(The background to this story is my wife watching Michael Pollan on Oprah's show about she and her staff going vegan for a week, the dependence on Whole Foods and the overall state of American palates today)
When I quit my full-time, Executive Sous Chef job in March, 2010, I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do. I knew that if being a chef meant gaining weight, being perpetually unhappy and never seeing your spouse, I wanted nothing to do with it. I also had it in mind that rather than simply ordering the local produce that was applicable to our menu on specific occasions, I wanted to work with those ingredients full time, on my own terms. So I printed up some business cards, told the small group of people that I knew that I was available for small, private events and got to looking at what was in season. In short, I had no idea what I was doing.
Before I ever cooked any food for money outside of a restaurant, I got a job at the farmer's market. Not just any job, though--no, I was working for what I still believe to be the most incredible organic vegetable and lettuce farmer working in Texas today. Arugula as delicate, crisp and bitter as I have ever tasted. Cherry tomatoes sweeter than pure honey. Mulberries at the peak of ripeness. I didn't just discover true flavor in its rawest form; I figured out, after several years of trying, what it is that I enjoy about cooking--the simplicty of pure ingredients.
Am I not a chef, though? Shouldn't I already have and employ a deep respect for each of the ingredients that I have in front of me? Shouldn't the sugar content in a ripe summer tomato come as no surprise to me? Of course. And, naturally, the flavor of each ingredient that I use in a dish is never lost on me. But there's nothing that says eating that same tomato, outside of a restaurant and with no other reason than to simply enjoy it, can't change my mind drastically as to how I will think about tomatoes from here on out. How I will make it my goal to show and convince people that shopping at the farmer's market doesn't just mean making a salad or grilling a steak. Or how every time I cook from that moment forth I will force myself to use every bit of flavor that each ingredient gives me before I ever lay hand to another. And thus my goal, like that of the Dan Barbers, the Alice Waters', the Michael Pollans and so many others of the world, was born. Or, rather, affirmed.
Since May, 2010, I have cooked for whomever would have me. I have sourced as much meat, produce and dairy from the local farmer's markets as possible and I have tried my hardest to never duplicate dishes from one event to another, thereby giving each diner a truly unique experience, always making the season's bounty (which hasn't always been so bountiful) the centerpiece of each menu. The food, I feel, in all honesty, has been overall delicious. There have naturally been highs and lows, but I have never put forth a dish that I didn't stand behind, whether or not it was absolutely perfect. And most satisfying has been that fact that every time I have served food, at least one person has walked away with a bit of food knowledge that they didn't have before. Free of charge.
While the last months have been rewarding, educational and reasonably lucrative, the reactions of many of those who have eaten my food have been uncomfortably surprising. At the end of a meal, guests will often come up to me and remark on how stunned they were by the food, how they've never encountered such flavors, such ingredients (no, really, I'm not gloating). Things like yellow watermelon, oranges and jicama, a bean puree made with five very simple ingredients seem to blow them away, always to my surprise, if not simply to my delight. My reaction is because they speak of the meal as though they've never been given such fresh things to eat. That past eating the best, sweetest tomato in their life, they've never stopped to enjoy a tomato, period. And so while, little by little, my efforts seem to be yielding positive results, I'm made strikingly aware of how much work lay ahead of not just me, but every chef, farmer, food writer and food advocate there is working in the business today.
However, there is an inherent problem with trying not simply to encourage people to eat fresh foods, but also to educate them on how to procure these items. Simply put, they don't always taste good. On a recent visit to a North Texas cattle ranch that raises and slaughters 100% grassfed beef for wholesale, we were given a few samples to take away and try. The ground beef that we ate in burger form, seasoned lightly with salt and pepper, was probably of the highest quality, richest flavor that I have ever eaten. The fat was so luscious and buttery, the meat nearly melted in my mouth. We agreed that we had found a goldmine. But moving on to the other cuts, things like ribeyes, porterhouses and T-bones that should normally be swimming in flavor and soft as can be, were tough, and almost inedible. Even at medium rare, the ribeye was like well done churrasco, chewy, dry and bland--a sad realization that best efforts don't always yield best results.
