This was never meant to be a food blog. There was never an intention of filling this space with recipes, or answering queries about why your french onion doesn’t look like the one in the picture. This was meant to be a space of growth, with food used as the medium of interpretation. Food, and feeding, is how I manage to get through this life. It is more than an avenue for me to make a name, or a paycheck, it’s spiritual, tactile, and language to me all at once.

This space was meant to share that. In Whites, is much more than a clever play on words about working in the food industry. Wearing whites (or not, as it more often is in kitchens anymore) means that about ninety percent of life is spent in a hot, tiny, clustered space, preparing food, feeding people, and feeding myself in grander ways through that. Growing and evolving alongside the flames, steel, and occasional pain. Those kitchens are my version of therapy, anger management, higher education, and recess. They are a tangled web of vines, growth itself.

Growth is beyond a simple definition of “complex”.

I am not.

Growth is deeply rooted in the concept of forward (and upward) motion, the conscious disregard of comfort, and manic embrace of aches and wounds rubbed raw, smelling of copper mixed with salt.

I have never been rooted in those things.

Comfort is the creature I feel closest to. There is an undertone of languidness to everything I do, a metaphorical supine body, allowing the worlds tides around it to push, pull, and navigate. Swimming was never an interest.

Growth is necessary, but the active pursuit of it has proved a difficult venture to leap into. Ambition has remained a distant acquaintance, fortitude a rarely met friend.  To clarify, desire has never been the issue. Coveting what a future holds comes easy to this soul, who revels in what – ifs, maybes, and perhaps. How does one learn to fight? How is ambition reaped like wheat from the fields, to feed that passion called hunger?

“Because there was a hunger in me to see everything, and do everything. I wanted to be everyone I saw. I wasn’t enough for me. Can you understand that?” -Sidney Sheldon. 

When hunger has been present for so long, after a certain point comes a numbness. A trickery of false satiation, the heart, spirit, and mind are fooled into the belief that they’re doing just fine, thank-you very much. Preservation settles in, curled against ignorance, they lie in mind under a blanket of brittle resilience.

Hunger isn’t truly experienced until the chance of not being hungry arises. Indulgent and earthy aromas of pure hearts, sincere souls, and honest characters curling and furling around. That is how an appetite is whet, how the feeling of needing sustenance is awakened; and just like teeth cutting through a tender ripeness, when that starvation is fed, you become enlivened.

This is what sustenance feels like. Energy, that crackling bolt that surges through restless veins, finding dominion within a needy mind. No more is that lackadaisical float through life enough. Through the foamy waves, an arm is raised in fight, lowered in a stroke. Briny breath sucked deep into the lungs, stinging, and grating, and real. The slightest bit of fare has kindled enough warmth to motivate those sleepy limbs, imagine the effect of a feast. One stroke doesn’t win against the currents, and one meal does not feed for long. Just as knives and fire are tools of old I’ve come to learn from, so are the integrity and kinship of shared passions.

The aim of feeding that hunger, to feel the warmth, to be able to fight, is not to win the war of change; change is inevitable. Nor is it even for growth. The universe and those residing in it provide those in spades for you, you just get to determine what you grow into. The fight is to be aware, awake. To not allow the lull of complacency, or the glimmer of comfort, to rock you gently into your late years without having learned the seas in your own way.

If my desires to share what food is to me, and can be, with those who don’t know their need of it yet, wasn’t met with minds of genuine encouragement and support, I wouldn’t be writing these words. If my dormant hunger for an opportunity to thrive, but more importantly fail, wasn’t met with a certain stalwart spirit, I wouldn’t be planning bigger and better adventures in this field, the way I currently am. More importantly, as this year begins to wind down, it’s become apparent that the only way to truly nourish oneself beyond the short term, is to give it all away. The opportunities that arrive like saving bread, are only rewarding when torn and shared among others. The hunt for more is only plentiful when experienced with fellow hearts.

This is not a food blog, but it is a blog about food.

I struggled with a self-imposed question this week – is life risotto, or a pot of water?

I’m stretching, a crazy diversion from the usual posts.

Risotto makes a strong case, with those tough, hard grains, being slowly massaged into a creamy, indulgent, luxurious gift of sustenance. Created with the barest of ingredients, water and rice (essentially). It isn’t what the dish is made of, but how it’s approached. How the person wielding the wooden spoon chooses to tend to the process; choosing between tender, constant attention, or leaving it to dry out, burn to the bottom, and then dump in an excess of liquid in the hopes of reconstituting it.

Get it? The ‘life is like risotto’ thing?

Fine. I don’t have any arsty angle shots of me stirring a spoon anyway.

In fact, I barely have any photos for this time around. For the first time, in a long time, I am busy. I’m not ‘keeping busy’, nor puttering around trying to make it look as if I am. I am, in fact, working. Working towards a goal(s), working towards something out of reach, requiring the use of muscles I haven’t flexed in almost a year. That’s why, ultimately, I decided on a pot of water.

