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In a Relationship With: Food

And Other Ways Kitchens Became My Life for Six Years

By CatherinePublished 7 years ago 2 min read
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I originally wanted to be a defense lawyer.

I poured over theories written by old, dead, white dudes pre-women getting the vote, tried to redirect them into my own liberal middle class views, studied African history enough to get into lengthy debates on the slave trade reparation, and went home with my heart full of joy at the notion of reading tort law. It was very weird and I still get strange looks from anyone not in law or familiar with social justice about how much I love the law.

Then, when the tropical storm of seasonal depression hit and I dropped out of university, I picked up a job at a local Jewish deli to stay preoccupied and think about going back to school. Something I wasn't expecting happened in the two years I was there; I fell in head over heels in love with food.

I used to joke with my friends in psychology in high school that when I die, I want to be in bed with a bowl of spaghetti because that would be hilarious. 17-year-old Catherine thought so anyway. Spaghetti was comfort and damned if I wasn't going to be comfortable when I died. I had all these notions of becoming a lawyer till I was 82 and then retiring and opening a noodle restaurant so I could be surrounded by spaghetti all the time.

Back to the Jewish deli though. The establishment has about 25 sandwiches on the menu, and before you are hired, you have to learn all of them. It took me a while, but I did, and I was happily content describing to customers everywhere what was on the #1 (overstuffed pastrami on marble rye with spicy mustard) and upselling my favourite (#22, lox and bagel with house cream cheese) before the other tropical storm of depression hit and my long term partner and I broke up, and it directly effected my work at the deli. I was devastated and not handling it well, often stopping in the middle of a shift to burst into tears in the bathroom, and so I left the deli to move to another restaurant and that's what I've been doing for the past six years.

I didn't start writing this with the intent to prelude my writing on this website about which restaurants I went to and from after leaving the deli. I want to talk about how much I learned and grew more infatuated with food as time went on. So, here's what I have learned from kitchens about food and life, over six years:

  1. You will never look at any piece of food the same after you realise all the ways you can transform it. That is a beautiful thing. This does not apply to people.
  2. Put butter on the yolk of a warm soft boiled egg. You're welcome.
  3. If you boil a lemon for ten to fifteen seconds, you will get three times the flavour out of it.
  4. Lobsters can still move a minute to 2 minutes after they have been disassembled.
  5. When you make bread, you are basically creating life.
  6. It does make a difference when you salt your pasta water.
  7. If you are nervous about showing someone your work, it's because you really really really care about what you made.
  8. Be aware of other people's food habits and dietary restrictions. They're not being annoying. They're nourishing themselves in the ways they know how.
  9. It's okay to have a complicated relationship with food.
  10. As a society, people are led to believe that if you haven't made it in this world, you are working in a restaurant. Cooks are the hardest working people I know. They are passionate about what they do, they know how to do what they do well and they are all cocky bastards about it. It's not a bad thing to be a cocky bastard about something you're good at sometimes.
  11. It's never okay to treat someone the way someone you once held in a position of power and authority in your life treated you. If someone threw plates at you or told you your food was trash and you will never amount to anything, don't say or do that to other people.
  12. Working in kitchens is hard on every moral and spiritual plane there is. Every cooking application asks if you can stand for up to 12 hours and if you can lift at least 50 pounds. You are also in a relatively small space, with the same people, for 8-12 hours a day, four to five days in a row; you're going to get in arguments. It's real, it's hard, it's not for the faint of heart, and people who've never worked in a kitchen will not get it.
  13. You will learn more about yourself in a kitchen than ever in an office job; that's a promise. I now know how to cauterize wounds, take apart a whole pig's head, differentiate the smell of all different types of herbs, hold my pee through a whole dinner rush, say all the right words to servers or cooks who were ever sad, and make perfect Italian meringues. You become a therapist, chef, butcher, part botanist, bartender, and barely qualified first responder as well as becoming twice the person you thought you would be.
  14. Food is a communion, in all ways, whether you see it in a spiritual light or not. We ask people we haven't seen in a while to go grab a beer and bite to eat, we take our partner to fancy restaurants on birthdays and anniversaries, we have people over for dinner to watch sports or celebrate holidays. We do not enter into something with food unless it is sacred or special to us, and knowing that is why I stayed for so long.

Kitchens taught me a lot about what I know, hope to accomplish in all walks of life and how I value friendships and myself. Kitchens were also the hardest years of my life, but they were the love of my life and I will never regret the hours and hours I ever spent there.

humanity
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About the Creator

Catherine

breakfast food enthusiast and public health student. really into dogs, hockey, life talks and soul food.

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