Chef C.Trejo

Marshmallow Fondant

Caramel Apple Cheesecake Parfait

I called it sugar rush. Blue and Red Velevet cake layered with mascerated strawberries in between each layer. A 4 tone cream cheese icing encases it. Strawberry sauce is dripping off of it and of course an assortment of chocolate candies are decorating it. The imitation ice cream is just merely cold cream cheese icing but looks pretty believable.

Happy 4th of July

*Gathers all the prep* Now! MEN, WOMEN, OTHER... WE are about to go to battle against the evil ticket demon. Today will be long, you may bleed, but we shall not die. We shall endure! Our lives are at the hands of our enemies but we shall overcome this horrible day of Holi. *places a paper before them* This is our Menu. May it be burned into your memory. Make sure your Mise IS en place. *clergy prays over the cook soldiers* Our day will not be over till we have cleaned the floor with the blood of our enemies; we shall drink ale upon our victory. *Makes a captain Morgan stance* Now let us journey on to the battle field. Server walks in and yells, "INCOMING!!" *tick tick tick ticktick tick ticktick tick* ^--- ticket machine goes off. Cooks: CHARGE!!!!!! 🤣😂😂😂🤣😂🤣😂 Sorry.... this is how we view holidays lol

Beer!!!! Love the Lazy Beach flights

There is surely one way to kill moral in a kitchen: ignorance. It is ignorant to think that by blaming everything on everyone else is the answer to your problems. At some point you must try to own up your to part in the problem. My Head Chef is a huge hypocrite. He has blamed me for so many problems, and he maybe right, at times. I know I am not perfect and I am always learning. However, his real problems don't involve me. He doesn't see that. He is killing the moral in our kitchen and it is starting to feel like a sinking ship. I have found my life raft and I am jumping off. But before I do, I will do it gracefully. The kitchen is interesting. The old way of thinking is that everyone in the kitchen should follow their Head Chef till the end. Chef is always right; even when Chef is wrong. That has been the mantra of all kitchens or at least what I have seen. Yet, there is a new wave of thinking that is slowly creeping into the kitchen way of life. Chef is right, but isn't always correct. Which is where chefs are starting to see their subordinates talk back and defend their point of view. Which the Chef is actually willing to hear our their cooks and may conceed to them being correct gracefully. If you look at a playing card and on one side it's the 7 of hearts and the other side is just blue, the person who sees the 7 would say it is a red card. The person that just sees the blue would disagree. Even though those are two different answers, they are both correct. I wish people could just have that approach before they act when problems arise. We will evolve some day.

I love how family feels the urge to "warn" me that other family is stirring up trouble. This is why I love the kitchen. We may have our drama from time to time. But it is real world family drama that makes roll my eyes and just want to escape. I have really really bad anxiety. I think it was developed from the drama from my family. So I escape in my kitchen. I would like to just bake right now. And forget what happens in life. Some people read books or play video games. I cook. I bake. What do you do when family or just drama gets to you?

So this week will be interesting. I got to feed 200+ each day for a week. Needless to say, I won't have any help. And I will have to deal with people in my kitchen while I make my pastries. The joys of cooking 😄 hahaha understand that feeding so many people for any length of time is seen as a challenge that we must endure. Other cooks in my industry would just say, "Suck it up buttercup"

Cream cheese bacon chive puff pastries. Soooooooooo good! Family meal basically, where we make something small so the staff can eat. My contribution is cheese puffs 😄

You'd be surprised what happens when the power goes out. Some kitchens are equipped to handle such a unplanned event. My kitchen, NOPE.... We had a power outage due to a drunk driver that hit a pole. It happens from time to time but we usually will gain power within mins. This took hours. So many customers upset but it wasn't our fault. We didn't hope that the situation would take long but it did.

