Eating Insects

Three days ago I was in Mexico City when a friend of mine bought a bag of dried grasshoppers (chapulines) from a street vendor. “They’re a good drinking snack,” he told me. And they were. We were drinking liters of cheap Mexican beer on a patio in Plaza Couyucan. I looked at their spiny little legs, dead and dry and curled up towards their bodies.

I ate them anyway, and they were good– exactly the kind of experience I wanted in Mexico City. I came there to eat. I’ve always wanted to come here. I wanted to see the colors of the buildings stacked together. I wanted to smell pork cooking and corn boiling. I fell in love with the Mercados, the cheese and meat and juice vendors tightly packed together in warehouse buildings. The streets are intoxicating to me. There are taco stands on literally every corner, sometimes several, each of them with five or six salsas stacked on a table with fresh limes cilantro and onions. Cumbia and mariachi music is constantly spilling into the streets. 

Everything is much less sanitary, and I mean that in a good way – it’s not wrapped in plastic and hidden behind a partition. The fruit is fresh and raw and hanging from strings on a food cart. The meat is cooked right in front of you. Someone pulls pork from the bone that’s been cooking in its own fat; a woman presses corn masa onto a griddle, and fills it with roasted nopal and beans and avocado. People stand together on street corners eating tacos with their hands. I stood on a dirty, unswept street and ate the best chorizo I’ve ever had – topped with sautéed onions and potatoes and an addictively creamy green salsa.

It's common to use every part of an animal – sweetbreads (the thymus gland), beef tongues and pig’s ears, chicken necks hanging in shop windows, pork face pozole. I watched a man make chicharones, slicing the fat with a sharp knife, pressing and frying it. 

And then there's the grasshoppers. What do they taste like? Mild, nutty, a little sour like sumac. Their legs, when braised, are a little strongly and fibrous. When fried they're crunchy like peanuts. Like most meat, they sop up the flavor of whatever they're cooked in. 

Comfort Zones

I read this quote a few years ago that said, “What you used to be afraid of is your comfort zone now,” and I’ve thought a lot about that since: comfort zones, living in them and breaking through them. Right now my comfort zone is a few streets in the middle of a city in Mexico that I didn’t know existed three weeks ago. My comfort zone is this little garden level apartment that really feels like home to me now. Home has become hard to define for me over the last year, or maybe easier — easier because it’s taken so many forms. It’s every place I’ve slept, everywhere I’ve unpacked. 

I’m a regular at the Starbucks near me now, in Monterrey Mexico, so much so that he always has my coffee waiting for me. I go to Starbucks because it’s the only coffee shop anywhere near me, and I order the same thing every day because I’ve finally grasped how to say it — “un cafe frio vente con leche soya.” I know how much it costs so I don’t have to fumble for change, trying to remember what the 10 pesos coin looks like, and the entire experience makes me feel a little like I really live here — like this neighborhood of mine is actually mine.

I’m a regular at Tocumbo, too, my favorite little fruit stand. I go when I’m hungover. I go when it’s hot. I go when I’m bored. I go almost any time I’m within ten blocks of it, and sometimes I go twice in a row. Maybe it’s the comfort and familiarity I crave. Maybe it’s the liters of coconut & mango aguas frescas that literally give me life. Tonight the boy at the counter laughed at me and said “coco y mango? De nuevo??” (Again??) It’s a funny thing to feel recognized in a city that still feels so foreign to me.

Here's something that very strongly wasn’t in my comfort zone: working dinner service in a kitchen I don’t know, in a language that I barely know. My friend and I successfully put on our sold-out pop-up dinner last Saturday, a 4-course menu I designed, prepped, and cooked, for almost 100 people with the help of some badass local line cooks. We plated 92 salads, chicken breasts, steaks, and tarts within a few hours, and to me it was a cyclone of an experience — three or four hours of running around cooking and plating food, of running out of food, of running to the corner store for cauliflower, of trying to communicate, of hearing and speaking words in Spanish I didn’t even know I knew. But ultimately it went well and the food was well-received, so that’s good. I stepped out into the restaurant to a room of drunk and happy people, singing and sitting around a guitar player, and sipped tequila til the sun came up. I have another pop-up brunch this weekend, and then Mexico City will be home for a while. And then my sister’s house again. And then..? Only time will tell. 

Salsa Borracha

I’m a lucky girl. This year I got to hop from one beautiful place to another, from two months in Hawaii to a month in Monterrey, Mexico, where I’m writing from my one bedroom apartment in the suburb of San Pedro. 