Life is akin to a pot of water, with the old adage of “a watched pot never boils” blaring its way across the speakers of a sound system I didn’t realize I had playing in the background. I must have tripped over the volume dial.

Life does not often do what we want, when we want it. Life doesn’t rush forward when, high on adrenaline and ego, the gas is pressed to the floor. Life doesn’t roll to a stop when the break is slammed in a fit of anxiety. Life has its own ebb and flow, outside of our limited range of control. It will spike from a simmer, to a boil, the moment it’s left uninterrupted, to behave as it’s meant to.

Eat with the seasons, chef told me. Live with the seasons, I tell myself. Embrace that your existence stands within its own, unique, defining season at this moment. It may be winter, you may hate the cold, but you can only learn to thaw, to bloom, by losing leaves, and hibernating. Warm yourself with thoughts of life giving rain, showering you clean with the Spring’s intrinsic sense of hope.  The heat of deep summer, invading your pores, pushing its way into your core, filling you with fertile imagination. Heatwaves of opportunity and creativity, reaching towards a soul ripe with ingenuity.

Breathe in the calmness that comes from accepting you don’t have to do it all; push forward with wants, desires, goals, and dreams, but let them happen as they happen. Rest during seasons of inward, grow during seasons of outward. Keep the mind going, always.

On the precipice of summer, heat prickling the base of the neck, diving forward. I will neglect the urge to cool down. This is the season, this is the life.

When cooking on a hot line, you become very aware of your size. The space it takes to make a 360 is smaller than you realize, but the distance from kitchen to dining room is always further. Taking as few steps as possible to achieve maximum efficiency is the goal, creating a small square in which you operate, mise only a glance away.

That level of awareness carries over into civilian hours. Darting in and out of grocery store foot traffic, your social circle alarmingly close and simultaneously comfortable at the bar. Your body just becomes another tool, a little large for the knife kit, but the concept remains. Depending on how quickly you become serious about the field, you start to treat it like a tool as well. Late night shots and loading dock cigarettes are a cool facade, until you can’t handle twelve hour shifts and brunch service the next morning.

At twenty three years old, five years of pretending to be apart of the field, it’s become apparent that the physical consciousness doesn’t translate mentally. Realizing the influence of mental space has taken much longer to gain, in regards both to myself and others. The effects that it has on performance, professionally and personally, result in the difference between a smooth dinner service, and a senior discount brunch.

The space that energy takes up is infinitely more important. A kitchen full of passionate participants, feeling the intrinsic rhythm and music of prep that transitions into an adrenaline fueled service, flames beating in sync with heartbeats, knife cuts pounding to the tenor of the expediter – it’s all energy bound. So is the kitchen dragged along by the deadbeats and downtrodden.

People are a lot more fluid than they like admitting, folding and twisting into the form that surrounds them. Who surrounds you is the mold, and as with anything else in life, you have the ability to choose what, and who, you want.

If it does not serve the food in some way, do away with it. If it doesn’t amplify flavor, intensify natural color, bring texture or aroma to the forefront – it isn’t needed. It is a distraction and a detraction from the simplistic beauty of what an ingredient can be. This applies to people, as well. If the who’s, he’s and she’s surrounding don’t amplify, intensify, or push you, they are detracting, and draining to the palate. Question which one you are constantly.

Consider too, mentors. Few, far, and rare, I’ve been blessed with too many in this life, each primed with a skill set that I just so happen to need at that moment. You get to pick those too, if you try hard enough. Choosing who you want to learn from is easy enough, convincing them slow down, and teach an incessant, questioning (probably irritating) equivalency of a child, is the hands in the dirt-tearing at weeds-torn fingernails part. Recognizing superior knowledge, experience, and skill is easy. Sacrificing pride, in reality, is more akin to what I imagine a bulb of garlic feels like when it’s being unceremoniously ripped from its dark cocoon of the earth.

Being a chef is more about restraint, and containment, then it is about flourishing gestures, and grandiose experimentation (even though its fun to deviate). Calculated moves, honing of tools, paying respect to the ingredients you manipulate. I’m trying to learn how to live and breathe those practices, in and out of a coat.

There’s no greatness, in anything, before you are good. You can’t be good until you learn how you’ve been less so. Find the chefs (people) that show you by being better than what you are.

Tomatoes are not in season. They’re close, inching, crawling, scooting like a tiny worm towards the door of the cafe. Close enough I think I can smell their deep sweetness, feel the fresh bitten burst of juice. A pinnacle sign of musky, heat wave filled July’s and Augusts.

I relate to those tomatoes. Close to creative ripeness, to luscious success, but just far enough away to be laughable at obtaining right now.

I can taste it. the sour-sweet tang of creative liberty, earthy responsibility of reputation; paired with the feeling of apron strings pulled tight, a cord of imagination turned tangible.  It is all, literally, right. there. In front of me.

Just like the waves of heat in those musky summers, visible, shimmering, present. Pulling you in like a mirage, luring with satiation and fulfillment. Elusive “future”, teasing the present.

I am a habitual liar though.

You’re scared, you’re not ready, inexperienced, not creative enough, no opportunities,  tired. 

