Committed

Married and bored or Single and lonely? - Chris Rock

I recently told Nick that I wanted to punch him in the face until he died. I think it must be true love when you can overlook a remark like that and keep pretending you're asleep to avoid the coughing child. 

After six years of marriage I understand why people get divorced. You want your life back. YOUR life. The one where YOU come first.  If you have kids you might be willing to give up everything that is good and pure and wonderful for two weeks a month of Cheetos, Real Housewives and no Legoes.  You might say to yourself, Hey Self, I'd like to put on full makeup and high heels and walk around with my tits hanging out like I used to instead of chasing Evan around the park in these motherfucking capri cargoes that we all wear. AGAIN.  

You might say that.

And then you might force yourself to think of all the poor people who live in real despair and have no chance or choice and it's so nice to have a family who is healthy and who loves each other.

And you remember what you said in front of God and the employees of the Flamingo Hotel in beautiful Laughlin, Nevada.

And you put the bag of Cheetoes back on the shelf, and rent Toy Story 75, pick up the pair of underwear and T-shirt that is ALWAYS next to the bed, and say Thanks to the universe for sending someone to love the bitch that is you. 

The Prophet, 2010, revised, abridged edition.

 

 

 

 

 

Knife Bag 5. OUI CHEF!!!!!!

You know the part in Pulp Fiction where Sam Jackson flips his wallet out onto the table and it says Bad Ass Motherfucker?

Ludo Lefebvre is that wallet.

Look him up online. Don't let the white teeth fool you. This is a man who runs marathons after training a few days, who comes to work after back surgery instead of nodding off on Vicodin like the rest of us weenies would.  He is polite, unassuming. He is a machine.

There are so many parts to being a chef. Cooking is only the first. You are the coach, the mommy and the shrink. You need to recognize different personalities and get each cook to want to be better with each plate of food they put out. You never want your team to be counting the minutes until they can leave. This isn't Subway. People can tell how much love got put into their food and that is a direct reflection of the team and it's leader. Ludo is exceptional. It is stunning to see someone who gets subtitles when he's on TV explain himself better than any chef I've ever worked with. EVER.
Lots of chefs get the cooking part, but cannot tell you how to do something. When you think you have finally figured out what they want, they come over and tell you how stupid you are.

(What normal person picks a job where people get to scream "RETARD" at you while you burn yourself, btw? There is such an S&M angle to cooking. I wonder what Freud would say)

Anyhoo, Ludo is genuinely warm as he greets me.

He hands me a shirt and apron, smiles with his very white teeth, and.........

tells me I'll be working hot apps & dessert with Chef Dan. R'uh r'oh.

The Twitter has led me to blogs and the blogs have led me to stories about failed souffles.  No one has apparently mastered these little fuckers yet, but there have been many stern looks of disapproval and the inevitable banishment to ice cream land. 

Lead me to the guillotine, sir.

It's like the first quarter of cooking school where you have to get past the crabby instructor before they let you cut more than onions and carrots.  It must be very challenging to have so many people with different skill levels knocking flour everywhere and forgetting things in the mixer.

The other interns are AMAZE-O. Where they lack experience, they make up for in stamina as they are pulling 50 hour weeks, gratis, just to get to work with him.  That's the power of the LudoBite.

After a five year-absence I feel like the red-cloggers on Top Chef. You've seen them. The 40 year-olds who represent for the catering witches everywhere. We're not untalented, just a bit slower. We don't have the energy we did when we were 25. We have had dead babies and breast cancers, sick parents and mortgage crises. We want to cook to save ourselves and the world from ow-ies and mean people.

So I'm slower, but I'm also different than I was before in a kitchen. I am VERY sensitive as most of you know and I used to go home crying sometimes after a behind-the-line ass-chewing.

Not anymore. When told to "inspect and reflect" my buttered souffle molds in a tone that might be construed as condescending, I just said Okay, and did them again.  I thought about Evan and how glad I would be to see him in four hours.

Wrap first night.  No disasters. I remember to say 'behind' and 'corner'.  No plates are dropped.

I am on cloud 9 as I exit through the dining room, softly lit like a cathedral where octopus and pork belly are worshipped instead of the Mother. I am back in my element, I can't wait to collapse into the Subaru and get home.

I turn the corner and reach my car................


Which is all alone. In a pitch-black lot. With no valet in sight.


next up-Are You Effing Kidding Me?

Do you think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me?

1994 - Year of the Goat Cheese Round


When I moved to Seattle I was in retail. Translation: I had no job skills besides putting on make-up and I was too short & fat to model.  I went to my local junior college to sign up for beauty school. The wait list was too long, the cooking program had a few openings, the rest is the story of a kitchenbitch.


There were 3 kinds of people enrolled: working chefs who wanted to add school to their resumes, enthusiastic eaters who had minor skills and didn't mind the idea of grovelling in a hot, dirty place as a career, and people who had NOFUCKINGCLUENOTANYNOTNOHOW.


When our Chef of the Day final came around, these folks brought in their Silver Palate and Pasta & Co. cookbooks and started pecan-crusting chicken like the cat licked it's own ass off and got a show on the Food Network.  I am not kidding  when I tell you that people thought red pepper strips on crostini with goat cheese was the shit.


I was having none of it.


Le Petit Cochon.  Modern takes on comfort food. Mary Had A Bowl of Chili with lamb and mole. Iceberg wedge with pancetta & Stilton and grilled cheese with brie & pears a full decade before they got effed out by Giada, Ina and the rest of their crew. Ancient Chinese Meatloaf roulades w/bok choy cooked by none other than Chefs Matt Dillon & Jake Mihoulides (the class behind us were our staff).


