Going Live

Just like with live television, broadcasting a live podcast can run into problems. Last week, and a couple other time as well, we planned a live broadcast on Blogtalkradio.com only to run into problems. As I have had the opportunity to mess around with my options, I had a plan B. Since it is a program with very little visuals, I quickly went to a taped conversation that I uploaded after the conclusion of the conversation.

There are a few ways that you can create content for your podcast if the server is too busy or something interrupts your scheduled show. I often tape my shows from Freeconferencecall.com. This service allows callers to chat and record the conversation easily. All participants call into a common phone number and the host can use its tools to make a mp3 of the meeting. Most laptops and PC's have options for recording voice recordings. Sometimes the feature may not have options to change the format of the recording, so please check. If you record a conversation in a format not recognized by your broadcast service, you may need a converter software to get the recording in a format the you can use.

I enjoy podcasting. The conversations heard on my show are very similar to conversations I have offline and in real life. The food news, food culture, chef conversations, and the culinary industry are apart of my everyday. And I hope my audience agrees....

We set the goal of one podcast a week, and I hope to always go live on Saturday afternoons, however if we run into issues, we got to tape and upload later. The other reason that may force us to go tape is the availability of our guest. I'd rather tape a podcast with a dynamic guest whenever is best for them than not to get the conversation with the guest.

I got one scheduled for today, so catch us if you can:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon/2016/04/24/episode-16-maurice-miles-wy-dolphin-and-foodie

Respect Yourself, even if no one else does.

A lot of the time, if you talk with chefs who have been in the industry more than a couple of years, you will hear a few horror stories about bad practices, bosses, and/or jobs. There are some that will stay in a job until the bitter end. This position of not wanting to do a job search and interview procedures can lead you in position where it is no longer beneficial to yourself and/or the company. Waking each day with a dreadful disposition and coming home the same is not healthy, no matter who you are professionally.

Respect yourself enough to understand when it is time to move on and stop being afraid to step forward into something new. Fear of the unknown and fear of rejection can keep the best of us from making changes in our lives. But if you are not in a place that you can nurture and it nurture you, then the place you are occupying is killing your spirit and in turn you are probably throwing shade on other people instead of uplifting them.

I have been guilty of these negative actions myself. Dragging my own pitiful butt out of the bed every day, dreading what I was possibly walking into, and knowing that I would not be happy at all at the end of the day. Why torture yourself and others?

Even if no one every tells you your worth, still respect your value. You have trained and studied to become who you are, so why do you think less of yourself? Take little time out of your day to do a job search to see what opportunities are available. Sometimes you will find that you didn't know that your own company has put out ads to hire new people and sometimes the job of your dreams is out there waiting for your resume to get on their interview list. Yes, you need to act upon your own abilities, knowledge, ego, faith, financial needs, or whatever else it takes to get you motivated enough to seek out your destiny.

I was taught to adhere to a very blue collar outlook at the job site. Keep your nose clean, do your work, don't let co-workers know too much about you, don't date at the job, and stick there until you earn that retirement package and the gold watch. Unfortunately, most of that wisdom isn't valid anymore. Chefs, especially, find that they will be on to the next position in about 5 years time, often. The company doesn't have a lot of benefits offered, might not be totally full time, and with the fickle customer base, they don't want to have such continuity. Is the whole industry like this? No, but it is a fairly consistent experience within and outside of the culinary world. Most of us chefs can have a hard time writing a resume that is limited to 1 or 2 pages.

Please understand that the same skills that got you hired in your current position, are the same skills that will get you hired elsewhere, and if you have added to your skill base since you were hired, then your stock price has gone up and you maybe a more qualified candidate than you were before. Add to this, if you are seeking new ground while still employed, you are not as pressed for time as you would be unemployed.

I have skills that are needed by organizations, families, communities, and what have you. I have worked for homeless shelters, schools, charities, churches, restaurants, hotels, sport arenas, and a few bars. I have ever starved working in this food city and in this industry. I have been paid less than I am worth, I have worked with horrible people, bad bosses, and ungrateful companies. But, know this, they can take away your employment but no one can take your skills and knowledge.  

OMG, I was star struck!

At every convention, there are always celebrities that are invited and some do demonstrations or lectures. The International Home and Housewares show is no different. Last year I meet and hung out a bit with Micheal Simon from NBC's The Chew. Super cool guy who is as funny and welcoming as he appears to be on television. Rick Baylis and Duff Goldman were among those who attended.

