It's a good thing that growing and being allowed to grow on your own is something we are privileged with. In hindsight, I think a lot of people would agree that we were all arrogant, ignorant, selfish, lame and (here it comes) disrespectful coming up as teenagers. And this is definitely something bleeds through in young adulthood. But! If you have a good head on your shoulders, you realize how grateful you should be of the people who helped you and maintain you.
Let's cut to the part where this correlates to cooking very quick like so I don't sound like quite the drunk softy I am. And this will go in side by side descriptions.
It is currently 3:13 a.m. in the morning. I am sitting at a computer in my parents house in the suburbs of Houston where I was born and raised. I just got through smoking a cigarette in my parents progressively modified backyard. At the end of my smoke I threw my cancer stick, as I normally would, in whichever direction and proceeded to head to the back door hoping not to make to much noise. On my way in I stopped. I felt guilty for trashing the, ultimately, microscopic portion of the backyard my dad works to maintain and be proud of.
***Enter food correlation***
Very recently at work I had forgotten to store a rare and exclusive fish properly. For those who identify... it was a scorpion fish. The man who brings our fish to us is a very endearing and extremely knowledgeable Greek (correct me if I'm wrong) named Frikso. We are extremely appreciative of this man at my restaurant for the work, quality, care and love he puts into his work. Not to mention his reciprocation in endearment for our restaurant and the respect with which we handle his product. The beautiful white and meaty scorpion I failed to store properly turned opaque and ghostly looking, thus leaving it unappealing and not worth serving. While I did catch an appropriate and deserved amount of verbal lashings, after a good moments thought, that wasn't my main concern.
I started to think about Frikso and his work. I certainly didn't catch that fish myself. I felt as though I had completely shit on his hands and his hard sweat and dedication. Granted I don't know if he is the one who specifically extracts the fish from water or not just yet is not the point. While a great deal of restaurants get their fish from large trucks frozen and in lame boxes, we at Stella get ours from a crazy amazing Greek man in hand delivered ice chests from the back of his foul smelling 02' suburban at ungodly late hours of the night. If I need to draw out the reason and rhyme as to why you would need to RESPECT this mans product, then you probably shouldn't be reading this.
This is just one of the few bigger lessons I'm learning in this game. Needless to say, I haven't stored a fish improperly since, and I also picked up that cigarette butt from the grass in threw it in the proper disposal container.
Love
Jay
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