Damnit. Started off strong and then totally lost it. In my defense: pandemic. Also, got a job. Time to close out the year and try to get back in the habit for next year which had better be an improvement over this one or I’m going to need to speak to someone in charge. In fact, I think we should see if we can get our money back for this year. It sucked. Anyway …

Since May (dear God this has dragged on and on …) things have gotten better, then gotten worse again. In California we are now back in lock down after being out of lockdown but this lockdown is not as stringent as the last lockdown even though the cases are actually rising at a faster clip and more people are dying that the first time. And businesses, bars and restaurants in particular, seem to be ignoring the restrictions which is understandable since the government is neither enforcing them nor providing any kind of relief for the small businesses who would like to do the right thing. I am not sure what the best course of action is, but I feel pretty safe saying it’s not what we are doing now.

Cookingwise, I definitely got in a rut. I was listening to David Chang’s podcast on my walk the other day and he pretty much summed it up. Essentially he said “I’m f***ing tired of cooking.” And I’m right there with him. I love cooking, it’s still fun, but it’s less fun when you’re never sharing with anyone but the people in your house. And I think they are ready for something else as well. Except my daughter who keeps asking me to make fettuccine alfredo every other day … I think the child would live on pasta and parmesan if her mother would let her. Dave went on to explain that he misses different styles of food (he actually said he misses “white people food” which is ironic because I’ve been craving some Thai or Chinese food lately) other than the Asian styles for which he’s known. And he doesn’t want to try making steak frites because he knows he’s not good at them and he’d rather get a really good steak frites instead of making a crappy version himself. Seems like a bit of a cop out from a Michelin starred chef. I mean, even I can make steak frites, Dave.

But as he talked more, I got the impression that he and I are actually on the same page. What I’m missing is not “other people’s food”, but the experience of going out and eating something that is out of one’s own wheelhouse. The excitement of trying new/different/better things and the inspiration that comes from those experiences. Plus, the bond of a meal shared with friends and, and this cannot be minimized, someone else doing the damned dishes.

Well, the beginning of the long march to the new normal has begun. Vaccines are being approved and administered to health care workers while undeserving politicians like Mike Pence are getting shots on TV to show how safe it is. Because there are people who are more convinced of the safety of a vaccine when Mike Pence gets it than they are when a doctor or nurse who actually knows something gets it. Plus, Mike Pence is really just an partially sentient, animatronic Ken doll so they probably just shot him up with some petroleum jelly and told him he is a real boy and that was a real vaccine before sending him back to Gepetto’s shop. Anyways, that little barb out of the way, hopefully they (vaccines, not Mike Pences) are being manufactured safely, efficiently, and in massive quantities so they will be available to the rest of us shortly.

The tin foil hat crowd is already making excuses about why they won’t get vaccinated leading to a veritable explosion of memes about things that people put in their bodies without knowing what is in them (looking at you, hot dogs) and speculation that post vaccine COVID is just the chlorine the gene pool needs. The argument being that only stupid/crazy people will choose not to be vaccinated and then they will get sick and remove themselves from our misery. If you throw a drowning man a life jacket and he refuses to put it on because he doesn’t know what it’s made of, you’ve done your bit … the rest is on him.

Okay, enough pandemic doom and gloom. I actually managed to find a job at a brewery in all of this lunacy. It’s part time and I’m the absolute lowest man on the totem pole, but it’s a job in a brewery that makes decent beer. I consider it a step on the long road to someday opening my own brewpub. When such things can be open again.

On to 2021. Already have my first post for the new year lined up. Well, the idea. Still have to write the post. It’s still a head start.