Job update: Terka found one!

It's taken a while, what with this dreadful economy (just under 14% unemployment) and being in this strange new country where chefs seem to be valued about as highly as grouchy shlop-serving ladies from school cafeterias, but Terezia has just been hired as the chef for the US ambassador to Slovakia. The contract was signed the other day, so it's official now. She wowed the ambassador and his wife with her mean cooking skills and her Alice Waters-inspired philosophy/approach of using only the freshest seasonal ingredients to create flavorful, well-prepared, non-fussy, yet healthy dishes. It really makes sense that they would pick her out of what was apparently a deluge of candidates (at least I was confident they would), since she became a chef and honed her skills in San Francisco, and she understands the discerning palette of those Western gourmand types.

She's not cooking at the embassy, but rather, at the ambassador's residence, where they host functions for varying numbers of guests every week. They have enjoyed everything that she's prepared so far, and they're quite appreciative of her ability to create inventive, fresh, flavorful salads (the word salad does not appear to exist in the culinary vocabulary of some Slovaks, if you know what I mean!), and she nailed the macaroons, a favorite dessert of theirs that they wanted her to make. The nature of the work is quite similar to a gig she had in 2009-2011 working for a dental academy in Foster City (where she cooked exquisite meals for dentists traveling from all over the world to attend multi-day seminars on new dental methods and technology), so she is feeling in her element.

At any rate, feel free to congratulate her!!!