This year, I meet someone that got me a bit star struck. Without ever seeing any printed picture, I spied a petite woman nearby our both and was struck almost dumb. Rumor had it that she was coming to the show, but I don't bank on rumors. So there I was face to face with a cookbook author to whom I admire just because the use of her book has been very important and reliable. I have had one of her books a good long time and I have not encountered any inaccuracy which is somewhat unusual. I love cookbooks and think of myself as somewhat of a collector. I have been gifted a few cookbooks and inherited a few, but when I purchase one I do so carefully. This lovely ladies book has been proven accurate and well done. I have often used her Cake Bible and loved it so much that I later purchased her Bread Bible which also is a very sound book.

Most of the time, I can read over the recipe and tell if it is workable and plausible. And when I find that I need to used someones recipe I typically need to adjust it to my specifications. With Rose's books I have not found a need to modify them at all. I have used her recipes in different ways other than the printed style but the reliability of her work is phenomenal.

It was such an honor to have met Rose Levy Beranbaum. She was gracious and lovely. She signed copies of her new book and gave them to our C-Cap students, she stayed and took pictures with everyone. I didn't mean to gush but I did. Her recipe for pineapple upside cake and the cheese cake has permanently replaced what ever recipe that I had used before.

http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/

Debate, Competition, Adversaries, and Allies

The topic of competition often comes up in dialogues about the food industry, any line of work actually, and more times than not, the dialogues can get heated. The art of debate seems to be fading away like a dream of an infant, quickly forgotten and hardly ever understood. I blame the years we, as a nation, spent under "mission accomplished" Bush as President, as he created the whole binary speak about patriotism. He helped the nation buy-in to the idea of "you are either with us or against us" type of confrontational speak that lead to this type of rational in many other areas.

Debate has a purpose that is not adversarial but rather designed to explore the topic at hand, amicably. A proper debate leaves the participating parties and the audience with a greater understanding of the subject explored. Nothing is black or white, all good or all evil, the world is a wash in tons of shades and colors. We more often learn more from our mistakes than our successes and allowing your opinions to change with additional information is an invaluable situation be to placed.

Sometimes this type of scenario can be present in personal relationships. I have witnessed groups of ladies where one member feels the need to compete with her peers, often to the destruction of the friendships, but the reality is the only competition that one truly has is against themselves. I strive to be better today than I was yesterday. I am one that will uplift my peers instead of tear them down. I have been known to go out of my way to lend a helping hand and would like to think that others who can will do the same for me when needed.

Within the food industry you may find yourself in the employ of owners that are overly protective of their customers, contacts, marketing schemes, or recipes, as if an employee is seeking out to steal them. This type of thinking is not healthy. It takes nothing to give others information or answers that will set them up to succeed even after they have exhausted the relationship with you or your organization. Instead we see the crabs in the barrel mentality when the reality is that there is more work out here in the marketplace that no one will ever be out of work for long if they have the skills. I can tell you how to to something or point you in the right direction but that doesn't guarantee that you will be able to get the same results that I have gotten.

Everything is situational....   (yes, I do know that this isn't really a word). I don't mind sharing recipes with people online or in person because many people that request the information will not make the efforts to produce the item, and they usually ask me to make it for them. I mentor and teach kids who like to cook and perhaps I will be able to start the next successful chef-in-training on the right path to excellence.

I have worked for folks who were victims of this mentality and they are usually toxic to everyone around them. It's easy to spot them in a employment situation as they are constantly seeking to horde all the information and control everything the employees do. This type of person tries to never fully explain the situation or decisions and is always very guarded. The rationale behind this behavior is to make themselves feel important by force, so to speak. No one can do any work unless they go through so-and-so, can't make a single decision, can't move on to the next thing, or use their own ideas, unless you get approval.  Too often this creates a false dependence upon another person and can be a fear reaction of the person who is exhorting control, afraid that the employee will run away with their business, do a better job than they could do, or get promoted ahead of them.

Most people can mistake their allies as adversaries due to a lack of vision. It's like the cheating spouse who constantly knows they are being cheated on, even without evidence, because they believe everyone is just as dishonest as their actions. I'm not one who adopts this thinking. If we are colleagues or friends, I am sure that there is something that makes you special and usually it is different than what makes me special.

Allies share, trade, and support each others efforts especially when the goals of both are the same. Two nations will become allies because they have mutual needs. They trade materials such as nation 1 is a great producer of wheat but nation 2 doesn't have the land type to grow wheat, so a pact is made to trade the wheat for nation 2's spices. The same can happen between to companies, two people, or two families. As a pastry chef, I have a few caterers that will call me to produce the sweets the client is asking to be made for their event, for example. The caterer has an expanded list of options that the client can chose from, the client doesn't have to search for these options with an additional company, and both the caterer and I will profit from the clients order, mutually beneficial.