I'm in a great neighborhood. I’m surrounded by really sweet, lovely people, who try their best to speak some English to me. It’s been a lot of cooking, eating, drinking, learning; a lot of trying to understand what the hell is going on around me. I’m getting used to the soldiers that ride in trucks with their rifles drawn. I’m getting used to kissing everyone on the cheek when I meet them. 

I'm learning that it’s kind of nice to only use my cell phone when there’s a WiFi connection. I’ve learned that stop signs are merely suggestions. That it’s customary to be 2 hours late (that one was tough for me). I’m learning that “language barriers” really are a barrier — I’m learning how difficult it is to live somewhere that functions entirely in a different language. How much of a comfort zone it is to know you can communicate. And I’m learning that language is much more than translation; that it’s a culture and a context, a collection of grammar and semantics and idioms that sometimes don’t translate at all. But I’ve also learned that there are universal languages, like dancing, like laughing, and like eating, which I’ve fallen even more in love with for the hundredth time. 

The tortillas are magical here. The campechanos, greasy street tacos with beef, pork, cheese and avocado. The aguas frescas, with fresh coconut and mango and jamaica flowers. The dulce de leche paletas. The salsa… I don’t have words for. On one of my first days here, my friend taught me to make "Salsa Borracha," which means "drunk salsa" because it's cooked down with Mexican beer. It’s rich and layered, spicy and balanced - 

To make it, take 1 peeled onion, 2 cloves peeled garlic, 2 tomatoes, and 6 serrano chiles and char them on a grill until soft and roasty. Place in a blender with about 1/2 cup of cilantro and salt to taste. Place the blended mix into a pan and add 1/2 bottle of good Mexican beer. Cook on medium-ish heat until the alcohol evaporates and it tastes amazing. Add lime juice and more salt to taste. 

An Ode To The Sandwich Isles

In the early part of this year, I bought a one-way ticket to the Hawaii with very little idea of what I'd do there. I had a few small paying gigs and a vague plan to WWOOF on a farm on the Big Island. I had some friends meeting me out there. I brought a small backpack and a hammock that made me feel like I could sleep anywhere (turns out that's not the case). 

I knew Hawaii was a pretty place. But I didn't expect it to take hold of me like it did. I fell head over heels for those islands. I struggled to leave. I got "Aloha" tattooed on my elbow. 

Hawaii is a vibrant, pulsing place. Stunningly beautiful of course and a world that feels small and also infinite. I spent two months on three of its islands, and the airport of a fourth one, wearing torn jeans and baggy tee shirts and a red polka dot bathing suit, chasing the sun and the moon, climbing waterfalls, and trees and towers of volcanic rock; swimming with dolphins and turtles in teal water, watching whales breach from the Captain Cook coast line. Eating shave ice and the freshest fish, mangoes that made entire rooms smell like flowers. Our hair was in knots, our skin a deeper beige. We drove our shitty cars around the islands, our 10-person white van with a hula girl that swayed on the dashboard. We took turns lying in the back of a pickup truck, watching the coast line wind. 

I met the Big Island hippies and learned about shakras. I picked up hitchhikers who tried to sell me LSD. The locals let me watch them slaughter pigs and roast them. I was a girl that jumped off a cliff and broke her tailbone in the water. I lived with ten people and a pitbull puppy on a farm we built together. It was easy to connect with people: with all the other transplants, just like me with no ticket home, no plans beyond a desire to travel until they couldn't anymore. 

There were the songs we listened to when we camped on the North Shore, dancing in the middle of the road. The meals we made with a pocket knife, a can opener, and a purse-size jar of salt. The steep peaks we climbed up with the beautiful views of the ocean, the water so clear we could still see to the bottom of it. The clean water pools, the black volcanic cliffs, the light that rose into the valley. The grass always dewy and a rich green, the sun a yolky yellow that beat down on us. The teals and tans and whites. The rich sky and ocean blues. The evergreen trees that line the beach nearest where we lived. The beach we laid on until the sun set, and the moon rose, and the moon set, and the fire died, and the stars spanned the sky to the horizon.

I can say with certainty it’s the best place I’ve been to. And so, as a toast to the sandwich isles, here’s a recipe for the sandwiches we made when we camped on a beach in Kauai, one you can make for about $20 including wine, and with no equipment other than a pocket knife. 

