream. Just the kind of reading that makes you want to rush out an get an ice cream maker. I was good. I didn't.

The picture above left is about 1 and a half hours into cooking and you can see that the peas are starting to break apart and give the soup an earthy green colour. I think I am now getting close to the time to remove the smoked meat and then with a stick blender, which I haven't used in some time but came across whilst tidying up the kitchen draws last weekend, or was it the one before. The stick blender is great for this purpose and saves the transferring of the soup to a blender and of course saves on washing up.
I have now blended the soup, after removing the meat. The speck was so tender it was ready to fall apart. A gentle knife was run through it and returned to the blended soup. Thursday night dinner is done.

Bread

Spelt flour loaves -my first two loaves

A little over a month ago I made a sourdough starter following the instructions given on a you tube video. From that I have made bread each weekend and am enjoying the early stages of being a bread maker. It has been a lot of fun. After the initial week of building a starter from wholemeal spelt flour and water I have been able to make 2 loaves of bread each weekend with varying levels of success. Obviously, providing you care enough to try to get better, you will improve over time at least to some level of accomplishment.

One of the interesting things for me about bread making is the small number of ingredients that are used to make bread by this traditional method. In it's simplest form bread has only 3 ingredients, Flour, Water and salt. That is it. Four if you count time or naturally occurring yeast. I have a challenge for you. Go and pick up the loaf of bread you bought from the supermarket, or if you don't have one, grab one off the shelf next time you are shopping. Count the ingredients in the bread. I picked up a wholemeal loaf at work and had a look. It had 17 ingredients. I saw on a show on netflix the other week that the wonder bread that is sold in the USA has an amazing 25 ingredients. The commentator on the show made the statement that he thought that perhaps many of the people in our society with gluten intolerance are perhaps allergic to some of the 22 other ingredients in bread and not actually suffering from the gluten itself. This does not include the 1% of the population who are allergic to gluten. Whether or not this is true I have no idea and as little more than a bloke who cooks food for a living I can't say, but it does make you think.

A white loaf and a Multigrain loaf  

Kneading bread is such a homely old world thing to do. Bread is believed to have been made as far back as 14,600 years ago. So, when you make bread you are part of an ancient tradition, at least in your own way. 

So, what is my process? How do I manage my sourdough starter? It is quite simple really. In the first week of making the starter I added equal parts flour and water, day 1 50 grams flour and 50 grams of water. The starter was left out on the kitchen bench over night to begin it's activation. Day 2, another 50 grams of water and flour. The mixture stays at room temperature for all of this first week of the process. Day 3 the fun begins. Discard 100 grams of the starter and then add 100 grams flour and water each. Day 4 discard 150 grams of starter and top up with 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water. Around day 3 or 4 you will start to see and smell the fermentation taking place in your starter. What causes this reaction? The naturally occurring yeast in the air. Day 5 discard 200 grams and top up with 150 grams of flour and water (300 grams in total). Day 6 discard 250 grams and top up with 200 and 200 again. Day 7, I have good news, we are ready to bake. I got this information from the I love cooking Ireland you tube page on their video on how to make sourdough. Make sure you check it out.

Sourdough starter

How do I look after the starter when I only bake once a week? As long as you don't use all of your starter you will not have to go through the starter making process ever again. Currently thinking of who I can trust to look after it when I go on holidays. So basically what I do is after I have used some of the starter to make bread, approximately 2/3 of the starter, I then stir together 200 grams of flour and 200 grams of water and mix this with the leftover starter. I rinse the jar that I use clean it out and then pour or spoon the starter back into the jar with the lid left loose to allow air to escape. An airtight jar may explode when the ferment is taking place. This mixture goes into the fridge until the night before baking, so in my case that is Friday afternoon when I finish work. I take it out, put it on the bench and it is ready to go Saturday morning.

Sourdough pizza , the recipe made 6 dinner plate sized pizzas

Over the last month I have made a basic white loaf, spelt loaf, a multi grain loaf, pizza bases and as I type this I am about to pop a rye bread loaf into the oven. I have taken a little time to get the oven temperatures correct, sometimes the loaves have ended up with a little too much sunshine. Having Said that all the breads have been edible and most cases well above edible. In fact I would say that they were yum. Even the loaves that were a little darker on the outside were great to eat.
If you like the idea of making your own real bread at home so that you can control what goes in your food then I highly recommend taking that week, probably only five minutes a day to get the starter going, jump on board and go for glory.

Sourdough Nutella pizza

multigrain loaves

Just start typing and see what comes

I heard the other day about a prolific author who was asked how he was able to produce so many books whilst others really struggle. His response was just write 200 words a day and the rest will follow. So that is what I am attempting to do here. Start and see what comes. When it comes to blogging starting is my, I want to say greatest challenge, but really, it is actually just the first challenge. Now that I have overcome that I can see what other challenges arise. Providing interesting content might well prove a greater hurdle.

