Dumplings for Davis

So often I see food used for evil. It's usually a fun evil, like gluttony or making dick jokes, but generally evil none the less. It is refreshing to see the opposite. And to have the opportunity to help out is absolutely amazing.

Last night I was given the chance to work a charity event to raise money for a kid who was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. It was hard work, and we were cramped in that little truck, but it was the most fun I've had in the kitchen. And it was truly something to behold, watching the donations pour in. This is something I need to do more. A relationship with food, I need to maintain. Food for good, not evil.

Davismckay.com

Teenage Wasteland

Some places just work better with specific songs. It just feels right to listen to Led Zeplen or Queen in the kitchen. It's like the walls vibrate better with the early punk sounds. I feel connected to the forefathers of kitchen yesteryear. Especially if, like today, the whole kitchen loudly sings, and air-guitars, along with "Teenage Wasteland." It's the type of thing that makes a cramped, hot, uncomfortable little room feel like a home.

Scars

I have burn marks all up and down my arms from shoving things into hot ovens and handling hot pots. I have knife nicks on each thumb and a few fingers. My hands are calloused and beat up. I call them my kitchen hands and they tell a story. I use to be proud of them. I used them as proof that I have what it takes, that I can withstand the pain of every day in a kitchen. I held them with pride. But more and more lately I've become a little ashamed. Each burn was a moment I became careless, each nick a time when my mind wandered. Instead of precision in all things, I wavered and hurt myself. A perfect cook would have no scars. A perfect cook would move their body exactly as they planned. Their knives would be an extension of their body. But there is no such thing as a perfect cook, just as there is no such thing as a perfect person, and we all have the scars to prove it.

Dues

My chosen fields always seem to require me to prove myself; to pay my dues. I start at the bottom, work my way up and hopefully gain respect and position. I must work the shit hours, get paid almost nothing, do the difficult or dirty work. I do these things because everyone does it. I do these things because it has to be done by somebody and it might as well be done by the least experience, the newest, the one who needs to show what he can do.

I went to school for Journalism and quickly learned I would learn nothing from school. This is not a knock against the school or my teachers, they tought me a lot and I'm happy with my alma mater. But what they really taught me was how to learn from experience. I rarely read a textbook or listened to a lecture. Every teacher kicked me out of the classroom and sent me on the hunt for a story. While this made my other classes more difficult (I still cannot, for the life of me, understand what a vector is or why I should care) it taught me to learn by doing and jump into a task with my whole body.

After school, I could do two things; move to the middle of nowhere and intern at a newspaper with readership around 100, or anything else. I chose the second option. I jumped into the kitchen, something I always thought about but never considered it possible. I still had to start at the bottom, I still had to do the worst jobs for the least pay in kitchens that weren't doing anything exciting. But at least I was feeding people.

Working more and more, meeting new people and (hopefully) showing them I can work, leads to bigger opertunities. And one day, maybe I'll start at a place not at the bottom, not as the FNG or kitchen bitch. (Although, I don't know if I'll ever feel any different) Some day I'll have paid my dues and gained respect and worked enough and learned enough to say to the wide-eyed newcomer "You think you've got it bad, back when I worked at . . . "

Reading

I used to inhale books. I used to consume them with such a passion; nose stuck halfway through one, while a stack, ten high, teetered next to me. I kept paperbacks in my back pocket and hardcovers in my book bag. I read. I was a reader.

Now, not so much. Sure, I still have a stack sitting next to my bed. And I have a hard time passing a used book store, but I can no longer call myself a reader. It takes me months to finish just a few hundred pages. I read one, two pages at a time and get a little board. I no longer read at night. I'm content to fall asleep watching tv or, god help me, listening to podcasts.

I jump from book to book to magazine to newspaper all in the same hour. I can tell you the titles of the five or so books I'm reading right now, but not really much else. Don't ask me for names of the characters or plot points. I'll just stare back, unknowingly.

That was all true until I found out the Urbana Free Library sells books. Remember how I can't pass up a used book? Stuck in the corner, barely visible behind a famously bad hardcover about what I can only assume is a killer cat, sat Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. My hungry eyes picked it out immediately.

It's been three days. I'm nearly finished. It's captured my attention and held it and I can hardly think of anything else.