It's 10am. I'm wired on coffee and have just finished my last cigarette. It's time to begin another day in the trenches, and I can already taste the mutual contempt in the air. I see the cashiers and runners right away as I enter, struggling during the last breakfast rush. One of them is Ann, a girl who's been there at least as long as I have. Her face is twitching as she says hello to me. Two minutes later I've washed my hands, clocked on and strapped on a random apron. For eight hours a day I am a ruthless, no-nonsense mercenary who takes no prisoners...and no bullshit either.I am not a chef. By most people's definitions, I'm not even a cook. I have spent the last eleven years of my life (five and a half years in this particular restaurant) in a do-or-die battle to the death...me versus the restaurant. After a long number of customer complaints, I have been gradually moved to the kitchen, where I am free to swear and sling ingredients about in a manner similar to the Swedish Chef. I keep a close watch over the screen that towers above me, which sends out a series of shrill beeps before listing the orders that must be made within the next ten to fifteen seconds. It could be a grilled club sandwich without tomato, it could be ten cheeseburgers...but it is usually a Big Mac. Yes, that's right. I work at McDonalds. Automatically that should be enough to disqualify me. I have never seen the inside of a "real" restaurant, much less worked a double shift as a line cook or a dishwasher. Yet I know what it means to cook well.When I come home from an emotionally taxing day at work, I want to collapse on the couch, cigarette in hand, and forget how close I came to killing someone. When I cook at home, I put more in my food than the skills taught to me by my mother, who learned how to cook damn near everything from scratch because of the restaurant she worked in for ten-plus years. I put my heart and soul into my cooking. It shows in the meals I prepare and in the faces of my friends and family. Each ingredient has a history with me, time-tested truths that turns the dish into a story that I've written, a painting that I've created. Even when all that is left are scraps, bones and greasy dishes piled up into an impossible mess in the sink...at the same time it is approval, respect and happiness that can only be brought on by a good steak or a bowl of French onion soup, many reminders that life is delicious...with many roads left to "travel" around the world and you never know what will be dished out next. Life, love, family and a content belly full of food...this is why I cook well.