Shrimp Sandwich: Take local Kauai shrimp, cleaned & deveined, and roast them over a campfire. Squeeze lime over them. Toast some Hawaiian sweetbread over the fire. Squeeze sriracha all over the bread, add the shrimp, half an avocado, cilantro, sliced cucumber, sprouts, and scallions. Eat with cheap wine. 

Just Keep Swimming

Today is my late grandmother's birthday. Happy birthday, Grandma. What a wonderful day it is. I wish you were here to see it. 

I'm sitting in this army trailer that I've temporarily occupied, parked in the jungle in the front lot of the house I'm helping to renovate. I’m nursing fifteen mosquito bites on one arm. I just watched one suck the blood from me, two actually, two on different parts of my arm at the same time, and it finally motivated me to light one of the toxic repellant coils I bought at the hardware store.

Today I swam two miles, out from Lanakai Beach and through the ocean to a small island off the windward coast. The swim was exhausting. Parts of my body were numb halfway through it. I was floating there, in the teal blue choppy water, swimming against the current, for over an hour before I reached the island. I’d float for a moment, listening to the sand move on the bottom of the ocean. There were shallow reefs lining the path, a few fish and a large sea turtle with a crusted sandy shell. When we reached the island I’d forgotten how to walk. Numb and exhausted and my body swaying like I was still in the waves. I sat in the sand talking to my friend Joe for a while, both of us lying down and looking at each other and talking about nothing, about Canada, about New York, about never leaving Hawaii. His beard was sandy and his teeth were shiny and his little dimples made his skinny frame seem handsome. I felt like I was on a different planet. I built a sundial and rolled around in the sand. Completely unaware of boundaries, of time and pressure and anxiety. We only knew that we had to be back by the time the sun went down. 

Seasons Change

I want to write about this, so what do I write about? Drinking margaritas with April, our tongues slurring on a concrete banquette? The smell of fresh pumpkins at 7am, scooping the seeds from the flesh? Peeled shallots and baby carrots? Butter softening and sizzling, lemon juice bouncing in a cast iron? Do I write about burned garlic and chicken liver? The way it tenses in the pan? How April writes that it still makes her knees tremble, the sound of it sizzling, the pillowy red livers beginning to brown? 

Do I talk about whole parsley? The cute inner leaves with long stems and florets? Do I write about deviled eggs? Cold and vinegary, crushed Maldon salt?  Do I talk about the smell of burned garlic? The trash cans full of parmesan rinds and blood oranges? The nights I dream about swiss chard and burning beets? Buratta and marinated peppers? Suckling pigs, hanging in the walk-in? Scoring their skin? Chopping herbs and anchovies? Ripping the heads off of trout, picking the bones from the flesh. Melting the hair off of pig's ears, cooking slowly in duck fat. Carving a pig's head, smoking and rolling it, slicing and breading it. 

How corporal it all can be? Carnivorous? 

Everything moves quickly, but vividly, colorful in memory. The seasons are defined in menus, colors, the smell of snow falling on the walk to work. Summer left in tattoos and orange suns, sweet corn soup and cilantro. Autumn came in pumpkins and honey crisps and English cheddar. There was milk-braised pork on the menu and we all started wearing thicker sweaters. I learned to roast carrots and carve suckling pigs. Fall was madness and pumpkin seeds, puppies in store windows, blankets and long syllables. Now winter's come in pomegranate seeds and lamb shanks, polenta and haddock and kale. I've learned to fry pancakes and cook bourbon syrup. We wear parkas and tall boots, take night cabs with the city lights behind us, the rivers beginning to ice. 

Do I write about that? How equally greyed and poignant it feels? My memory of this is colorful and juicy -- ripping a pomegranate open, the smell of cream scalding, buttery brussels sprouts leaves. Vivid, primal, wild, loud, blurred and confusing, green and blue and distant and immediate and it's all too soon to know what it will be. 

New York Real Estate Of Mind

You’d think that after two years in New York I’d have become calloused enough not to believe promises from hasty brokers and landlords, or buy into blanket statements about trendy neighborhoods, or actually convince myself of things like, “$1200/month for one room in an illegal 5 bedroom, street-level, windowless apartment, is a GREAT DEAL FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD!” You’d think.

I was so happy to have found this place I almost peed myself. I bragged about it to anyone who would listen. All of my living space! My clean white walls and chic reclaimed fireplace! The cool brick inlay on one of the basement walls! Central heat and A/C! It’s “A DREAM COME TRUE, ” a “SUN-SOAKED 5 BEDROOM IN THE HEART OF HIPSTER-VILLE.” I had found real estate mecca!

