My kitchen is jacked...

It’s true.  Witness:

- There are exactly two square feet of work space for food prep,  

- The cupboards are small, inconveniently distant from the stove, their doors removed in a long ago renovation and never replaced,  

- The stove is old, small, the burners on the right side moody and frequently uncooperative,

- There is no range hood or exhaust fan for the stove which is definitely problematic when getting that certain, deep rich brown on these lamb neck bones I am going to braise in da’ag curry,

- The fridge is cluttered mess that becomes a cluttered soggy mess in the summer when its sagging door lets in the warm humid air which condenses, freezes on the ceiling, warms just enough to drip and drip and drip until we have to mop up a pool of condensate,

- We do not have a dishwasher, I am not exactly sure given the current configuration of the kitchen where we would put one,

But we have a great sink; a big old porcelain farm house number with one deep basin that is perfect for soaking greens and vegetables, and a shallower one, set at just the right height for shucking shellfish and after the meal (or during a break in the cooking action) washing the boatload of dishes resultant from my every foray into the kitchen.

It's true.  My kitchen is jacked, it is also a teaching kitchen.  It teaches me every day:

- To properly plan ahead, get my mise squared away no matter how big or small the meal because I just can’t stop cooking, slide everything to the side and quick chop, mince or slice something I forgot to prep, there is NO fucking side to slide things to,

- To not just sit around while things cook, but to police up my work space, to wash the dishes resultant from the most recent cooking step because again I can’t leave a pile of dishes on my 2 square feet of work space because I will have NO work space and for the sake of marital peace and glad tidings I just can’t leave an immense pile of dishes to be washed after we eat.  Agnes has previously and effectively employed this Euro-gypsy death curse thing (soon to be a poem, I am sure) that I am doing my best to not be on the receiving end of,

- To be patient.  I am still working on this.  There are more than a few times when I cannot find a key ingredient in the refrigerator’s cluttered, soggy mess or one of our “cabinets” and want to throw something CRASH into the wall as a statement of my frustration, but then I remind myself, take a deep breath and try one more round of searching before calling Agnes to find the missing ingredient,

- To never underestimate the importance of a good, deep and voluminous sink to any working kitchen.  I can work around all of the other jacked shit, but I do not know what I would do with one of those 2 gallon six inch deep stainless steel piece of crap wash basins they pass off as sinks these days,

Above all, my kitchen has taught me to persevere, to find creative solutions to the lack of space, to be (increasingly) patient with old, jacked appliances and cabinets and to continue cooking the best fucking food I can.

My kitchen is jacked.  Fuck it.  Dinner’s at eight.  Bring wine and a good story.  

I have been cooking all day in my jacked kitchen.  I need both.

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Die foodie die!

Whenever the fact that I have a food blog comes up in conversation, I am often confronted with the following response or a variant thereof, “Oh.  You’re a foodie!”  At that point my eyes narrow and if I had super hero laser vision, I am hard pressed to keep from boring a hole through the offender’s head and dropping them like a pile of fresh, bleeding meat at my feet.

I despise the word “foodie.”

Discounting the fact that it just SOUNDS stupid, I despise the behavior it implies.  Based on what I have observed about the culture these days, a foodie thinks that what they eat is somehow important and they are a unique and special flower as a result.  Thus, a foodie takes a photo of everything they eat.  A foodie writes snarky online reviews of the places they eat at as if their undifferentiated palette were somehow relevant.  A foodie drones on about farm to table, sustainability, technique, terroir, nuance.  A foodie will turn the simple and basic into the purposefully complex.

While foodies annoy the snot out of me generally, my larger gripe is that the word implies that that food is the focus, a solo artist and not a participating player in a larger ensemble.  Make no mistake, it is pretty clear I love to eat, but from where I sit the word excludes two important aspects of living: enjoying one’s food with a suitable, complementary beverage and that both food and complementary beverage are best enjoyed with other human being types, preferably people whose company you enjoy or have not yet bored a hole through their heads with your super hero laser vision, but that is not necessarily required.

And so, I reject the word “foodie,” its ugly, narcissistic implications, its loneliness, its very existence and I hereby propose replacing it with: bon vivant.  I will not bore you with a dictionary definition as many would; it is far too easy to look things up these days, so please go do so. Suffice to say, the Gallic tradition of "good things" and the inclusive, cultural nature of the term more fully approximate my views than some nouveau, made up bullshit term.  

So, if you feel the need to label please use the bon vivant (BV or beeve are suitable diminutives) label and please never, never, never call me a foodie.  I have conducted preliminary experiments related to the attainment of super hero laser vision and I will use it.

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