Confidence in one's ability, self-confidence, honesty about you own knowledge and skills, understanding the limit of your own ability and where it can be improved, and having a centered humble spirit can be more valuable than all the money or influence in the world. It takes a certain type of humility that allows you to be in a position to both help others and be helped at the same time. No matter how much I learn or how advanced my skills become I remain humble because I have worked with and met some giants in my industry and I fully understand that there are some with skills that make mine look like a crayon coloring book drawings next to a museum quality painting.

In my opinion, seeing everyone else as your competition or adversary is a big red flag that this person is struggling with some deep identity issues. The need to always be in the spotlight, to control every thing and everyone, to dismiss people willing to help you or support you because you can't imagine that they are being honestly genuine, and always thinking of your needs as more important than anyone else's, are personality flaws that are not uncommon within the chef world. I also believe that the idea of celebrity chef is drawing more and more of people with these personas, who feel the need to prove their self-importance plate by plate.

The chef personality type is large and crazy but the real stars are those among us that are firmly rooted in reality while constantly reaching skyward to shine among the stars. You can shine as bright as the sun without trying to diminish someone else's light, in fact, lending your light to others doesn't reduce yours but in fact increases the light from you both.  

Finding Your Roots

If any of you actually know me in person, you may already know that I have somewhat of an obsession about genealogy. Tracing my origins back through time, generation after generation, isn't an easy task, and often the discoveries made lead to more questions than answers.

When I entered culinary training, a good amount of the work would follow along either a technique, building skills, or it would be a grouping of dishes from one country and then another. I was surprised to learn that several of the dishes I grew up eating were cultural invites into other worlds that my family were not apart of to my knowledge. I remember learning that the oxtails my Grandmother cooked were not like the ones other blacks cooked that had come to Chicago from the Southern states, but much more in the style of Italian migrants, for example. We ate smoked sausages with sauerkraut, and I haven't found much in the way of German ancestry. As neighbors tend to do, Grandmother shared recipes with neighbors and friends.

Sharing food culture with others and the history of foods, their origins, and development, became a fascination for me. I once took a class at Roosevelt University all about the history of food. In that exploration, we ventured back in time to the cavemen days, and viewed history and archaeology of food, how food procurement is at the very beginnings of civilization itself. Farming changed us from strictly hunter-gatherers of nomadic origins to settlers and villagers. Yogurt changed trade routes and therefore economy. I will share more of this in later posts.

Even before Henry Louis Gates Jr. began televising episodes of his award winning show, I had a curiosity for this type of exploration. My companion podcast is a type of this kind of exploration as they are conversations with people about their relationships with food and by extension culture.

Chefs, foodies, critics, writers, culinarians, educators, artist, and any sort of people who eat have some type of connection with food. I am loving talking with my guests about the subject. Just in the first few broadcast, we have seen how the conversations have taken us into conversations about social unrest, cultural and religious rebirths, and dietary changes for religious and health reasons. These are all just breadcrumbs along the pathways of creation and generational growth.

I have a small collection of older cookbooks because I like to compare what was popular 20,40,60 years ago to what is consumed now. The techniques used, the flavor pallet, the available food stuffs, and the changes in the social norms of dinning etiquette and social graces, all change and as they change so does the preferred foods. The modern mothers of today, often can't imagine hosting a dinner party that consist of 9 or 10 courses of foods, let alone design, produce, and prepare such an culinary experience but it isn't so unusual for the cultured society women of the turn of the century.

No matter the era of your birth, your place in society, your ethic makeup, for country of origin, your immigrated home, your racial background, your chosen profession, your political background, or any other thing in which we classify ourselves, we all eat and we all have a love/hate/health relationship with food.

If you are interested in taking part in our weekly discussions, please leave me a comment with your contact information, and I will love to schedule a broadcast to explore your food history.

Listen in to our discussions both live and archived: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon
If you like us, please Follow! I will be soon making this available on iTunes and other search engines such as IHeart Radio in short order.

Chef Introduction

It just occurred to me that I have yet to talk about who I am and why should you read my blog or listen to my podcast.... Silly me.

I am Chef Elaina Alexander, a pastry chef, Chicago native, age 45, wife and mother of three teenagers. I have been in the food service industry since 1988. Please don't do the math on that, LOL. I have worked as some of the best prestigious hotels, sporting stadiums, and restaurants in the Chicago. I currently live in a South suburban town just outside of Chicago and I work as a chef instructor for two organizations serving young people. I also serve a small clientele through my service for custom created cake specialties.

