normal human interaction

I promise that this little blog of mine isn't just about books. I really do! I have plenty of good food to be shared from recent days. I'll bring a little of that later in the week!

Truth is, I've been getting over being sick, and there's nothing better than reading a book in bed to get you well again. Except watching a movie in bed with popcorn and your love. Or sleep.

That is to say, I started reading Medium Raw:  A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain while I was sick, and I've just finished it this past weekend.

I like that this book was more of a modern social commentary than Kitchen Confidential. While the first was about a restaurant kitchen and his experience, the second had a much more worldly feel to it...which makes a lot of sense, given that Tony has done an awful lot of traveling in the interim.

I know, don't you just hate him? Slash want to steal his job right out from under him? Just me?

Shhh.

The book felt a little disorganized to me, but I just followed it where it led me. I now have a long list of references that he made that were familiar to me, but leave a lot of understanding to be desired, so I'll be doing a little "suggested reading" on my own in the coming months.

And. And, and!

Can I just say, that after reading his description of pho, I needed a bowl. How much are plane tickets to Hanoi?

As a matter of fact, that whole "Lust" chapter, with its brief anecdotes of a situation, an environment, and a dish, make me insanely jealous. I know Tony feels--slightly--ashamed sharing this food porn, but damn if it doesn't want to make me travel. Isn't that his point?

The passage I marked, and felt most like sharing, is about hipness and beer:

"Order a Heineken in Portland or San Francisco--or just about anywhere, these days--and be prepared to be sneered at by some locavore beer-nerd, all too happy to tell you about some hoppy, malty, microbrewed concoction, redolent of strawberries and patchouli, that they're making in a cellar nearby. Unless, of course, you opt for post-ironic retro--in which case, that "silo" of PBR will come with a cover charge and an asphyxiating miasma of hipness."

Hipsters love their microbrews. Hell, I love microbrews. But I love PBR and Heineken too. I drink microbrews with the rest of them, because I like to try new things and new tastes. I drink PBR because it's cheap and it tastes good to me (to each her own). I appreciate that he called the hipsters out on their holier-than-thou attitude, because I think it's a little silly to sneer at someone's beer choice. Just clink your glasses and take a gulp, we're all here for the same thing. I'll reserve my right to try a new microbrew...and then switch to PBR, to keep the bar bill down.

Just sayin'.

One of the big questions, and something that he brings up on his show fairly often, is this: is he helping to kill the things he loves? By exposing the uniqueness, the you-gotta-see-this-for-yourself of other countries, is he ensuring that there will be an influx of tourists that will forever change it? By enjoying the unique qualities of certain meats, veggies, beers, liquors, etc., is Anthony Bourdain encouraging the boutique-ness of what has happened to staples like the hamburger and the cupcake?

I don't know. Maybe.

For me, being shown these parts of the world and their flavors makes me want to learn to cook more things. If anything, I think it's a positive sentiment to take away from the book.

...Although I HAVE paid $50 for a hamburger before. But just once!

the gentleman can write

I'm blowing through books this past month or so! I can't complain, winter is perfect reading time because the weather is iffy at best, and constantly cold. My apartment is freezing because gas costs are through the roof (amiright?), so I'm most likely covered in a pile of blankets with a book in front of my face.

I just finished reading Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain. I really liked it. It helped that I've watched his shows for years, and I could hear him talking as I read. It's really a new experience to read a book that way. If you can hear an author speak (or if they have recorded their own audiobook) I would absolutely go for it. If you get familiar with their voice, the cadence of the way you read their words completely changes (in a good way).

Just a note before I get into things: I used to work in "the industry". Not in a restaurant. I worked for a few years as a baker/assistant at a big catering company in Connecticut, and I actually still work there on weekends in the summer (wedding season). I loved that job. Really and truly. I loved what I did and loved the people I worked with, the environment, everything (why else would I work weekends in addition to my regular 40 hours!?). Do I have the mean, exhausting restaurant experience that Tony had? No. I honestly don't think I could handle working full time in a restaurant kitchen. But I do have a sense--fleeting as it may be--of what he's talking about with that, and full familiarity with a lot of other things. It was great to read something so familiar, but also to learn something from it (a lot, actually).

(I think I abused the concept of parentheses in that last paragraph.)

