I was a waitress, a model, a dancer, but not a cook. When I was a server I would watch the owner of the restaurant and think about how sweet his job was, it taught me that I wanted to have my own restaurant someday. I felt that all the power of a restaurant comes from the kitchen, so that is where I decided to start. Once I was in my first kitchen I loved it so much and I realized that there is an infinite amount to learn. I started leaning towards becoming a chef. Over the last four years I ignored the other parts of myself and focused only on becoming a cook.

I’ve realized that I’ve grown a lot the last four years but I need to stay focused on my original goal. My goal has always been to be a restauranteur. To design a place for me, that fits my life. I’m not a cook, I’m a restauranteur, I’m a girl and I’m not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to become a “chef”. I’ll be a cook on my own terms. I need to nurture the forgotten sides of myself. My goal is a humble one, a small place of my own in Saskatoon. I’ve always followed chefs that have the highest standards, I think that once you have those standards in place, beaten into you, you can go into the world to test your creativity. Everyone does this in their own time, it doesn’t need to take years.

Since I quit my job, my creativity and inspiration have been keeping me busy. My mind is flooded with ideas about design, business, menus, food, and music. I’m finding the joy in cooking again, connecting it with all these other ideas seeing the goal as a whole. I’m honing the skills that I’ve learned over the years. If I seemed distracted while blanching those fries it’s because my eyes, ears and mind were open to everything that was going on in the restaurant around me.

The farm is in an increadibly hot part of B.C. up near Lillooet. There are wild horses, tall grass and bears. Right now Gabriel has walla walla onions, cherries, garlic and baisil. The quality of what he produces is the best I’ve seen. The best tomatoes and peaches I’ve ever had have been from his farm, and I can’t wait to have some this year when they are ready.

The Farm is called Sapo Bravo, I’m not sure what it means and I forgot to ask. He offered us beer, and he said he normally brews his own but he has been busy with his new baby. We had home made goat cheese on crakers and some fresh cut greens. We were close to his farm because we were on a dirt bike camping trip. I don’t dirt bike, I just lay around and read.

I want a dessert made out of these, because they are new to me. I think they are so interesting, because they are wild and beautiful.

I love local organic swiss chard. When it’s fresh it is amazing. We’ve been getting some local organic stuff from an organization called Sole Food located in East Van. Spinach and radishes as well.

I’ve been reading alot about where chefs get their inspiration from. In the last food and wine there was an article about Pierre Gagnaire and his inspirations, which ranged from art to perfume. That must have been in the back of my mind when I spent the day here. Everything looked so good to me, the colors and lines, the wild, earthy shapes and smells. Variety is a very appetizing thing to me, the amazing variety of ground covers that covered the land was somthing I haven’t seen. It made me think of the mixed green salad I’ve had once and never again. Each leaf of the salad was different and crisper and fresher than I’ve ever had but warm from the sun, just picked, never been refrigerated. One was sour like sorrel, one peppery mustard, one sweet baby kale, licoricey, spicy, sweet, topped off with kale flowers. These flavors were only hightened by the addition of some lemon, fine olive oil and sea salt. The colors were dark, purpley green, frilly white, bronze, yellow, violet, baby green. Someday I’m going to have that salad again and the ground cover reminded me of that. In nature there are so many beautuful lines that get me thinking about the lines and thought that go into plating a dish. Arbutus trees seem like exotic birch trees, and birch trees, fir, pine and eucalyptus is what I want. These pictures are for me to draw upon when I need to create dishes down the road and I wanted to share them.

Really satisfying staff meal made by Guillaume. Split pea soup, maple glazed pork belly, and poached free egg. That’s it that’s all.

Kyle and I had 2 days off in a row together so we jumped in the car with no plan and started driving to the island. I packed my new smart girl bag complete with pen holder and not much else and we just drove around, took ferries and listened to music all day. We bought some wine and cheese and we had a picnic. We went to Salt Spring Island and saw the cheese makers there, their farm had cute goats and chickens foraging in the woods for slugs and apparantly they have amazing eggs available but they were sold out when we got there. We went to the good wood fire pizza place in Victoria and the pizza was super good, then we camped for the night.

Haha! I used to repeat this to myself out loud at my station in a creepy, mantra-like tone to make Scott Dicks laugh.

Everyone was really awesome about that bottle rage post. I thought no one saw it because I removed it an hour after posting it, but I got alot of responses. I just felt bad about venting negativity on the internet. It was some PMS and some anger. I just can’t put into words clearly what is so frustrating to me. It isn’t monotonous jobs, because I love those. I just know that most of the really driven cooks that I know were on meats within, at least their first 2 years of cooking. Bryan, Jeremie, Kyle, and Scotty didn’t have to wait like 7 years before they paid enough dues to go on meats. I’m not different than them.

Robbie says standing next to the meat station and watching will only go so far, he says I need to be “fired in dry.” That is how you learn, you do, you get yelled at, you do better.

I’m getting all riled up again. Positivity, intensity, positivity, intensity.

I’m just going to set up my own kitchen and get Kyle and Bryan to teach me, and everyone else can go fuck themselves…positivity, intensity.