cry less, breathe more April 26, 2010

So much of this past year has been about reacting. Being ready for my mother’s illness to be over, to take her from us. It was something I denied in a forceful active way. I stuffed my workweek with so much stress and busy-ness that there wasnt time to think about it. I would dread calling her to hear how sad she was, I would dread not calling her for fear of not being the dutiful daughter. My brother was there with her the whole year, they had always been close, he had the means to do it. When we were both there with her I took the lions share of helping her, it seemed only fair after his year of cajoling and caregiving. He needed a mental break. The both of us didnt get much sleep, I took the first shift from 11-4 he took the second from 4-9. The people I love kept reminding me they loved me, kept telling me to breathe. I stopped breathing, I still find myself holding my breath for stretches at a time. Its like I cant remember how that long cool breath you pull from your belly feels anymore. Its like I forgot and replaced it with food. This time last year I was down to a size 8, less than 150 pounds and constantly moving. I was “tasting” at work all the time, not really stopping after a bite, autopilot in the worst way. Whatever weight I had lost to initially combat the stress I put right back on and then some. Back to my predivorce weight, this time I am older, a little more shopworn with a little less motivation. Most of all, the grief I staved off the first month after she past has hit me like a brick wall. The lack of sleep all those weeks with my mom, and the lightning fast return to work (2 jobs, 6 days a week) became too much. I read something today, by a cook and writer I admire and it all made sense and it made me cry, and ultimately it gave me hope. So, I will practice crying less and breathing more. Thank you gluten free girl for reminding me that its ok to be human.

http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/2010/04/carry-that-weight.html

Constant Inspiration April 20, 2010

I just got back from Napa, which is my favorite weekend trip to take. It has everything I love, food, wine, sunshine and the company of the people I love the most. There are always surprises; like the fella at Clos du Val who talked to us for hours about the way the valley has changed and growing food and livestock on his farm. He went into detail, lemme tell ya, deer 25 dollars, rabbits 10 dollars, coyotes no charge. It was sweet to meet someone at a tasting room who was there because he loved making wine, the harvest of the grapes, the revelation that it becomes a transcendant beverage in the hands of those who understand it. Then there were the boys at Honig; Mark-the secret weapon and (lets just call him) Tex won me over the moment I got a tweetback from my *I think Im going to Honig first* – ping – *when are you coming to see us?* I know we all have to be charming, those of us that sell and talk about wine, but when its sincere and in the company of those who love food I could stay all day. Those boys opened my eyes about the vast potential of twitter. Now, mind you its still a pretty silly concept, we have our follows that are guilty pleasures (Alyssa Milano-I know!) But for the most part I have learned more about this years Bordeaux releases, wild kelp foraging, rare Vega Sicilia collections going to auction, and things that make us laugh and sometimes what challenges us. I have friends who do not like this kind of global sharing, and it has forced me to evaluate how much I actually put myself out there. But the connectivity of the food and wine world thanks to technology has made us so much more educated and we are a lot that loves to educate and share. Now, will someone please send me a badass female butcher I can follow on twitter? KTHXBAI –