So as I listen to Michael Pollan and Oprah discuss the merits of veganism, knowing thy farmer and why shrink-wrapped meat completely removes us from the knowledge that that steak came from a once-breathing animal, I can't help wanting to simply go back to square one, to something as basic as showing a person how to cut an apple or peel an orange. Before I can ever convince a diner, a friend or a vegan that a ruddy-faced farmer raising marbled, Texas, grassfed beef is better than a shrink-wrapped tenderloin, I have to prepare dishes for people that barely involve cooking, let alone meat. Farmers may smell or have dirty hands and the market might be full of self-righteous yuppies or far-too-politically correct advocates, all enough to drive would be clientele away from discovering peak-of-season specialties, but the grocery store, even the supermarket, need not only be home to boxed cuts, pre-cut fruits and more refined sugars and starches than the man who discovered wheat could ever imagine, but also all the raw ingredients to make each and every one of us healthier, happier eaters.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
A Dedicated Two Hours
As I mentioned in my post last week, one of the main factors in my move away from writing was the mere fact that I didn't have any time. When I moved back from Chile and enrolled in culinary school (a running theme, I know. Don't worry, I'll move past it soon), I was working 50 hours a week, going to school for 25, visiting my now wife and trying to catch some sleep somewhere in the middle. I wrote on my days off, read before bed. For awhile it seemed like there was time, but as my job began demanding more of me, school became what I had to do everyday at 8 a.m. and I started thinking more about marriage, something had to go.
In putting writing to the wayside, though, I was able to completely focus on one thing--cooking. By the time I was awake and putting my station together at work, my mind was razor sharp. I knew what was expected of me and I knew I wanted to get better. Every time I had to cut chickens, make potato puree or clean lobsters, I got a little better--just as a writer would when given the time to write everyday. So while I do have a natural knack for cooking, it wasn't simply cooking that allowed me learn and progress at a rapid rate, but rather the time allowed for that development. Time has long been a strong motif in my life.
The reason I bring this up is because in reading over ruhlman.com, a culinary-centric blog, last night, I found a post that wasn't at all about food, but about a writer who had died and the impression he had left on Michael Ruhlman himself. Most notable / applicable for me of the advice given by the deceased writer was that in order to progress, one need to spend a dedicated two hours everyday, the same two hours everyday, to the craft of writing. A mere two hours, but a dedicated and focused two hours nonetheless.
To sit here now, at 11:30 a.m. on a Monday morning, writing about cooking and how I'm up in the air on both, I realize that it's nice to have time. If I dig deeper and look back at the reasons I finally decided to quit my full-time job almost a year ago, I can say that I ran out of time to simply cook or get better at cooking. I was constantly juggling peoples' schedules, making orders, managing, hiring, firing, bitching and cleaning up messes that I lost the time to simply cook--the whole reason I had wanted to become a chef in the first place. Even amidst 14-hour days there were rarely even 30 dedicated minutes for me to focus on any one thing. So as with writing, I started putting cooking to the wayside.
On the first page of his novel Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller writes "The hero then is not time, but timelessness." This is a line that has stuck with me since I first read it, in part because I've always longed to be that talented and prolific, but also because I believe it's true. As I read it, the line means that time, as I have here and now to sit and blog, isn't what we need, but for our time to be ours, to do with it as we please and to have as much of it as we want.
Writers feed us in ways that chefs cannot. I'm aiming to do both.
In putting writing to the wayside, though, I was able to completely focus on one thing--cooking. By the time I was awake and putting my station together at work, my mind was razor sharp. I knew what was expected of me and I knew I wanted to get better. Every time I had to cut chickens, make potato puree or clean lobsters, I got a little better--just as a writer would when given the time to write everyday. So while I do have a natural knack for cooking, it wasn't simply cooking that allowed me learn and progress at a rapid rate, but rather the time allowed for that development. Time has long been a strong motif in my life.
The reason I bring this up is because in reading over ruhlman.com, a culinary-centric blog, last night, I found a post that wasn't at all about food, but about a writer who had died and the impression he had left on Michael Ruhlman himself. Most notable / applicable for me of the advice given by the deceased writer was that in order to progress, one need to spend a dedicated two hours everyday, the same two hours everyday, to the craft of writing. A mere two hours, but a dedicated and focused two hours nonetheless.