You’re so tired,

aren’t you tired?

You need a break, a rest,

a reset, a start-over.

I haven’t even started. 

There is opportunity, even more importantly, there is support. Endless, boundless, support, from people I wouldn’t have dared ask of it. There are no valid excuses to support the tamping down of chances I’ve put myself through time and time again. I’m just scared. Scared of failing, more scared of not, and having expectations to live up to; a suffocating, claustrophobic tunnel narrowed by my own vision.

This blog will turn one year old in March 2018. Imagine if I’m still writing about being scared? Still stagnant, still taking kinda shitty/kinda passable photos in my tiny apartment. Imagine if I’m still just writing, and not doing?

So stop being a little bitch, “In Whites”. Start working. Planning. Clock in, clock out, keep going. Little sketches in a book are cute, until they get yellow with age instead of stock, then they’re just sad. If you want strong roots, dig deeper. Water them, feed them, sustain them. Follow through on the chances you keep “agreeing” to, instead of letting them drown in the depths of abandonment. Passion will follow suit.

Make creativity corporeal, turn this small space into a curative process. A gallery of experiments, personal and public. Some will slip into a cohesive path, without breaks, showing growth. Some will turn into steps. Appreciate them across the board, but just try. 

Be tired, need a rest, need time. Embrace the soreness of feet holding you up hours past the time stamp, hands cramped from holding a knife after closing. Let yourself grow, accept the pains, and enjoy fruition – like a sweet, sultry, summer night.

I was eight when I decided what I wanted to be as a grown up. Curled into my grandfathers recliner, watching an old Italian woman merry foreign flavors together, create music out of sizzles, pops, and slices. Background noises of my mother making dinner in the kitchen blended into a mural of a softer version of what I love hearing in kitchens today. Wooden spoons sweeping the sides of sauce pots, the deep bubbling sound of boiling pasta, butter foaming, sizzling, and browning.

I was eight when I decided I wanted to be a cook.

I was 18 when I decided what I wanted to be as a woman. Watching my mother process a phone call that no daughter wants about their mom. Seeing shoulders be pulled back in assertion, heart continuing to care, and give. The moment of realization, in me, that she was the branches between the leaves of our family. Tendrils stretching and weaving out from the core of her, intertwining all of us. Watching her continue to be the strong-willed, soft-hearted, fiercely loving force in my life. She was, continues to be, a deeply rooted, softly swaying willow tree.

When my sister decided she deserved to make her own path. Digging deep into the dirt, peering through the salty sweat, planting seeds of what she is today. Demanding respect, giving it in equal measure, calibrating her own scale. Straight spine, set shoulders, keen eyes. Meticulous, and articulate. She is the timbre and cadence in my voice, the one I fake in kitchens when searching for the same presence in myself.

I was 18 when I decided I wanted to be in their roster.

I was 19 when I decided I was going to be a chef. Gazing out at the abyss like void of the future, and seeing two options. One entailing comfort, ease, and security. Becoming a cook that showed up for a 9 hour shift everyday, knew her place, had the pleasure of working with food, and went home each night.

Or struggling, getting screamed at, possibly demeaned, realizing how much I suck at this field. Learning my station can always be more organized, I can always move faster, whine less, do more, hustle more, create, strive, give – more. That right now I am less, but can be more.

Realizing that I don’t suck, but instead have that annoying element called potential. Niggling, nagging, whispering, and leering in the background. Possibilities of what could be on loop. Deciding to tear into it with both hands; shredding the neatly aligned sides that contain it, getting to the marrow, scraping it out of corners and getting it stuck beneath grubby nails.

Working day and night to polish it into skill, giving talent a backbone. Overcoming insecurity and blights of laziness. Climbing over walls of self doubt. Choosing the harder option because of it being more difficult by nature, and therefore more worthy in the end. Win or lose, success or failure – I chose the latter. I chose to try.

To try more, to try at fucking all.

It wasn’t until 23 that I decided I didn’t care though. If my personal struggle is recognized, and comforted. If the leaps and bounds are broadcasted and *liked, *shared, *reposted, *tweeted into oblivion. If there are questions and quiet whispers about why I’m still where I am, why I didn’t move there, or go for that job. Not even that out of everyone else, I was the one that used to care most of all. Most likely, the only one.

I am learning more now, in this chapter, than I have in all the previous. Which is how it always goes, but I was always guilty of trying to read ahead, becoming confused when I’d read the ending page of a protagonist I didn’t know. Each model of success I have in this field has stumbled, fallen, and kept going. Re-routes and detours were defining parts of the character mold that made them models.

Having the gift of just enough clarity to see through the haze of bullshit, and recognize, is humbling. Recognize the mentors, teachers, character arcs and building blocks. Piecing together the puzzle as you find the parts isn’t common, and I’m trying to remember that. More importantly, that the puzzle is your life, and it takes years. I won’t have an idea of what it’s meant to look like until it’s almost complete.

To those that teach me – thank you. Encourage me – thank you. Motivate me – thank you.

To the ones that question? Keep asking. I want answers too.