My Last Hurrah

Next week I’m off to Germany to be part of the culinary Olympics in an official capacity of chair of the ACFEF. Imagine the many years I’ve spent in competition and I still have the passion to compete at whatever level I choose.  The dedication I see in many a competitor‘s is the desire to perfect one’s craft and it’s not about bragging rights or medals it’s about the desire to learn and grow. The greatest critics of perfecting  one’s skills for competitions is the desire to extend the envelope as much they can so one is always critical of one’s work and it should be that way. The Monday quarterbacks who sits around and brag what they can do and never compete are those who are lost in mediocrity bemoaning the amount of money one spends on building the team and get it to the Olympics or the World Cup or to any other international competition.  I believe it’s just pure selfishness and not seeing the whole picture that a chef must reach out to become successful.
I honestly believe that to be a chef and I mean a chef is a person who is willing to be able to identify new challenges during their career to make themselves more successful.  As we are all in the entertainment business and if we really believe that’s we can compare ourselves with the great entertainers of the world who are those individuals who are in constant change to perfect their craft continually. You really think that Escoffier sats on his butt and did nothing more after he became the   "father of modern culinary arts." Chef once told me that he worked continually even after he retired from the kitchen to promote the craft of cooking and the craft of being an excellent chef. I’ve been blessed in my life to be surrounded by chefs like this and it always amazes me that I still hear people moaning and groaning how hard they have to work about the long hours and their lack of self-esteem which is normally transferred to all the other for cooks and kitchen people within their businesses.
Yes I’m proud to be a chef and I’ll always be one but I still fall back on the great saying by Chef Escoffier  “the world’s greatest chefs are the world’s greatest cooks and Sir I am a great cook who was lucky enough to become and be recognized as a leading chef in my lifetime”
So the ready for some nice photographs and the experiences I’ve will have at the Olympics.
But there is another part of me that needs fulfilling and I intend to visit Buchenwald concentration camp which is near where the competition is going on. I have visited two other camps like this in my lifetime and as two my cousins were adopted by one of my uncles after the second world war from one of those camps I need to be reminded of the evil that’s in this world and the evil that was perpetrators against the 13 million peoples of all nations religious faiths and illnesses.
So I’ll keep in touch what I’m in Europe on till I get back I’ll be safe and I hope and pray that you will all be to.
Chef