To sit here now, at 11:30 a.m. on a Monday morning, writing about cooking and how I'm up in the air on both, I realize that it's nice to have time. If I dig deeper and look back at the reasons I finally decided to quit my full-time job almost a year ago, I can say that I ran out of time to simply cook or get better at cooking. I was constantly juggling peoples' schedules, making orders, managing, hiring, firing, bitching and cleaning up messes that I lost the time to simply cook--the whole reason I had wanted to become a chef in the first place. Even amidst 14-hour days there were rarely even 30 dedicated minutes for me to focus on any one thing. So as with writing, I started putting cooking to the wayside.
On the first page of his novel Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller writes "The hero then is not time, but timelessness." This is a line that has stuck with me since I first read it, in part because I've always longed to be that talented and prolific, but also because I believe it's true. As I read it, the line means that time, as I have here and now to sit and blog, isn't what we need, but for our time to be ours, to do with it as we please and to have as much of it as we want.
Writers feed us in ways that chefs cannot. I'm aiming to do both.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
January 22nd, 2011. What have I been doing?
It used to be so easy for me to write on this blog because when I used to write, I was cooking. I began this blog as a side project to my culinary studies because I didn't want to lose what I viewed as talent as a writer. Culinary school, line cooking, the time it took to learn about ingredients and how to use them--I don't think I ever fully intended to use them as a profession. Though I willingly enrolled in culinary school, I hadn't fully thought through what it meant to be a chef. I just liked to cook. So I created this blog as a sort of flotation device, a reminder of who I was and where I had come from before I gave myself over to cooking full time.
Freshly returned from life in South America, I took time with my studies, learned as much as I could as quickly as possible. I surpassed most of my classmates in technique, out-cooked them when it really came time to perform and moved ahead at a much faster pace than even I had anticipated. If you look at the early posts on this blog, my mood reflected this. I wasn't writing everyday, but I was certainly taking the time to go eat, to explore, and to jot down notes about what I had consumed. I was giving myself a complete education. My second.
Along the way, though, as both school and my job cooking became more demanding, my ability to sit and focus on writing as a hobby, as an equal to cooking, lessened. The inner tube started to lose air. I almost completely stopped reading books in my spare time and when Kurt Vonnegut died I barely took notice.
For people like drug addicts, alcoholics or anyone else that has lost their life due to abuse and dependency, I know the consequences are much more dire and severe. For me, though to barely be able to sit here and eek out a few paragraphs when just five years ago I could fill page after page with prose, I feel as though I have lost a great deal of myself. And what's worse is that I was conscious the whole time.
Things have changed, though and I'm no longer cooking full time. In fact, I don't do anything full time at this point, other than worry about how I'm going to make money to pay next month's bills. In many ways I'm better off, because my time is much more open to chance now. The hardest part is rediscovering not only what it is that I used to do when I had free time, but even worse is relearning how to do those things again because it feels like so long since I've done them.
I feel that, moving forward, the writings on this blog, for those of you that may read it, will continue to revolve around food because I write about my life and my life still revolves around food. What I hope to see in the writings, though, is not simply surviving, as one might with a life preserver, but actually moving ahead as though in a boat. Whether or not my time spent in formal kitchens cooking for money is completely over, I can't say for sure. I know that cooking led me down a path that I've never truly been happy with, though one that has led to a great deal of education and awareness of the world around me. Writing, though, my first true love since childhood, will no longer take the back burner.
Freshly returned from life in South America, I took time with my studies, learned as much as I could as quickly as possible. I surpassed most of my classmates in technique, out-cooked them when it really came time to perform and moved ahead at a much faster pace than even I had anticipated. If you look at the early posts on this blog, my mood reflected this. I wasn't writing everyday, but I was certainly taking the time to go eat, to explore, and to jot down notes about what I had consumed. I was giving myself a complete education. My second.
Along the way, though, as both school and my job cooking became more demanding, my ability to sit and focus on writing as a hobby, as an equal to cooking, lessened. The inner tube started to lose air. I almost completely stopped reading books in my spare time and when Kurt Vonnegut died I barely took notice.
For people like drug addicts, alcoholics or anyone else that has lost their life due to abuse and dependency, I know the consequences are much more dire and severe. For me, though to barely be able to sit here and eek out a few paragraphs when just five years ago I could fill page after page with prose, I feel as though I have lost a great deal of myself. And what's worse is that I was conscious the whole time.
