Carrot Top

When a working environment of any sort becomes known as "The Life" in everyday language, an impossible generalization and glossing-over of reality occurs. Things take on a narrative tenor with hints of romanticism lurking round the edges of a world surmised in the listener's mind as one with perhaps dangerous or at least unknown qualities, far apart from their own lives. The quality of Bohemian vs. Bourgeois enters the scene. People who work in restaurants are not different than people who work in the stock market, or in a factory, or even perhaps as prostitutes. They come in all sizes and shapes. They are female and male. Some have families that they put first, some put work first, some just don't put anything first but wander along doing their best to enjoy the day. The romantic image as attached to the restaurant life or to that of being a chef does allow one to use the excuse of certain personality traits if one wishes to, of course. These supposed personality traits have been a traditional refuge from whatever one wishes refuge from in other "artistic" mondes and demi-mondes (let's just slip on that little black silk negligee with those words, too - using monde and demi-monde rather than "worlds" gives a little shiver of pleasurable excitement that hints at a bit of the ooh la la of The Life) since forever. Great refuge if wanted, tossed round with black silk lingerie and clocks that don't work and calendars that can get lost when wanted. Ah, The Life.

I would make an artichoke/pancetta/ caramelized onion puff pastry tart. Quick and easy. Roll, saute, fill and bake. Then corn chowder with the corn, bacon, stock, and potatoes etc. Corn chowder is good as an evening summer meal even if it is hot . . . The sausage can be cut or rolled into bite size pieces, put on a skewer with onions and peppers if you have them or just plain if you don't, and grilled slowly. .............................. Or you could use the sausage, broken up and browned with lots of onions, to fill the tart with the addition of mozzarella. And make a corn and bean and artichoke salad tossed with frizzled pancetta and vinaigrette . .............................. I would find a friend with a freezer for the extra glace and stock. Of course you could always make jellied madrilene but that's probably pretty passe.

I knew there was something nagging in the back of my head at that term. From "Cassell's Dictionary of Slang": Well, well. A sixth definition must be added, obviously.

I'm glad that the required well-phrased defense of Oklahoma piqued you to a first post, annabelle. And I was thinking about those huckleberries all day yesterday, too. Had to eat blueberries instead from North Carolina and they were obviously grown to be shipped, because they tasted like little purple cotton balls.

Mmm . . . it tastes better than Propel, to me. As far as the cost goes, I think the last bottle of 30 multi-vitamins I bought cost around twelve dollars or so. It would take two bottles of the "50/50" variety of Vitamin Water at a dollar fifty or so per bottle to equal that so at three dollars a day times thirty days that makes ninety dollars a month. That's just for one person. When you consider that now my son also likes this stuff, if we all drink it that makes two hundred seventy dollars a month in Vitamin Water. See what I mean? I used to need to make money so I could afford to live in New York City. Now my life has devolved to the point where I need to make money to buy Vitamin Water. It does taste good, though. Sigh.

No, but you reminded me that my daughter is now hooked on Vitamin Water and I love it too, though I regret the price of it as it seems silly to me to pay for water, though I do. It tastes like light koolade. And it seems to promise a full days worth of vitamins in each bottle, but read closely as it really does not and some basic things are missing, like enough calcium. It seems to be an up and coming thing. Coca-Cola Co. just bought the brand recently . . . . . . and it has some fabulous television ads. Pretty good stuff. And no, it does not make me queasy when drinking it. Just worried about why I am spending money on water.

Oh, honey . . . I still love canned spaghetti. But you know I make sure to *hide* when I eat it.

My method of keeping the milk at the right temp for becoming yogurt is a combination high-tech/low tech bundle: Place it on top of the cable-TV box with a knitted wooly winter cap over it.

Maybe that's where the idea of using ketchup on eggs came from. *Anything*, to help choke down the things.