I spray painted the menus to look like NYC graffiti, painted butcher paper like blue sky and clouds to go under the glass tabletops, got dozens of pink peonies for decor.


And I was going to kill something in the dining room. That's right. Until yours truly came along, the tableside portion of the final at SCCC had been strictly sixties. Caesar, Diane, Jubilee. Rinse and repeat.


No ma'am. Uh uh.  I would rather release a sex tape than mash an anchovy in the bottom of a bowl and pretend there is anything original about that.  And since it would be prepared by another student, it seemed pointless for me to COPY a recipe for this to happen. Where is Chef Marisa in THAT equation, exactly? Oddly, no one else ever questions this ridiculousness. Amateurs.


Drunken shrimp cocktail. I decided early on that I was going to get the prawns hammered on tequila and light them on fire right there on Broadway, cementing my legend, inspiring the next class to put down the baby greens and use their imaginations.  I must have read about this somewhere, because at that point, with my limited experience, I had no idea when the season for live prawns was or where I could get them. Fuck it. Go big or go home has been my lifelong motto and it's why my life rules.


So I put it on the menu and started calling Mutual Fish every day for an update.  The day of the final, I called and oh-my-Jesus, it was raining in the gulf, the water was muddy and the shrimp weren't there yet.  My very first purveyor crisis. Way more practical work experience than ordering chicken tenders and waiting for them to show up.


I got back to school right when service was starting, threw the tequila in the bowl, had a shot since it was my final and what could they do, and pushed Dave and the cart out into the dining room.


You could hear the squealing across the room.  They sure are loud little bastards.  I guess I wouldn't be all that happy about immolation either. I hope the tequila helped ease their transition to a better place.


They were served on a bed of ice that had been colored shades of blue and green, frozen in sheet pans, and shattered to look like broken glass.


How's that Caesar salad, bitches?


My efforts were lauded, I received a 4.0 on my evaluation, and my menu went up in the display next to the office. I would have to check and see, but so far I think I am still the only one to bring death to the dining room at SCCC.


Shrimp Assassin.  Recognize.

Knife Bag, Part 4......Welcome to the Terrordome

I was a bad-ass.
 
Professional cooking is hard as nuts. Most girls would never want to smell this bad or have their nails look like mine. Could never imagine being elbow deep in pig intestines. And the outfit.  Sweet Fucking Jesus. I cried the first time I put the whole thing on. 

When I came into the kitchen in 1992, women were the mascot. There was one of us in every kitchen and we got to make salad. If a gal was lucky and blew the right GM she might skip cooking altogether and go straight to being Executive Chef where you only had to show up a few hours a day to order and schedule.

I was NOT that girl.

I was the girl in the parka and ski-cap on a dock on Lake Union in January, grilling 200 sides of salmon. I was at the Ruins working 21 hour days during Xmas. You heard me. When was the last time any of you actually stood up doing manual labor for TWENTY-ONE HOURS??!!( the five chefs and one actress reading this are excluded)

I was a fucking bad-ass.

Maybe not to the guys on Deadliest Catch, but seriously, compared to most people I know? 

A certain constitution is required to be able to handle the long hours, hot & dangerous work environment and binge drinking. It's a perfect life for a single 25 year-old. It's hell if you're a mommy.

So when Evan was born, I quit.
I didn't want to parent from the couch while I recovered from the night before. It seemed a logical choice for me to stay home.
2000 days later I am a bit out of shape.

Cooking is like athletics. You might see a big ol' gut on a chef or two,  but there are no fat prep cooks.

A few days after our miraculous anniversary dinner I get an email. Ludo is going to add a prep cook. Am I in?


Nick promises to leave work early everyday so I can be downtown at 3 and I start to assemble my knife bag.

Uh oh.

Honey? I need to get some tools.

Like what?

Like EVERYTHING. DUH. I can't go asking to borrow stuff in the kitchen.

Why not?

It's like talking to a tree stump. He just doesn't get it. It's not like an office job where the computer and printer are waiting when he gets there in the morning. A kitchen has an oven. And some half pans if you're lucky. It is not uncommon for cooks to bring their own egg pans or their own spatulas or whisks.  Restaurant owners are notoriously cheap and forcing you to bring everything down to measuring spoons ensures that they won't have to pony up for any more than necessary.


I spend the next 2 days driving all over LA reading the menu and trying to guess what I might need. Poached oysters? Better get an oyster knife. Ricer for mousseline? Check. Nick shakes his head every time I walk in the house with a new bag and bets me I won't use any of it.


Now that I am equipped, I have the genius idea to get the oil changed. Which leads to some belts being fixed and the info that our battery is about to die.


THAT can't be that hard to fix. I've done it plenty of times.


Yeah, stupid. IN THE NINETIES!!!!!!!


When the computer of the car did not need to be reset in order to run.


This is a revelation a girl does not want to have at 6 pm on Saturday night.  My chariot to the most fantastic kitchen experience ever is stalling every other minute and the only place open on Sunday is the Sears who sold me the battery, but can do nothing about computers. Sorry. SORRY?????


I am hysterical. I call everyone, look at every Subaru repair website. What am I going to do???  I can't sleep, I'm so freaked out. I swore to Krissy that not only could I do this, but would do the best job ever and I can't even get there. I even look up metro schedules so that Nick can start and stop my ass all the way to the bus stop if he has to.


I go to the EZ Lube that tested the battery, in tears, asking the manager what to do. The very nice man who looks exactly like Cedric the Entertainer, motions me into his office. Uh Oh.  I don't want to cook THAT bad. He tells me that he can reset our computer, but it's totally illegal and he's going to do it to get me to stop crying.


There must be some reason life is trying to get in the way of me getting to Ludobites.


Silly me thinks its a test to see how bad I want it.


next up - Out of the Frying Pan.