Things have changed, though and I'm no longer cooking full time. In fact, I don't do anything full time at this point, other than worry about how I'm going to make money to pay next month's bills. In many ways I'm better off, because my time is much more open to chance now. The hardest part is rediscovering not only what it is that I used to do when I had free time, but even worse is relearning how to do those things again because it feels like so long since I've done them.
I feel that, moving forward, the writings on this blog, for those of you that may read it, will continue to revolve around food because I write about my life and my life still revolves around food. What I hope to see in the writings, though, is not simply surviving, as one might with a life preserver, but actually moving ahead as though in a boat. Whether or not my time spent in formal kitchens cooking for money is completely over, I can't say for sure. I know that cooking led me down a path that I've never truly been happy with, though one that has led to a great deal of education and awareness of the world around me. Writing, though, my first true love since childhood, will no longer take the back burner.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Permeating Austin
As shown by the 17 total covers that came into the 160-seat restaurant this evening where I play Sous Chef, Austin is dedicated to Texas. I do honestly believe that in the future, Austin will develop and nurture a viable food culture, one that is knowledgeable, worldly and wholeheartedly interested in not just their ingredients, but their chefs as well, their restaurants and their image. For now, though, and perhaps even in that hopeful future, things like UT football games, the Dallas Cowboys and all things Tex-Mex reign supreme, dictating not just the eating habits but their patterns as well, of not just Austinites, but Texans in general.
What, then, is a progressive-minded, thoughtful and passionate restaurant to do when even the most educated of diners or foodies is torn between Saturday night's game or an enjoyable night out for dinner? For some, the answer is simple: serve your food the way you want, while still paying homage to your roots via some bastardized dish with the word "Texas" in it, regardless of whether or not it has any place on your menu. For those focused on something larger, though, involving not just food, but the way in which food affects us as people, in our own cultures and in others, the answer is not so simple. Tex-Mex ingredients aren't as easy to intigrate, or simply aren't necessary, so the battle continues uphill. The struggle, between chef and diner, to convince the latter that highlights of the game will be just as good once you've gorged on that monthly splurge of a meal and come home completely satisfied.
The solution, I believe, lay in education. Not simply chefs, but also food writers, food critics, purveyors, journalists, diners as educators. An opening of those sacred, "keep Austin weird" doors to the outside world, a permeation of exterior restaurant cultures to thereby inform this smaller community of what they're missing. Not simply bringing New York to Austin, but bringing Austin to places like San Francisco, Miami, New Mexico and even Portland, Oregon! Places that have burgeoned as food destinations because they have learned from other cities and climates, other trends and forecasts of where food is going, where it has been. Places that even local chefs know and read about on a daily basis, secrets that the dining community of Austin should be made aware of.
What I'm getting at is the larger picture, which I believe Austin is missing. There's a reason that Chuy's will constantly be busy, regardless of a football game, a recession, a fissure in the Earth's crust--without a better knowledge of food and the culture it creates, diners won't feel the need to expand their own horizons, right here in Austin. If more diners knew of hunks like Sam Mason, that allure of "possibly meeting the chef" might draw them out. If more writers could do a better job of describing who David Chang really is and why his food has hit such a high note, simply because they themselves were more educated and worldly, diners might be craving more exotic and adventurous food. And if chefs here could stop using fucking queso as a crutch and fill that spot on their menu with something more legitimate, the dining scene here might start to progress and challenge people's pallets.
When, during a recent discussion, someone told me that the blogging community here isn't overly competitive and that people generally get along, it split me right in half. On the one hand, I was truly excited to know that people care about their ingredients and wish each other the best in their preparation and presentation. On the other, though, I thought, without competition, where do we get progress? Without a healthy sense of competition, I believe, Austin will remain a city of ever-reaching goals of becoming great, though always left falling short of what is prime to be an amazing city in which to eat.
