Remember that Christmas week when everything went right?

Back in 2019 right before Christmas, I had a week where every single order was spot on. Had a customer from the local diner in St. Louis ask for 40 lbs of custom-cut pork chops and I nailed the thickness on every one. Even the older guys who usually complain about my fat trimming just nodded and said 'looks good.' Has anyone else had a week like that where the stars just align?

3 comments

3 Comments

taylorellis1mo ago

I mean it's just pork chops right, not like you cured cancer or something.

ray1361mo ago

Think about it this way though. Cooking a perfect pork chop is harder than curing cancer because you don't get to mess up a thousand times in a lab. Nobody's writing blog posts about the day they mixed some chemicals and accidentally changed the world. But people post about that one time they nailed a bone-in chop with a 145 degree internal temp and a perfect sear. So yeah, maybe it's not saving lives, but it's a small win in a day full of failures. And honestly, who doesn't need a little victory lap over dinner?

the_christopher1mo ago

I read something recently about how butchers and chefs talk about "muscle memory" for cuts like that. @ray136 makes a good point about pork chops and the small victories. I remember a butcher in a documentary saying he could feel the perfect thickness through his knife before he even measured it. You just get to a point where you know by the weight and the grain of the meat that it's right.