Well. Of the 5 bedrooms, 3 are illegal; of the 3 bathrooms, only 2 seem to have been built; and the central A/C? Fughettabout it.

So now I’m sitting in my kitchen sweating under flourescent lights, and I’ve been waiting 2 hours for the landlord to come with his crew, and I can hear the rats mating in the dry wall, and my beer is slowly sliding off my kitchen table, and I still cry like a baby every time I realize it’s the first of the month. When did I become such a sucker?

Maybe I am just blind to the details — maybe I possess such faith that I look past all the small things, like street-level windows on a busy night-life corner, and an oven that doesn’t light, and floors that slant inwards, and pans that fall off the stove while I’m cooking eggs, and the vent in my room that’s not connected to the “central heating system,” and the disclosure forms we had to sign because our apartment is actually illegal (if anyone asks, the 3 roommates in the basement are squatters), and the fact that my HOT location in this HOT neighborhood is actually just an ancient building in an old immigrant slum (it shows).

But they sold it to me so effortlessly. “$1180 per person? This deal can’t be beat. For the neighborhood, you know. For the convenience. And what a cool chandelier from IKEA, you know? Check out that detailing. I’d sign right now because there’s probably a line out the door.”

I wish I had listened to everyone who told me not to waste my money. The truth is, I only use this place to sleep, and shower, and sometimes use my roommate’s espresso machine. I might as well live in a bunk. So I guess the advice I can offer, to anyone moving to New York, is this:

You’ll never be home, so don’t waste money on a fancy apartment. If you have the money, splurge on a neighborhood, not a space. Live in a loft, with ten roommates. Share a bathroom with your neighbors. Sleep in one of those tubes from the Japanese hotels. It doesn’t matter. There’s no reason to ever sit at home in this city. Even on rainy days. There’s bars for that.

Side Effects

I’m convinced that when Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” he was a line cook in his twenties at a Michelin starred restaurant in New York City.

I try to stay swollen with the good things: the good times, the new family I’ve built of my coworkers, the celebrity stories that excite people when I tell them, the living and the learning, the inexplicable laughter and brooding, the drunkenness and dancing, the closeness that comes of working so many hours in close quarters. I feel lucky to have come so far, to have climbed the line so quickly at such a renowned restaurant. I'm flattered that they have the faith in me to carry out their legend. I more often than not feel unqualified, but they continue to give me the chance. 

I write a lot about the good things, partially because there are so many. Partially because I'm trying to stay positive. Partially because I want the people who believe in me to keep their reasons to. But I have to admit that this holiday season, I feel completely consumed by the consequences of this life, the side effects of the career I've chosen. The side effects that seem to do more harm than good. 

I have a lot I could say about the kitchen and the restaurant and what I’ve been doing. But all I can think about lately is what I’m not doing. 

Like the love life I want but can’t access. As I watch everyone around me get together like spring birds and take holiday photos, I'm alone in the corner of a kitchen cooking carrots. My sister is pregnant and I'm lucky to catch up on it through a Facebook update. I'm afraid I might be the distant aunt, the best friend who never calls, maybe one day the absent mother, the shitty roommate who forgets to feed the cat. There are things I want so badly and just can't procure. 

Most people don’t talk about these side effects. Or maybe they do – Anthony Bourdain mentions it in the back of Kitchen Confidential – but it always seems to be greyed by some sentimental statement of passion and love for food or the food industry that makes it all worthwhile. It all ends the same – yes there’s no denying that this industry will destroy your life as you know it, tear apart your relationships and more than likely your health…so don’t bother with it unless you’re truly passionate. But what if you are passionate? Is that enough? We live in a Food Network era that’s glamorized food professions, where a once blue collar job has become a deified career. I feel good telling people I’m a cook. I know it will be received well, even if I make less money than I did when I was sixteen; even if the 70 hour weeks seem to be weakening me and my relationships, I know that someone’s eyes will light up when I tell them what I do, and they’ll picture me like Giadia De Laurentiis in a push-up bra dashing paramigiana reggiano into a pasta salad. Yet I still wake up every day wondering what I’m doing it for.