What, then, is a progressive-minded, thoughtful and passionate restaurant to do when even the most educated of diners or foodies is torn between Saturday night's game or an enjoyable night out for dinner? For some, the answer is simple: serve your food the way you want, while still paying homage to your roots via some bastardized dish with the word "Texas" in it, regardless of whether or not it has any place on your menu. For those focused on something larger, though, involving not just food, but the way in which food affects us as people, in our own cultures and in others, the answer is not so simple. Tex-Mex ingredients aren't as easy to intigrate, or simply aren't necessary, so the battle continues uphill. The struggle, between chef and diner, to convince the latter that highlights of the game will be just as good once you've gorged on that monthly splurge of a meal and come home completely satisfied.
The solution, I believe, lay in education. Not simply chefs, but also food writers, food critics, purveyors, journalists, diners as educators. An opening of those sacred, "keep Austin weird" doors to the outside world, a permeation of exterior restaurant cultures to thereby inform this smaller community of what they're missing. Not simply bringing New York to Austin, but bringing Austin to places like San Francisco, Miami, New Mexico and even Portland, Oregon! Places that have burgeoned as food destinations because they have learned from other cities and climates, other trends and forecasts of where food is going, where it has been. Places that even local chefs know and read about on a daily basis, secrets that the dining community of Austin should be made aware of.
What I'm getting at is the larger picture, which I believe Austin is missing. There's a reason that Chuy's will constantly be busy, regardless of a football game, a recession, a fissure in the Earth's crust--without a better knowledge of food and the culture it creates, diners won't feel the need to expand their own horizons, right here in Austin. If more diners knew of hunks like Sam Mason, that allure of "possibly meeting the chef" might draw them out. If more writers could do a better job of describing who David Chang really is and why his food has hit such a high note, simply because they themselves were more educated and worldly, diners might be craving more exotic and adventurous food. And if chefs here could stop using fucking queso as a crutch and fill that spot on their menu with something more legitimate, the dining scene here might start to progress and challenge people's pallets.
When, during a recent discussion, someone told me that the blogging community here isn't overly competitive and that people generally get along, it split me right in half. On the one hand, I was truly excited to know that people care about their ingredients and wish each other the best in their preparation and presentation. On the other, though, I thought, without competition, where do we get progress? Without a healthy sense of competition, I believe, Austin will remain a city of ever-reaching goals of becoming great, though always left falling short of what is prime to be an amazing city in which to eat.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Brothers and Sisters, Lemme Get Up and Do My Thing!
Family.
It's what the television shows edit out. It's what the blogs don't care about, the chef glosses over to make himself look better, the critics can't possibly include in their review. A restaurant family is long nights of drinking together, complaining about work and going back in the next day. It is incest. It is hangovers, late-ins, firings, hirings, comaradery.
When linecook415 gives you the parting quotes on each of his posts, you are not meant to understand. As I said in my last post, these blogs, the nights in the kitchen, on the floor, the nights after work--they aren't for the readers or even the diners. They are catharsis and inside jokes, letting go of the day and looking forward to the next. We don't write about these moments to glorify them; no, we write because we need to let it go and, for some of us, a few minutes on the template is healthier and safer than a beer binge which will inevitably decrease the next day's performance. As he left tonight, one of my cooks, in speaking of his other job and how long they've all worked together, said "it's almost like their a family." Almost? Or altogether? All in, everyday. The people you spend more time with on a daily basis than you do your wife or kids.
I think that for me I am often reluctant to give in to that familial bond for fear of losing touch with the world outside. As I remember the moments we share, though, with the hum of the ovens and the laughter at one of the cook's expense, how filmic it all seems and almost surreal, I know that this is where I belong and why, after countless heartaches and nights I've sworn against cooking, I haven't left yet. Family is security and, in an industry that is plagued with perpetual movement and ladder climbing, security is an asset.
Perhaps those who've made a career out of critiquing, photographing, writing about and just plain enjoying food don't mention family ties more often because the family is not theirs. It's not their grandmother in the back making the best braised veal they've ever had, but a team of highly trained, near-robotic cooks that can and will consistently make it better than grandma with just as much soul. Attributing love and sentimentality to a restaurant and its inner workings would make talking about it that much more difficult. Ignorance it is then, and therefore blissful eating.
Mais, c'est la vie. The burners go on everyday and, just like our grandmothers, we aim to please. Weekends and holidays, grad nights and weddings, we're always there, with each other. Life goes on around us, because of us, and with us. We're all there, playing our role, as those in plain clothes will play theirs, giving, taking, leaning on one another, all with one goal in mind, standards as high as ever.