What I like most about the book is his analysis of behavior in the industry. It's something I desperately miss now that I work in an office. In the food industry, there are things you do and things you don't do, and they're mostly black and white, cut and dry. Do a good, efficient job. Don't slack on your work or let your co-workers down. Variations on these themes. And if there's something that's unsaid, if the line is crossed, someone will say it. Or scream it, depending on how bad the mistake is. I saw a prep chef drop a raw chicken breast in a bowl of sliced tomatoes, pick it out, wipe it off, and keep working. He wasn't pulled aside...the chef screamed at him right there, immediately, in front of everyone. Whether that prep chef didn't think anything of it or knew that he was wrong all along, I personally think it was more effective to get it out of the way then and there. No chef has time to have meetings all day long reprimanding people for things he saw earlier. He has work to do too. No one is that idle in a kitchen.

Raw chicken=salmonella and other yucky things.

Now that I work in an office (I know it sounds bad to say it), I wish screaming was an option. There isn't that kind of regulation of behavior in an office. In the kitchen, you are working at your station. If you want to carry on a conversation, do it, but never ever stop working. Stay out of the way as much as possible and get things done as quickly as you can. In an office, too many people want to waste time because there is no chef looking over their shoulder. Too many people interrupt. People are interrupted on their lunch breaks. It's not the end of the world, but when I worked in catering, my lunch break was the 5-10 minutes it took me to scarf down food, and if you wanted to talk to me about work, well, tant pis.

(Tough luck.)

(Those parentheses again.)

But the book. It was good. I wish I had read it when it came out because the tell-all-ness of the book was lost on me, having seen and heard most of Anthony Bourdain's subsequent work before ever having read Kitchen Confidential. I bet this really knocked the socks off of some people other there when it first came out. Especially if they've never been a fly on the wall in a working kitchen.

That being said, I'm onto my next literary entertainment: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by the same sailor-mouthed gentleman. A few months ago, Jim's mom went to the thrift store and came back with two titles for each of us--two Stephen Kings for Jim, and two Bourdains for me. How well does she know us, huh? That thrilled me to no end!

an idea lives on

Last week, I finished the decidedly hefty (849 pages!) new Stephen King book, 11/22/63. My knowledge of Stephen King's writing lies--aside from a number of short stories I've read--in the Dark Tower series, which I think was the best collection I could have started with (thank you to my wonderful boyfriend for that advice). The Dark Tower is Stephen King's literary baby, and it reaches out to all of his other works, so I feel like I have a solid base for reading everything else--and I plan on it. It's the trunk of the King tree, the veins in all of the leaves, the connector...

But let's leave that for another time.

As soon as I opened 11/22/63, I was immediately comforted. I just love the way King writes. It makes me feel wholesome and fully engulfed, as only this Mainer's easy pace could. I grew intensely attached to the characters, and I will be honest and say that at more than a few points, my heart was racing while I was reading. A true thriller. No spoilers here, I just want everyone to read it and enjoy it as much as I did.

The book surrounds the "mission" of Jake Epping, who is introduced to a sort of worm hole that enables the user to travel back in time--but here's the (first) catch--to the sunny, warm day of September 9, 1958.

Side note: I wonder what the weather was actually like on that date in 1958??

His goal is to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, because the timing is right (the assassination will occur about five years from the time he "arrives" in the past) and because he and his cohort Al the diner owner think that this was the turning point to where the world started going downhill. Think of a world without the Vietnam War. Pretty enticing idea, right?

What Jake Epping discovers is that the past is obdurate--it does not want to be changed. He can lay low and not encounter too much resistance, but as soon as he attempts to change the past in a larger way, the past fights back. With such a turning point as the Kennedy assassination, you can imagine how hard the past will fight back.

My favorite aspect of this story was the time period. The way Stephen King described the 1950s made me ache for life to be like that. Simple, slow, appreciative. People were, for the most part, genuine and nice (and when they weren't, you could tell just by looking). The months that Jake Epping spent on the cabin by the lake--rising early, reading, writing, hiking, and canoeing all day long, to fall asleep exhausted and fulfilled--is just the absolute peak of daily appreciation that appeals to me. And the setting of the late 1950s and early 1960s in Jodie, Texas, just doesn't get any more small-town-lovey. You can learn a lot from Stephen King's view of the 1950s: take things slow, appreciate the finer things in life, and cultivate your relationships, because they are the most valuable possessions you will have.