Cooks drink drinks

When you are a cook surrounded by excess it can be difficult to moderate your lifestyle. My role models are hard as fuck. Cooks like Bryan can go out all night and into the morning for days. Scott Dicks looks innocent enough but the man drinks lots coffee, smokes a half a pack a day and stays up all night after his 12 hour shift playing guitar and drinking whiskey almost every night. Drinking everyday, smoking and pounding coffee are very normal in the kitchen. I try and be self aware when it comes to my body but it is easy to get into a routine.

When you look up to people like Anthony Bourdain and Hunter S Thompson all you want to do is be a degenerate visionary gonzo type. I recently took some time off drinking and caffeine and it was strange being in the kitchen drinking herbal tea. It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that I’m a lady and I need real balance in my day, not fake balance where I drink some water after my daily intake of beer and bourbon. I’ve been learning to switch it up, sometimes beer and bourbon, sometimes just a splash of red wine, and sometimes bubbly water and a day without booze. As a cook it is harder to not have a drink everyday than it is to just shut up and drink what is put in front of you.

I find myself reflecting on this because I’m at the chef congress and I done drunked too much, I smoked a pack of cigarettes and haven’t slept much in days. It’s fun, it’s been awhile since I’ve stumbled around in the soft forrest. I’m thinking there is a sometimes connection between drinking and cooking. We are surrounded by excess here at the congress; free booze everywhere you turn, weed and such freely circulating. Kyle took one look around the congress, his face lit up and then he took off into the night laughing hysterically. I found him a few hours later face down half in the tent, shirt off, one shoe, and a pile throw up.

The point of my story is that booze and caffeine make you pee out all your vitamins, and if you pee them out ever day for four years you can start to be haggard and you find yourself with no option other than trying to heal your ulcer with rooibos tea and cabbage juice.