While there are certainly exceptions to the rule, cooks are generally mobile and mercenary in mindset. We jump from restaurant to restaurant for a variety of reasons. Some moves are financially motivated, others in the hopes of greater creative control, and sometimes we sacrifice pride and money for knowledge and experience.

In a perfect world, we would have our next jobs lined up months in advance, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: we chefs aren’t very good at planning ahead. Between egos, flaring tempers and bad luck, we find ourselves all too often in a random lull in employment.

Now I relish a vacation as much as the next guy, and you feel great the first week off, touching base with friends and eating out like regular citizens, but by the second week, most of us are ready for some action. It’s our own version of Stockholm Syndrome: we bitch and moan about the hours and pain our jobs inflict on our bodies and lives, but once we go without, we start remembering why we love it so much. So what do we do about it?

1. We Keep Cooking

First off, we cook at home. A lot. So all of you with chef friends, be properly sympathetic if your friend has lost their job, but in your heart you can allow yourself a small squeal of joy: their misfortune is your windfall. Out of sheer boredom and the need to be in a kitchen, we crank out cookies, breads, pâté, sausages, anything that we’ve been interested in but never had enough time to try. There’s no way we’d ever be able to finish all that we make since we’re trained to cook at restaurant quanitites, so we always end up with 15 peoples’ worth of pastrami and find ourselves sharing.

2. We Make Guest Appearances

The second thing many do is stage. Not like the theater, but rather the fancy French restaurant term. It’s basically an externship. We apply to restaurants and offer our services for free to see another chef’s style and to work in another kitchen without the commitment of full-time employment. It’s a time-honored tradition and one of the best reasons I can think of to cook.

Right now in my restaurant I am hosting two great line cooks out of Germany. These bright young guys (their former restaurant just garnered its second Michelin star) saved up some money and have spent the last six months traversing Asia, cooking at different restaurants in different countries. They work for free, a week or two at a time, all in the name of bettering themselves.

Art may go in and out of fashion, and technology will forever be evolving, but people will always need to eat. That reassurance is one of the reasons I cook. I hope to never stop learning my craft, but rest assured, if I ever find myself out of a job, there are still ways to keep myself in the game.

When Austin Hu isn't busy writing City Weekend's The Dish blog, he runs things over at Madison. Check out more of his articles here.