Am I missing something? Am I just not passionate enough? Am I missing the forceful drive that lets you abandon all other earthly desires and become a monk in pursuit of culinary nirvana? Or am I just spoiled, unwilling to make sacrifices and work hard for what I want? I don’t know. But I do know that for the first time in my life, there are a lot of things that feel more important to me than my career path, my “adventure,” myself. I’m watching the people around me take steps, become units, become parents, travel, thrive, make impacts. And I wonder my place. My steps. My impact. It’s hard to feel as if I’m participating in the world, contributing to a community, when I stand in one place and cook anonymously for people who spend what I make in a week on a bottle of wine. I feel like I am at the same time in the midst of the action, at the cusp of the excitement, brushing shoulders with my idols, and meanwhile passively abandoning everything and everyone else that I love. 

Am I too concerned with the past, too unwilling to embrace my new family, my new “chapter,” and let go of the old? And am I abandoning my feminist independence to want someone to come home to? Am I becoming needy and conventional? I’ve always preferred the path less taken, am I letting that go?

When I say that its the best and worst of times I mean it. Sometimes I find myself ecstatic with how great it is to be living in this city, working with such amazing people, such amazing food, consistently inspired and alive. Consistently moving forward in my career. But at what expense?

Trailing

I’ve been volunteering all over the map, as usual, though it’s slowing down as it’s getting closer to the holidays. About a month ago I did a "trail" at a Michelin-starred fish and seafood restaurant near Rockefeller plaza. A trail is basically a hands-on interview, where you work an entire shift at the restaurant as an "employee" and you get a chance to check out the restaurant and learn from it, while the chef sees if s/he likes you as well. Needless to say, I was terrified. I met the head chef at the NY Produce Show back in November, and he gave me his card and offered me to come by and trail -- so I took him up on the offer.

It was... educational. I felt like a mindless idiot. One of the Sous Chefs approached me and yelled at me in an indecipherable accent, “why would you not take the pot of water off the stove when you were done with it?" and “WHY would you toss these parsley stems, why the %$&#? Are you stupid?” while the other sous chef, from across the kitchen, would yell “KATY. 2 FEET. ON THE GROUND. NO LEANING!” What an experience. I had cuts all over my hands from fabricating 70 pounds of lobster, I stunk of shrimp veins and was stained with beets, hanging my head low. I was convinced they hated me and would never ask me to be back. But then, at the end of the shift, after 513 covers, Chef pulled me aside and asked me to join the team as an intern. Right away. 

I figured out that the yelling was a learning experience and a test to see how I withstood it, and amazingly I passed. I’ve been working there every Saturday now, and it’s been a great experience. Even though all I’ve done every week is put lobster consommé into a little cup as the day’s amuse bouche, it’s been such an opportunity to learn about the way the kitchen functions (especially a Michelin-starred kitchen). I feel so much more prepared to step into other kitchens now... which... shit... I really need to start doing soon. 

For our required externship through school, we have to trail at at least three restaurants before we decide (and are “chosen,” or accepted by the restaurant kitchen) which one we want to extern with. Here’s where I’m planning on trailing: Jean-Georges (Jean-Georges Vongerichten), Perry Street (Jean-Georges Vongerichten), DBGB (Daniel Bouloud), Bar Bouloud (Daniel Bouloud), The Spotted Pig (April Bloomfield), and The Breslin (April Bloomfield). Here we go!!! 

I've Never Been So Lost, I've Never Felt So Much At Home

Tonight I walked past Fitzgerald’s, this humble Irish pub on 3rd Avenue, on the way back from my friend’s place in Murray Hill. I went to that bar three years ago in December after a spontaneous decision to drive overnight to the East Coast from Chicago. I still remember it vividly, the drive up I-95 at 5am in a blizzard into Brooklyn. We stayed a few days and saw the city, went to a show at the Blender Theater (now the Gramercy Theatre) and spent the rest of the night at Fitzgerald’s. There were at least twenty of us, playing songs on the jukebox and singing belligerently until 4 or 5am. That was my first year in Chicago and the 2nd time I’d been to New York City. And now, three years later to walk past it and live 4 blocks from it, is a trip: from the vivid memory of when these streets were unfamiliar and the prospect of living in a place like this was almost asinine, to a reality. It’s a reminder of how great it is to be there. It goes so fast that I forget how insane it is that I’m here, waking up in Manhattan and walking towards the Empire State Building, or down 22nd Street to the school I’ve been dreaming of going to since I was 17. It’s such a strange thing to walk past. I felt like I was out of my body, watching my 20 year old self through the window, in a black scarf. Watching something that then felt so far away, become a reality, my reality, my daily life. 