It's funny how so often it's all about style. Much more so than it being about the substance of the thing. But style can often define substance. When I first was a professional chef, I loved that chef coat. Even though they didn't have them in my size back then. I looked rather smurfish, with all those rolled up sleeves and floppy bulkiness enveloping me. Now, of course, they make chef's coats (and very elegant ones, too) to fit even three and four year old children. (I can see them now, in front of their plastic play kitchens, trying to mimic Gordon Ramsay as the teddy bears hover, bow, and rush around making plastic little dishes of food.) (Now there's a business opportunity not yet mined - making the traditional plastic play fruit and vegetables and eggs and such into plastic play "foodie" items. A towering stacked salad, a foam of something-or-other, little dark green leaves of plastic mesclun . . . ahhh. Start 'em young. But that's a different topic.) Later when I was an executive chef those bulky chef's coats became tiring to me. The uniform I wanted to wear was the corporate suit. So as often as possible, I did. In certain environments, executive chefs spend a lot of time out of the kitchen not cooking but feeding the people they intend to have dine at their tables in other ways - fussing over menus, fussing over fussing over menus, fussing over how to possibly procure all the things that are needed for the menus, fussing over the cooks who are fussing over each other and the food vendors and the executive chef . . . so as often as possible, I did not wear the chef coat. It was there, I could put it on (most importantly, put it on with an apron which helps keep all that lovely food off of the rest of the clothes one wears) when I went into the kitchen, but it was not my badge of chef-ness. That resided within me somewhere, though it wanted to wear other clothes, clothes that I saw as having more potential. Wearing those clothes, the Tahari suits and silk blouses, wearing that uniform that style, eventually became what I did wear when the next transition was made from exec chef to corp manager/VP. Style matters. Style says substance in ways, or hints at it. It can also be a laughable thing, as when the wearer has absolutely nothing to bring to what one has draped on oneself as defining uniform. Uniforms define vocation, and the owners of vocation are territorial. Can you do the job? Wear the uniform if you like it. There will of course be some big territorial dogs that might like to come round and bark if you're not in their pack. Bark right back. As a matter of fact, lift your leg on them if you please. "Chef" is an action word, it is a verb as well as a title. Some people are chefs that don't use the title in daily use. I never did when I was one, my own name seemed better. The notion of hearing "Chef Karen" hollered through the kitchen seemed ludicrous. Though I know some guys like, love, the idea of hearing their name attached to "Chef" being hollered out. Rob, wear the chef's coat in your commercial kitchen. If it looks good, if it gives the right impression for what you are doing at this moment, if it keeps the rest of your clothes from being spattered with food - there's no law that says you shouldn't. You should. Just remember, the dog that pisses the highest is top dog. Aim high.

As for the nausea? I wa told that taking them at night help. No go. Then I just wake up nauseated........ ← Mm mm mm. Tina Turner and we three. What's love got to do with it, I ask you. We don't need no stinkin' pills.

I am of the school that buys vitamins then stares at them on the counter till their expiration date is past. Then I throw them out and sooner or later buy more and do the same thing. The children take gummy vites in the winter months and sometimes I will have one too for the fun of it, though they claim I am stealing their vitamins when I do so I have to hide in the kitchen and eat one very quickly! They taste pretty good and do seem to help quicken recovery from common colds, particularly if they take one regular gummy vite and another gummy vite with echinacea in it. The dark cherry ones are the best. Something odd happens often when I do take real vitamins - they make me nauseous, sort of like the same feeling you can get from drinking tea with a very high tannin level. I've heard that this does happen to other people, from doctors. It's not just me. It is difficult to think of the concept of someone taking handfuls of vitamins each day if they don't really *have* to.

I don't know what they were, divalasvegas. All I know is that I got away from them as quickly as possible. But considering my recent experiences with suck-y food out there in the world, I have now decided that the answer of "time and money" just does not cut it. It is not an adequate response. Currently, I am quite certain that the answer to the question of "why does so much food suck?" lies in String Theory. Alternate dimensions, existing side-by-side with our own. How those people that make suck-y food ever fell into the other dimensions can not be explained yet, but surely with time an answer will come.

I take one bite from the center. Maybe another. Then starting at the left edge, I nibble that round and round so that the left edge has been neatly demolished. Then I do a bit of typewriter left to right. Then a bit of typewriter right to left on the other side. This is no mere arbitrary biting, I assure you. It is all part of a Plan. Then all the other parts are devoured just as I please, with whatever part that looks most appealing being bitten off first. I do not use those little corn holder things on the ends, those little plastic yellow skewer-forks that look like cute instruments of torture and doom. Though I do like to have several scattered about in the kitchen drawer, just because.

