VCBW 2012

From the category archives:

Kitchen Porn

Thumbnail image for A Cook Is A Cook

A Cook Is A Cook

by Jacob Galbraith 10.03.2011

There is a certain unflattering imagery that accompanies the professional label of “cook”: a sad, tired individual wearing a stained apron and a dirty shirt, simultaneously grasping a spatula and a fry basket. “Chef”, however, paints a more favourable picture, and so it makes sense that a large portion of my contemporaries shy away from [...]

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Thumbnail image for Selling Out – Part 2

Selling Out – Part 2

by Jacob Galbraith 08.31.2011

(Read “Selling Out – Part 1“)
I walked away from the orientation sessions with a comprehensive knowledge of three things: the benefits packages, breakfast pastries, and the peripheral interests of several people I would never speak to again. At the outset I understood that I was signing up for a culture shock, but the environmental contrast [...]

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Thumbnail image for Selling Out – Part 1

Selling Out – Part 1

by Jacob Galbraith 08.15.2011

I’m a large doses kind of guy, which isn’t always good. I’m lucking that hard drugs never found their way into my bloodstream, because I’d be the dead kind of drug addict, for sure. I either do something exclusively for years, like obsess over pop punk as an angsty middle class teenager, or pour myself [...]

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Dear Cooking

by Jacob Galbraith 02.25.2011

We were a classic example of “is she really going out with him?”. I was a fresh faced 19 year old at the tail end of the “year off” of school that has always had a way of turning into either a decade or forever; I had yet to be determined. You, on the other [...]

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Honeymooning

by Jacob Galbraith 01.26.2011

So I’ve managed to change some pretty sizable pieces of my life in a short amount of time, among said changes: place of work. The details aren’t gruesome, typical even, but I’ve landed where the grass appeared to be greener only to discover that it is indeed greener… for now. By that I mean that [...]

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Thumbnail image for The Age of Indigestion

The Age of Indigestion

by Jacob Galbraith 01.06.2011

The holiday season for this little line cook, and several others I’m sure, was spent juggling chaos and leisure, alternating between long days of feeding the frenzied and festive masses and taking some time to sit down, drink some wine, and enjoy the presence of people I care about; the bitter is seldom far removed [...]

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Thumbnail image for Why So Serious?

Why So Serious?

by Jacob Galbraith 12.02.2010

I remember peering through the clutter of scraped off plates and often burnt pans, from the dish pit to the line, marveling at not only the pace, but also the collective focus of the entire brigade, evidenced primarily by the expressions they wore on their faces; the seemingly impossible combination of a furrowed brow with [...]

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Know Your Enemy

by Jacob Galbraith 11.11.2010

The culinary world is full of vices, some of which you drink, others you smoke, while edible etceteras find themselves filed in the knotted bellies of kitchen folk everywhere. While some cooks find their fingers up to the knuckle in at least one of these pies, I only ever catch a [...]

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Thumbnail image for Dirty Work

Dirty Work

by Jacob Galbraith 10.26.2010

Whoever it was that decided white was the shade of choice for cooks and chefs was clearly a comic genius, because I don’t know a bigger challenge than keeping those whites white while handling the astonishing array of food that shows up through the back door on a daily basis. I’ve [...]

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Thumbnail image for Thank You

Thank You

by Jacob Galbraith 10.11.2010

The kitchen is the only place that I know that takes these two little words and does with them whatever it pleases. Gratitude is miles away towards the end of the night when the customers are pecking at the ruined corpse that once was a well prepped station, yet I still find myself giving thanks. [...]

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Thumbnail image for Shit Show

Shit Show

by Jacob Galbraith 09.22.2010

Hollywood tainted love by leading people to believe that a wealthy man can fall for a wig wearing prostitute, and porn spoiled sex by tricking men into thinking that all women secretly crave explicit exploitation. Professional cooking, in turn, has been permanently fucked with by none other than Thomas Keller and his portrait of culinary [...]

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Thumbnail image for CCC2010: Plenty of Cooks, Not Enough Fish

CCC2010: Plenty of Cooks, Not Enough Fish

by Jacob Galbraith 09.16.2010

In a word, I expected shenanigans when I signed up to attend and write about the 2010 Canadian Chef’s Congress. As a most unfortunate side effect of being a cook first and writer second (boyfriend third), is that I couldn’t wrangle the entire weekend off, and therefore found myself missing out on the Friday night [...]

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