stuck in neutral April 12, 2010

I went back to my previous job, working with the team I love, with students that are so engaged they seek me out and come to me with questions I would have asked my chefs in another lifetime. My first week back was harrowing, not because the job was hard, but because my heart was hard. This was the job I took when my mom first got sick, and I worried about my brother constantly. I literally flew back to interview for this job in between my mom’s chemo treatments. This job holds mixed feelings for me. I felt my heart grow cold and harden, one of my students died and I saw someone have a heart attack and pass away right before me. This was also the job I had before I started to feel warm and unravelled, felt the glow of spring, kissed summer til I was breathless. It holds so much potential and so much that is unpredictable that I woke up every day this week with a dodgeball of gravel in my stomach.
You want something so desperately to work that you sometimes ignore the signs. You look into that person’s eyes when they have captured you and you see nothing else; pitfalls, heartbreak, the inconsistencies in the cracks of the mundane and the thrum of constance. You…should not….have to work so hard. At holding on to your love for them, at hoping against hope that they will wake up and know. If its that hard, maybe neither of you wanted it that bad, or even, the universe has other plans. Yes, the universe has other plans, don’t you remember falling before, or even more recently, where you were when you fell for her. “And then what happened?” The inevitable grand reveal. You: knew all along who you were but couldnt admit it for fear or them not loving you for it. Them: you kept thinking it would change or together things would be different. Then that moment of clarity comes and you either: accept it, or ignore it depending on how warm the water is.
I know some things about myself now, that I was a little nearsighted, that what I loved about us was the vast difference. She: stable, constant, even keeled, reserved even. Me: silly, loud, tempramental (yes, shocking for a chef I know), impetuous. I thought she could change me, I thought I could change her. Love would be enough, she might see actually how much I loved her.
I used to tout that I was full of firsts, had not fallen for a girl before, really hard before, only slightly. Had not talked about having a home, and a shared life. I want to go back to that place where someone looks at me helplessly and knows that I love them, that I would push them down and lavish them with affection, equinanimous passion, fearlessly and confidently. I see people in love every weekend, I admire their ambition. I only see them for one night, but they are beautiful to me, like an exhibit, like art. I long for that, and yet, after all I have been through I would rather die alone than get hurt again, and that seems the saddest proposition of all.

Ad Hoc: Back to Basics April 4, 2010

The last night I was in Napa we went to Ad Hoc, Thomas Keller’s latest venture. It is to the culinary world what Chez Panisse was all those years ago. Before I was born, before Alice thought serving forth what the French had done all along would be understood, or at least respected as delicious. We sway back and forth as cooks between masterful manipulation and simplicity in an elemental sense. We do it every day, sometimes in a matter of hours and days, sometimes alongside colleagues, sometimes thousands of miles away from each other. Cooks can choose reinvention, or truism and I always respect both when done with skill and intention. The French Laundry cookbook when I was first a sous chef was our greatest pleasure, flipping through the pages excitedly, faces grilled red after a hot shift, enjoying our first thirstquenching sip of beer, or white wine. This meal, felt like that, simple, soul quenching, just what I wanted, in the moment I wanted it.
Our menu, delivered in a brown manila folder with a simple blue lined label held simple generically fonted dishes that when brought out in their sequence delivered everything that they claimed to be and then some.
We started with spears of romaine and crisp small leaves of watercress, thin sliced chives, sieved hard boiled eggs, teeny tiny bacon bits, small diced beets barely dressed. Precision, clean flavor and classic. We had ribeye next with oven charred rapini, crisp and salty, a palette for meat so well rested it was as if it woke up from a nap. Smashed fingerling potatoes, butter poached kohlrabi and grilled ramps that were mustardlike, soft and delicious. The one flavor stitched through was mustard, laced through kohlrabi, balanced atop the crisp smoky rapini and ramps. Even with my love of fingerlings the vegetables glistened and beckoned me over and over again. Our server was like a friend you meet at a barbeque, generous with praise, convivial at every turn telling funny stories about an Easter Island shaped barbeque or his favorite fried pie (at the Fremont of course). We had cheese and it was a deconstructed apple pie, dry crumbly cheddar, compressed apple and local honey.
When I bring a dessert course to a guest, it is no small victory. Often enough I have seduced them with savory, talked them in to one more course “they shouldnt miss” Braised lamb belly or prawns dancing in garlicky olive oil. I always tell servers I don’t leave room for dessert, my mouth wants to find a hidden savoriness yet unexplored, sweet is just too simple. But a banana split Chef? A banana split? To which Chef Keller, the chef who riffed on coffee and doughnuts all those years ago would reply “Yes, that’s how I roll.” And so they did. Buttered popcorn ice cream, fudge sauce, bananas, homemade almond brittle pieces and chocolate ice cream just to make sure I cried uncle. Many times when I see a guest enjoying dessert I will run over and announce “I win!” Because that means they had the whole experience, and I did my job, and they will tell all of their friends about the wine, and the food, and the sweet in the company of their sweet. And that my friends is most certainly how I felt on that beautiful night in Napa.