Adria is a chef. But he has successfully neutered several of the limitations of the definition of "chef". He has done this in an individualistic way that others may try, but that he (as an individual) has succeeded in exceptionally well, so in this sense he is an artist (if the definition of an artist is that of someone who produces works that would not be mistaken for anyone else's works, at least until the techniques become widespread and copied by others). If you look at Adria from the eyes of the art world, certainly he could be considered a performance artist, taking his "work" (which includes his manifesto or writings, his food and his concepts including the way he operates his restaurant) as a whole - if one wanted to. And I think that in this case the art world wanted to. Part of the reason why they wanted to is the artistic sense that he has created around his work (besides the fact that it is there, there has also been a sense created about it), another part is the aura of exclusivity that his body of work holds, the aura of exclusivity which creates a certain sort of buzz, a particular spark, that must exist for anything contending itself to be "art" to enter into the higher echelon of support system of museums. Did Adria bring people in to the Documenta art show by being there? I bet he did. Did his being there stimulate them in the ways that the other artists' works did? I bet it did. And I bet it stimulated them in other ways, too - in the ways that the idea of food only can. So my take on this is that he is a cook who became a chef. And then that he is a chef who danced right over into art in this moment of time. To envision the idea of a cook dancing in the halls of the museum as intelligent visitors gawk, muse, hunger, and think - and think of what he cooks as "art" - well. As far as I'm concerned, he can call himself whatever he wants. That's a pretty neat little dance he's done.

I love the comments but have a sense that the writer was more interested in the romantic flow of the words than finally pinning down any exact "truth". How I sense this is that I do it myself, often. To this comment, my answer is of course, "yes and no". Was there ever such a thing as a gourmet that was not "noble" in these old books? What would he (or she? no no I can not wrap my mind around it) be then? It does surprise me to hear of a British book speaking of sauces in this way, Janet. It sounds almost French. "Sauces to food/action to oratory". I'm going to assume that the action spoken of is gestures and movement, the theatrical part of oratory. So that the meaning is that a sauce sparks factual things into vibrant life. Can't agree with that, unless the food paired with the sauce is dull or flavorless and the sauce more vital than the paired food - and that is not how it should be to my mind. It should be a pas de deux. Oops there goes that other language again. *But* that may have been the style of cooking at the time - strong sauces paired with duller tasting foods. Nice line though. I could just read this sort of writing and not think a single thought and be quite happy afterwards. Sounds like the author is in love. .................................................. My favorite sauce is charcutiere, with pork chops. And yes, elephant will be fine with that if you're fresh out of piggies at the moment. Just don't forget the mashed potatoes, please.

Yes, chile-peppa, I know that area in Virginia. I wonder how the trajectory of your "food life" ( ) would have been different if your family had remained there and not moved to Chicago . . . ............................................. The answers to these questions *are* really interesting. I'm glad to hear these stories.

I guess that b*tch (excuse the french) not only has limited taste buds and would like everyone else to hang right there along with her, but also has no fear of showing her terribly bad manners. You made a fresh home-made dessert and she prances in with a tub of fluffed lard and says, "Put this on it?" Meh. I am having fantasies of dumping a vat of Cool-Whip on her head. Sigh. .............................. I really don't know why I bother to leave home to travel anywhere unless it would be to a major city, as far as finding something to eat that does not suck goes. After yesterday morning's styroeggs I went on to have lunch at the most promising non-chain independent restaurant in the area, a Mexican place, and was served a burrito the size of a WWII tanker which tasted like one too and had the same effect of literally trying to kill me, I do believe. If I had eaten more than an tenth of it, I would have been lying on the floor unable to move from the heavy denseness of it. Dinner, again at "the finest place in town" (another independent restaurant) was better. It was amusing, though, that the place advertises itself as having a wine list. This is how it differentiates itself and touts sophistication. The wine list had two producers listed on the top: Woodbridge and Beringer. Then underneath that it listed three varieties from each producer. *That* was the wine list. Geez. I'm tellin' ya. It's either laugh or cry. Honestly, I might head for fast food for lunch and just plain appreciate the fact that, expecting not-too-much except consistency, I might not be disappointed.