It's what the television shows edit out. It's what the blogs don't care about, the chef glosses over to make himself look better, the critics can't possibly include in their review. A restaurant family is long nights of drinking together, complaining about work and going back in the next day. It is incest. It is hangovers, late-ins, firings, hirings, comaradery.
When linecook415 gives you the parting quotes on each of his posts, you are not meant to understand. As I said in my last post, these blogs, the nights in the kitchen, on the floor, the nights after work--they aren't for the readers or even the diners. They are catharsis and inside jokes, letting go of the day and looking forward to the next. We don't write about these moments to glorify them; no, we write because we need to let it go and, for some of us, a few minutes on the template is healthier and safer than a beer binge which will inevitably decrease the next day's performance. As he left tonight, one of my cooks, in speaking of his other job and how long they've all worked together, said "it's almost like their a family." Almost? Or altogether? All in, everyday. The people you spend more time with on a daily basis than you do your wife or kids.
I think that for me I am often reluctant to give in to that familial bond for fear of losing touch with the world outside. As I remember the moments we share, though, with the hum of the ovens and the laughter at one of the cook's expense, how filmic it all seems and almost surreal, I know that this is where I belong and why, after countless heartaches and nights I've sworn against cooking, I haven't left yet. Family is security and, in an industry that is plagued with perpetual movement and ladder climbing, security is an asset.
Perhaps those who've made a career out of critiquing, photographing, writing about and just plain enjoying food don't mention family ties more often because the family is not theirs. It's not their grandmother in the back making the best braised veal they've ever had, but a team of highly trained, near-robotic cooks that can and will consistently make it better than grandma with just as much soul. Attributing love and sentimentality to a restaurant and its inner workings would make talking about it that much more difficult. Ignorance it is then, and therefore blissful eating.
Mais, c'est la vie. The burners go on everyday and, just like our grandmothers, we aim to please. Weekends and holidays, grad nights and weddings, we're always there, with each other. Life goes on around us, because of us, and with us. We're all there, playing our role, as those in plain clothes will play theirs, giving, taking, leaning on one another, all with one goal in mind, standards as high as ever.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
I'll Get More Sleep Tomorrow Night
When I set to writing this blog some two and a half years ago, I never really wished to become a spokesperson for the kitchen, a literate and somewhat nerdy link interested in bringing together those who eat and those who cook, even those who are simply interested in the two as a topic of discussion at parties. There are plenty of bloggers, both cooks and eaters alike, that do well in exploring and elucidating the finer points of what goes into a great meal. For them, I'm thankful. They give me a great deal to think about each night when I get home, something to read that gives me just a little something to dream about before, inevitably, I pass out cold only to wake up and do it all over again.
For me, though, it's never really been about giving to anyone else, adding to anyone else's night--it's been something far more personal, something rooted more in my own progression and my own revelations about cooking and food and what those mean to me as a person and, most importantly, the simple need to write them down. I was, after all, an English major just six years ago, an aspiring writer. That goal, though, never really came to fruition, never quite seemed logical or even practical, until I started cooking, really sweating over food, full time. I've written plenty of stories since college, published a couple zines, had small offers here and there, but never really felt moved, self-motivated enough to carry through on my own instincts to write until I tasted my first amazing turnip, ate a multi-course meal and paid more for it than I have for some plane tickets.
Food changed my outlook, if not on life, then simply on how to live it. Nourishment, nature, farmers and the earth they cultivate, these became the things that I started to and still currently think about, how our choices about food, the things that we eat have an enormous impact on how we live. Perhaps these ideas are even a little too deep for me, or at least for a blog but, again, I never really intended this to be for anyone but me. My outlooks on food, where I eat and how that affects me. And as I sit here at 1:00 in the morning, neglecting the sleep that I will so desperately wish I had gotten tomorrow mid-service, enveloped by the smells of beef stew that I made earlier, still slightly reeling from tonight's episode of Top Chef and how challenging it was for me, as a cook, to even watch, I realize that I'm surrounded by food, consumed by what it means to me and the fact that, for over a year, I've done very little in the way of expressing just how important that all is for me.