I also realized how much I’m in my element, more than ever before. It's only on par with how I felt at 18, when I was driving across the country in a beat-up Camry for shows with the best people I’d ever met. We became close because we loved and believed in the same thing, and that’s what’s happening all over again. I feel so lucky to have adapted to everything so quickly, became readily close with these people I’ve known for less than 3 months. Every day is the same corporal, energetic feeling I remember from those shows -- the feeling of cold steel bars under our hands and the pressure of the crowds behind us. It’s the same as the sound of knives sharpening on steels, pans sizzling, the sweat on my hairline, a sharp knife slicing into an onion or a tender steak.

We’re focusing on regional French cuisine in class right now, and today was Alsace, a Northeastern region heavily influenced by Germany and Austria. We made 2 different tarts, a tarte flambé (almost like a pizza) of cottage cheese, sautéed bacon, and caramelized onions, and a tarte aux pommes de terre, flaky pastry dough with potatoes, bacon, hardboiled eggs, and creme fraiche. It’s the first time we’ve done doughs and I was so in my element, even just the feeling of the butter incorporating in my hands with the flour, the silkiness of the yeast as it surrounds the gluten as I’m kneading and rolling. There’s not a day I don’t want to be in that kitchen. In all 4 years of college I never felt close to this, never so comfortable and energized and inspired. Never so in love with the people around me (with the exception of my best friends of course). Never so excited to be exactly where I am. Every damn day. 

Welcome to the Roller Coaster Ride

Why hello there long lost friends of the world wide web, it’s been a while. So much has happened in this cold and hazy big apple. I’m back in my old stomping grounds on 18th trying to put myself back into a able-blogging conscious. It’s been exactly as the broker told me. I’m never home, and when I am, I spend no more than one waking hour there. I’m sharing my tiny apartment right now with my good friend Cara and the few moments I’d normally have to write have been replaced by red wine and impromptu dance parties. Where do I begin!?

I’m already in the last course of Module 2 in culinary school, which blows my mind. We’ve learned about sautéing and grilling, frying, and poaching, classic french dishes and techniques. I’ve eaten pounds of veal and chicken paillards. I’ve volunteered at the James Beard House (post to follow), our school’s graduation, and a chef’s dinner. I got into a brutal battle with an artichoke and a paring knife, resulting in handfuls of blood and a mid-class trip to the ER. I was the first in the class to have a “major” injury, something besides the daily cuts and burns we’ve all had several times over, and I’ve been spending the last few days partially handicapped with a thumb full of liquid stitches and a splint.

These last two weeks have been the typical up and down roller coaster ride, school and New York both a vigorous tug of war game pulling me back and forth between love and hate and oscillating feelings of brilliance and adequacy. Last week I had one of those days where I wanted to quit cooking altogether and become a dishwasher or janitor or some non-glorified profession. I know how to do dishes. I’m good at dishes, I’m efficient, it’s easy. No one will come breath over me while I’m doing them and tell me I’m scrubbing wrong, all day, every ten minutes.

I over-browned the bacon in a pan without slanted sides. I butchered two chickens improperly after several examples. “Is this your chicken?” “Yes, Chef,” “Where are my bones? I need bone-in breasts, this is unusable.” I underbrowned the chicken, too little pieces in too large a saute pan, “why would you do that? you’re burning up the pan,” “I thought that saute needed high heat,” “Not this high, never this high.” The coq au vin was under-seasoned, the flambé didn’t properly flame, the bacon was charred, I poured brandy from the bottle, I used too much wine, put too many chicken thighs in too small a rondeau, the oven was low, and the stew tasted bland and undercooked. I felt like I knew nothing. I admit I at one point went to the bathroom to cry to myself for a minute before recomposing myself on the toilet of the 14th floor. I didn’t have the skin for it, and it just widdled away at me to hear over the 3 compartment sink, “You better toughen up now. This industry will beat the shit out of you.” 

We were let out late after our lecture, and I ran in the pouring rain to 15th street for an interview, looking like a wet spaniel, bought 2 cupcakes at Crumbs and a bottle of Old Vine zinfandel, ate my shitty coq au vin and watched Julie and Julia for the fifteenth time. I just wanted to hear Madamme Broussard say to Julia Child, “You have no real talent for cooking.” I try to keep her in mind always. Twenty years my senior she became something huge out of nothing. There’s hope!