As a culinary educator I work with kids from 5 - 8th grade and 9th - 12th grades. This phase of my career is somewhat new. I started teaching about a year ago and it has been great. I have wanted to do some mentoring with upcoming new aspiring chefs, and I have done a little, but teaching has been more rewarding that I originally expected. All of the kids I work with are minority kids in two under-served areas on the South side of Chicago.

When I entered the industry, all those years ago, the number of options to learn the craft in a educational outlet was quite limited, in fact, if I am not mistaken, there were just three school in America, at the time. Since then additional outlets have sprung up or added culinary department to their universities. After completion of my culinary production education, I was recruited to continue my education at Roosevelt University where I studied hospitality management, graduating with my Bachelors degree. I went back to school a few years ago and studied for my M.B.A online.

I have had the pleasure to serve Dick Chaney, Barrack Obama, Bill Clinton, Carol Mosley Braun, Ray Nagin, the McCaskey family, and a host of NFL stars and their families, to name a few. I have always enjoyed working with all the differing groups of people that my career has afforded me to work for and with. Each opportunity has given me more than I gave away. But my heart has often gone out and been the happiest when I have worked with social organizations. I worked for a homeless center for women only in Chicago named Deborah's Place, a couple of church organizations, and now in a community center and a Chicago Public High School.

I strive to constantly learn more and improve myself each day. I have been blessed to continue in this field for all these years and I am looking forward to see where my path is going to take me next. My eldest child is now a college freshmen looking to study nutrition, I guess my influence has been productive.

The more I submit, the more you can get to know me.Since everything and everyone is touched by food, health, diet, the food industry, and food and diet trends, I will strive to talk to all of those subjects and more as time goes by.

Stay tuned.

Conversations About Food - Podcasts

As a companion piece to this blog, I have launched a podcast of the same name. There I will explore the roots of, the relationship of, and the changes of people's relationship with food. Everyone has a history of eating, cooking, loving, and hating some foods. There are all sorts of traditions, religious restrictions, feasts days, fasting days, dieting, likes and dislikes surrounding folks intimate connections with eating and cooking. It's aim will be to talk to professional chefs, homemakers, athletes, musicians, the whole gambit of professions and phases of life.

I will update this list as I post the broadcasts. Please subscribe and tune-in regularly: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon

Ep#1: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon/2016/01/18/conversation-with-chef-yehoshuah-yehudah

Welcome

This blog, and its companion podcast, is dedicated to the explorations of many things revolving around the food service industry. I have been a professional pastry chef in Chicago for over 24 years and I intend to have discussions about many related topics from the changing face of the industry, the pitfalls of business ownership, food trends, what it is like being a minority in this line of work, culinary schools, competition, and just about anything else.

Why did I pick this name for my page? Well, when I was a kid, it was trendy to have, hanging on your wall, the giant fork and spoon. These decorations were wooden or metal and often found in the dinning room or kitchens, as a kid I tried to imagine how big you must be to be able to use them at the dinner table. As I grew up, these wall hangings began to fall out of favor, considered passe, but my love of food, and creating food art, began in the shadow of these relics.

The chef life is never dull and hardly ever simple. Everyone in the industry needs to balance the business with artistry to meet the ever changing demands of the clientele, and that isn't easy. When I began my journey in this industry there was no such thing as a "celebrity chef", no television channels dedicated to our work, and very little that accurately depicted what the day-to-day was like in a professional kitchen. Julia Child lit the torch that peered behind the curtain the separated the front of the house from the back of the house. She was the pioneer that demystified fine dinning and culinary excellence both at food outlets and at home. Anthony Bourdain wrote a best selling book "Kitchen Confidential" that peeled back the facade and took a hard look at the life of the chef will all that it can be, both accelerating and dangerous.

I have come to the conclusion that even with all the media exposure and the developed thirst for all things "celebrity", the Rachel Raye's, the Mario Batalli's, and Guy Fieri's, there is still a lack of respect for what it is we do, and a lack of understanding about what it takes to get into this line of work, stay in the industry, open a profitable business, and have any measure of success. I often find, that when talking to other professionals in other industries, I feel the need to illustrate what it is we do and why we chefs are not to have a nose turned skyward from anyone. Chefs all over the world run businesses, just like any other business, with it's demands of profitability, while using applied chemistry techniques to food stuffs, and mixing in artistry to please a wide audience.Trends change rapidly, similar to the fashion industry, and keeping up with the dietary and taste request of customers keeps chefs consistently training and retraining their skills.

Hopefully, my experiences, and those of my colleagues, will widen your perspective and understanding of this chef life we live. My goal has always been to open my own outlet in Chicago, as for now, I am delving deeper into teaching the next generation of people with great cooking skills, and perhaps some will take their skills on to high heights within the industry. Everything has its pluses and minuses and here's where I intend to share them with you.