So what should I write about. How about food. I am a chef. I cook food for a living. I work Monday to Friday, 6.30am to 2.30pm. At least those are the hours I am paid to work. The challenge, I think I may be over using that word is time management. I want to claim more of my life for me. That is not to say that I don't give my all to my food and care about what I put up for my customers each day. I am one chef cooking  baine marie held food for about 100 to 120 people a day. I work for a company which leases the premises of another company (our client) to provide a staff cafe for their employees. We have a manager who is a Catering Assistant, a barista and another Catering Assistant or CA for short.

So, what do we provide. The Barista provides what you would expect i.e. coffee. The CA's set up a sandwich bar and provide mostly made to order sandwiches and wraps. They also serve the hot baine. I provide 3 different meals a day, two containing meat and a vegetarian meal to serve aproximately 20. As well as this I make a salad for about another 20 visitors. The menu changes daily and it is my job to write a new menu each week. On top of this I also cook breakfast. The usual suspects are provided at breakfast, bacon, fried eggs, sausages, hash browns and grilled tomato or at least it would be if we had a grill. It is actually baked tomato. On top of that there is a weekly cycle of breakfast, not so special, specials. Monday French toast, Tuesday sausage roll, Wednesday eggs Benedict, Thursday ham, tomato and cheese melt, and Friday scrambled eggs on toast.

I think I am past those 200 words I spoke about at the start of this piece, now I have to find some interesting content.

What do I cook? Let me grab a typical menu. Thursday is roast day, roast beef one week, roast chicken the next, then lamb and finally pork with crackling. I roll through and after four weeks it is back to the beginning again. These days it is about 18 to 20 kilograms of meat. Many chefs would cook the meat the day before and slice and reheat on the day of service. Personally I like to cook and slice on the day. Hot meat is easier to slice and there is less of a food safety issue if you do it all on the same day. Food doesn't spend as long in the danger zone where harmful bacteria can do it's thing. What temperature makes up the danger zone? 5 to 60 degrees Celsius. The objective is to keep food out of that zone for as much of it's life as possible. That's the brief of it.

Friday is fish day. Hoki caught in New Zealand waters. What is Hoki? Hoki is a white fleshed fish found in the waters around New Zealand, southern Australia and off the coasts of South America. Why do we use it? Because it is both cheap and sustainable. By the time it gets to us in a frozen packet of I think, about 5 kilograms, it is also boneless. The fish rotation is smaller than the roast rotation. Battered fish one week, crumbed the next and a simple seafood basket in week three. If the client invests in a grill there will be a fourth item to the rotation being grilled fish, but that is yet to occur. They are not exactly in a hurry to spend money on us, which I do understand in that we are probably see as nothing more that an expense, but a little bit of cash thrown our way would be nice. Fish is the most popular item of the week, which is why the rotation isn't too big. We sell about 65 fish on a Friday against the normal allowance of about 40 of a regular meat dish.

Somewhere in the menu is a curry, usually on a Monday containing chicken as that allows me to get my meat order in on a Monday to ensure freshness for the remainder of the week. I get chicken on a Friday for Monday's menu and then as required for the rest of the week. What sort of dishes do I cook, Thai red and green chicken curries, various Indian curries although the norm is one curry a week. There is a pasta dish somewhere in the mix. I have tried to keep them a little lighter over the last year but do still like the occasional creamy bacon and mushroom boscaiola. A burger each week of some type. Good old fashioned beef burger is always a winner, as well as pulled pork rolls, chicken fillet burgers, I favour the thigh fillet sometimes marinated in Tandoori paste or a satay chicken burger can be good too.

My company like us to run a selection of healthy dishes, at least one each day which are recipes created by the head office food gurus to provide a push in the direction of healthy living. They are mainly based around, in my opinion, the idea of less meat and carbohydrates and more vegetables.  This of course is what current ideas of health food entail but customers often feel a little ripped off if they don't get as much meat in their fish as they usually get in a typical meal. I have found that if I run the healthy meat dish up against the fish then the lessoning of sales doesn't hurt the menu's balance.

Beef stroganoff, pork goulash, chicken cacciatore are but a few of the regulars to feature. Grabbing a few popular dishes from your local Chinese restaurant is an easy way to fill the spaces including Mongolian lamb and sweet and sour pork.

As they say and so much more. I will save the rest for next time. I try not to back dishes up too quickly for basically I need, there are some exceptions as mentioned above, about 120 different dishes to fill a 6 week cycle. That is quite a lot but it is important to not become too repetitive.

More thoughts from the kitchen to come in future weeks. I feel as though I have achieved something here by just getting the first words on the page (maybe page isn't the right word). Screen perhaps is more digitally appropriate.
 Hope you enjoy
Chef G