I didn't choose to give up writing for the last year or, rather, I didn't just one day decide that I'd be better off not writing for a year. I've had countless nights out for dinner, some good, some amazing, some downright frustrating. I've changed jobs and become a proper Sous Chef. I've found a mentor, I think. I've cried, I've laughed, I've threatened to quit cooking all together. I have "watched" Keller and Achatz charge $1500 a plate, Chang and Bourdain make complete asses of themselves to a national audience. Simply put, I've had a great deal to write about. Food, though, isn't always enough.
Without desire, or backing, without inspiration or without a mere five hours of sleep a night, food cannot survive on its own--not as a topic for an essay nor as a medium itself. Food, like those who grow it, those who cook it, those who write about it, has to be nurtured. It has to grow and rest, eat and be stimulated. And for me, for the last year, a year or writer's block or, even worse, writer's apathy, it's been a lack of those fundamentals that's made my relationship with food and my need to write about it feel so weak.
Tonight, however, for whatever reason, that year comes to a head. The night that I cooked while Obama became president. Michael Pollan digging into food television as though we all couldn't use some help right now. Anthony Foot-In-Mouth Bourdain. Nearly being fired three times from a job that I've so exhaustingly grown into. Getting back to what's important, here, tonight, although I don't know why. Nor does it matter. Most important is that I feel like I've gained soemthing back, rediscovered something that I was missing. Writing, or food, my voice, motivation.
Thanks watchman.
For me, though, it's never really been about giving to anyone else, adding to anyone else's night--it's been something far more personal, something rooted more in my own progression and my own revelations about cooking and food and what those mean to me as a person and, most importantly, the simple need to write them down. I was, after all, an English major just six years ago, an aspiring writer. That goal, though, never really came to fruition, never quite seemed logical or even practical, until I started cooking, really sweating over food, full time. I've written plenty of stories since college, published a couple zines, had small offers here and there, but never really felt moved, self-motivated enough to carry through on my own instincts to write until I tasted my first amazing turnip, ate a multi-course meal and paid more for it than I have for some plane tickets.
Food changed my outlook, if not on life, then simply on how to live it. Nourishment, nature, farmers and the earth they cultivate, these became the things that I started to and still currently think about, how our choices about food, the things that we eat have an enormous impact on how we live. Perhaps these ideas are even a little too deep for me, or at least for a blog but, again, I never really intended this to be for anyone but me. My outlooks on food, where I eat and how that affects me. And as I sit here at 1:00 in the morning, neglecting the sleep that I will so desperately wish I had gotten tomorrow mid-service, enveloped by the smells of beef stew that I made earlier, still slightly reeling from tonight's episode of Top Chef and how challenging it was for me, as a cook, to even watch, I realize that I'm surrounded by food, consumed by what it means to me and the fact that, for over a year, I've done very little in the way of expressing just how important that all is for me.
I didn't choose to give up writing for the last year or, rather, I didn't just one day decide that I'd be better off not writing for a year. I've had countless nights out for dinner, some good, some amazing, some downright frustrating. I've changed jobs and become a proper Sous Chef. I've found a mentor, I think. I've cried, I've laughed, I've threatened to quit cooking all together. I have "watched" Keller and Achatz charge $1500 a plate, Chang and Bourdain make complete asses of themselves to a national audience. Simply put, I've had a great deal to write about. Food, though, isn't always enough.
Without desire, or backing, without inspiration or without a mere five hours of sleep a night, food cannot survive on its own--not as a topic for an essay nor as a medium itself. Food, like those who grow it, those who cook it, those who write about it, has to be nurtured. It has to grow and rest, eat and be stimulated. And for me, for the last year, a year or writer's block or, even worse, writer's apathy, it's been a lack of those fundamentals that's made my relationship with food and my need to write about it feel so weak.
Tonight, however, for whatever reason, that year comes to a head. The night that I cooked while Obama became president. Michael Pollan digging into food television as though we all couldn't use some help right now. Anthony Foot-In-Mouth Bourdain. Nearly being fired three times from a job that I've so exhaustingly grown into. Getting back to what's important, here, tonight, although I don't know why. Nor does it matter. Most important is that I feel like I've gained soemthing back, rediscovered something that I was missing. Writing, or food, my voice, motivation.
Thanks watchman.
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