I had a very spooky food-sucking experience this morning. I went down to the buffet breakfast at this hotel (Hampton Inn, first time I've stayed at one - maybe should have chosen the other one that has commercials that say they make you smart, instead) and went to look at what they were offering for hot food. Sliding back the silver cover, I viewed something that looked like dog turds on the left that actually were sausages. How they could have been more dried out is awesome to consider, for probably they would just turn into a poof of black smoke if they had been heated one more second. But that was not the suckiest thing. The suckiest thing I really do not even want to call eggs, but they were. Or that's what they were supposed to be anyway, but really I can not believe that they were not made out of styrofoam for that was the exact texture. They were these little round egg frisbees, all stacked up like so much cut wood on top of each other in three big piles. They were white with a tiny spot of buttercup yellow in the center. They looked like flying saucers. They were actually scary. I've seen the hard little frisbee-shaped scrambled eggs before but never whatever this thing was supposed to be. I went back to look several times to be sure that I wasn't hallucinating from the watery coffee or from the fumes that must have approached my nose from the yellow and orange cut up chunks that they called "fresh fruit" but which looked like sewage actually. Not that I've seen sewage but that would be the closest earthly thing they resembled, for they did not look as if they came from this planet, anywhere. A man came up and looked at the eggs, standing beside me. "Have you ever seen anything like that before?" I asked him. "Noooooo. No." he said. "I have *no* idea what that is." he said mournfully and walked away, stumbling a bit in his shock. Why? Why didn't they just make *hardboiled* eggs if nothing more difficult could be managed? What is the point of these hockey pucks and dog turds being offered to people for breakfast? I wanted to ask the woman in attendance at the buffet but didn't want to depress her. Or alternately, if she was one of the aliens that actually think this stuff is the right stuff to serve, I didn't want to get beamed up onto her space ship and kidnapped.

Kasha for breakfast, too, for that matter, Rebecca.

I'm all for egg salad, as either Fat Guy or The Old Foodie described it at the very start of this important discussion. Hard to improve on either of those ideas. But there is yet a remaining vital question attached to the idea of egg salad sandwich, though, and that is how thick should it be layered onto the sandwich? This can make or break an egg salad sandwich, leaving one greatly disappointed or even vaguely angry, if it is not engineered correctly before taking a bite. The best egg salad sandwich I ever had was in London. It was a perfect little rectangle of Best British wheat bread filled with egg salad that approached a puree in texture, with only tiny little bites of hard white here and there to be found. The bread was very soft and thin and a bit nutty from wheat kernels that also seemed tiny and precise, self-deprecatory wheat kernels they were, rather than the usual huge lumbersome kernels that are always trying to get stuck in your teeth. It was topped with the loveliest little alfalfa sprouts, darling alfalfa sprouts, and just enough of them. They were not even peeking over the edge of the sandwich in a rude fashion but rather honored their inner selves as sprouts by retiring gently between the slices of bread to cuddle up next to the finesse of the egg salad, knowing that soon they would be eaten but ready and willing for the eventuality to occur. For of course, they were sprouts and they knew their place. One might say they closed their eyes and thought of England but I doubt those sprouts were even that pushy. There was also a shimmer, the merest shimmer if that is possible, of Branston pickle on one side of the sandwich. Which added the merest savory bite to the whole otherwise gently receding yet delightfully tasty experience. But the core question here is the thickness of egg salad. You can not layer on egg salad with a trowel as if it were roast beef, or turkey. No no no. It is a crime against the tastebuds of humanity to attempt that. It must be a rather thin, perfectly measured layer throughout the sandwich with not the least bit of deviation in height, otherwise the perfection will be quite off, to the point of ruination.

I have, in a past career. And I agree with you, that really isn't the point. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Write, make money, be a plumber, take naps . . . whatever fits best.

Thanks. I still believe I could have made more money if I'd decided to train as a plumber, but there's still time for that if this doesn't work out.

Going through the drive-through several times? What do you call that, the slow-fooding of fast food? I feel ridiculous enough going through the drive-through *once*. There might be some actual adults in the places outside of town that have joined the ranks of fast food workers in our "rural economy" (though I can't remember seeing any for ages now around here) but right here in town we just have the future MBA's, engineers, scientists, and Ph.D candidates of our great country smiling through the drive-through windows. I know this because inbetween messing up my orders they complain to me that they are not getting their homework done or they explain at endlessly mind-blowingly boring length the contents of the oral presentation they have to give "soon". Maybe it's something in the air in the places - brains might get clogged up somehow with all those burger fumes and grease aromas?

It was close to two years ago that I wrote this, above. Several weeks ago in a nutty moment the idea of writing "for real" seemed more appealing than a nap for some bizarre reason. I submitted a proposal (with a sample, if that's what it's called) for a short series to a real publisher, a newspaper. Today my proposal was accepted, and I have to go there sometime soon to sign a "freelancer's contract". Now all I have to do is actually write the things and have them work right. I do hope it does not interfere with my nap time.