Understand when we order the vegetables and fruits, they come from a food distribution company. Those people could be like Hardies, Sysco, or Benny Keith. These people have the resources to transport food from all over the world to specific areas. It isn’t like we can just grab veggies from our backyard and serve it to you. So it sometimes gets frustrating when these distributors don’t bring us our food on time. Sometimes they have delays themselves or human error comes in and ruins our daily plans. So the next time you get angry that a certain restaurant run out of spinach or carrots, please understand that it is sometimes out of our hands. It isn’t like the chefs in the back are hiding these veggies till you leave to serve to someone else. We don’t have time like that to be vindictive.

This is a gigantic cake. 1x2 feet. It's yellow cake with cream cheese icing. I made this for work at my second job. There are children coming in on Tuesday and they deserve a nice treat 😊 I think the parents are coming too, thus explaining why I have had to make such a huge cake. This sucker weighs 10 lbs.... the icing made the cake heavier. My banquet boss had to help carry it for me lol

I happen to get very flushed in the face when I get hot. I look all blotchy and sweaty. How can any man find that attractive? All I can conclude: cooking is sexy 😎

So, as I rung in my 30th birthday this past March, I began to question where I am going in life. If my personal info needs to be said, just know I am a 30 year old who has no kids; my career is my child and right now, it's a preteen. I work for a restaurant baking cakes, cookies, custards, and sauces. My confections are still raw but I got potential. I got into this industry a little late in the game. However this culinary world became my escape, it also became the reason I can't have a normal life. I may have not seemed dedicated to some; a fuck up to others. Highly educated only means that so much more is expected out of me: in other words, so much more pressure is put on me. This world isn't for the thin skin. There is no one that can make me feel less than I already am. As I began this question of where I am going in life, I have to ask the first question: am I just being dramatic? Now what you may not know about the culinary world is that we all have this code. Basically, you got to be a beast in the kitchen; no room for weak links. You got to be better than the next person but you got to remain humble. The amount of pressure given to cooks is skyrocketing into this "Rock God" status. A cook gets too ahead of themselves and refers to themself as a chef without "earning" the title is an easy target for ridicule. We have a pecking order in the kitchen. Even if some have years over you, others have knowledge, or even worse, shows how much of a bad ass they are. Yes, this is a male dominated industry but some don't discriminate against women. Some of the toughest and talented are women. But I can ramble on... So as I began to look at my life, I came to the question: what can I do to change my direction, because I know what's wrong with my life? I feel like I am stuck. I am in a culinary rut. We all have them. And it's ok if we have these ruts. I feel like at times we try so hard to look "tough" or "strong" that we ignore that real reasons of our set backs. It isn't weak. Weak is knowing that you are in a rut and just give up. Just continue to be in normal 3am to 12pm shift. Knowing you may do more in the kitchen but it's just not worth working along side some truly idiotic co workers that don't know the difference between confit or corn flakes. But again I ask: am I being dramatic? With that question of dramatics, it drove me to wonder: since I can't change my co workers, how can I change myself? Now before you jump down my throat, here me out. Never allow others to define you, but if I am the reason for my own unhappiness, I need to make myself happy, right? With many conversations with my boyfriend, we came up with a plan. Growth. I feel most fulfilled in life when I am learning something. My outlook on life is so much more brighter when I am working on a mission. Besides working at my current location, I have taken up 2 more side jobs. One job I part time at a private club, just working 2 to 3 days a week but the chef is amazing about self enrichment. He believes that building yourself and surrounding yourself with the best is crucial to achieving success. I agree tremendously. The other job is actually myself. I am trying to build myself on Facebook. I have seen how everyone is building their brands. It's amazing how small business is growing in the digital world. Besides side jobs, books are going to be my next goal. Any good chef has cook books laying around. I will post some of the articles I read in the next coming weeks. I love to read and watch documentaries about food. We truly need to know what we put in our mouths. Well, tomorrow is my double day. Work the morning in one spot, baking in the afternoon at the other spot. Pics will be posted later via Instagram!

I am so happy to be watching Little Women. It reminds me of older times growing up with my cousins. I wish I could go back in time and experience it again. Just for fun. 😊

Sending Prayers and love to the French community! ❤