Category Archives: adventures in cooking

adventures in cooking

The lost books of Bourdain

Three years ago, the world lost an example of the American dream. A bottom level chef, dope addict, and workaholic wrote a book that transformed his life and the life of others. Kitchen Confidential boosted Bourdain from a kitchen to television. There were books that came before and after but none of them were as successful as his culinary opus. For some reason his path did not take him into the literary world as he inspired to do, instead he ended up on television throwing insults at Rachel Ray and Emeril Lagasse. That trip didn’t appear to have an ending and somewhere along the way there was the idea for Bourdain to help others become published. An Anthony Bourdain Book became a subdivision of Ecco publishing, the company that published Kitchen Confidential. Every year after 2011, Bourdain picked books, some of them by people he knew, and they were published with his Oprah like stamp on the cover. For seven years this trend continued until Bourdain’s death in 2018. I have come across these books over the years and I have enjoyed every single one. I became curious, how many of these were published? Are there more on the way? Is there a list of all the Bourdain books with his stamp of approval? Sadly, Ecco stopped the publication of Bourdain books in 2018. The last books that Bourdain picked that year were the last to be published with that stamp of approval. The other questions took my down a Google rabbit hole that left me in a world of disappointment. Ecco didn’t have a list of books they had published, only listing items that were still available or still in print. Amazon doesn’t have a category for Anthony Bourdain books although they carry many of the titles I found. eBay was hit or miss with the deciding factor being how the seller listed the item. Even Wikipedia, while it had a listing for Ecco and their subdivision, did not have a list of books that Bourdain published.

The following is the list that I have been able to put together so far:

You’re Better Than Me by Bonnie McFarlane

Pain Don’t Hurt by Mark Miller

Start the Fire by Jeremiah Tower

WD50 by Wylie Dufresne

The Prophets of Smoked Meat by Daniel Vaughn

We Fed an Island by Jose Andres

The Mission Chinese Cookbook by Danny Bowien

Prisoner by Jason Rezaian

Vegetables Unleashed by Jose Andres

Grand Forks by Marilyn Hagerty

L.A. Son by Roy Choi

They call me Supermensch by Shep Gordon

Eating Korea by Graham Holliday

Eating Vietnam by Graham Holliday

Rice Noodle Fish by Matt Goulding

Grape Olive Pig by Matt Goulding

Pasta Pane Vino by Matt Goulding

Hawker Fare by James Syhabout

Adios, Mother Fucker by Michael Ruffino

Stealing Green Mangoes by Sunil Dutta

The publisher stated that the Bourdain portion of the company would publish 3-4 titles per year. There are 20 titles listed here and I’m not sure if they are all of the books published. I have a feeling there might be some missing. After this, there is the question of the introductions Bourdain wrote for other authors, books that Bourdain edited like the 2008 Best of Travel Writing, and the documentaries that Bourdain created like Wasted! The Story of Food Waste. Besides No Reservations and Parts Unknown Bourdain did a lot of projects on the side and some of which were released after his death. To stay on track here let’s focus on the books that Bourdain thought were worthy of being published.

I don’t know if this is a complete list or not. If there is anything missing, please comment on this post so that I can add and edit anything that had been forgotten. For one reason or another Bourdain thought these books were important and while some became popular for obvious reasons there are some that were forgotten the moment they hit the shelves. I find it interesting that Eating Korea appeared to have sold well and was an enjoyable read. However, Eating Vietnam was forgotten and I didn’t even know about it until I started doing this project. Even Goodreads appeared to have dropped the ball on that one.

Where should I go after this? Documentaries? Obscure writings that Bourdain contributed to? Let me know. In the meantime, I have some reading to do.

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adventures in cooking

The Ghost of Bourdain

All I wanted was a hard cover copy of A Cook’s Tour, one of Bourdain’s early books after Kitchen Confidential, for my personal library. I noticed that eBay had a nice selection of books for fairly cheap and some places offered free shipping. If I could get a good copy for a few bucks instead of waiting for a local shop to get one in then I would buy one online. I found a copy by a library bookstore and they were offering free shipping. I figured throwing a few dollars to a library was a good investment for everyone. I placed my $8 order and waited, and waited, and wondered if it would ever come. Today I came home after running some errands and found some packages on the porch, one of them was for me. I opened the package to find my copy of A Cook’s Tour. I flipped through the pages to see if it was a first edition and found the signature first. The loud obnoxious “Hello!” was in my face and I turned the light on to see if it was real. Flipping the page over there was that indentation of a pen being pressed against the page. I had seen these before, the early signatures being simple and a quick scribble of his name, during a time he wondered if his fame was a fad and if it was all going to fall apart at some time unexpectedly. This was before the knife or the skull and the addition of “cook free or die” written on the page. I have found gems like this before. A signed first edition of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay with an inscription by the author Michael Chabon was on the shelf at a local store of $1. I bought it and took it home feeling little guilt happy to know it would stay in my collection for decades to come. This was the first book I read where I thought to myself “this is what writing is all about.” My taste has changed over the years but that one book has always stayed with me. Other have come my way over the years, John Updike is a common occurrence, Jim Harrison is on the list, and the local Bonnie Jo Campbell is a dime a dozen in town but I don’t pass them up. This by far is the best find I have come by after seeing dozens of Bourdain’s signed books online for hundreds of dollars and wondering if I would ever be able to own one. I couldn’t help but wonder if his ghost swiped its hand and said “ya know, he’s always been a big fan, stuck through until the end, here you go young man.” I had been looking over his estate auction wondering if I could buy part of his personal library, but this is so much better and in my price range. Somehow, someway, this book came my way, and that need for a person bit of Bourdain’s history being in my life is complete. From now on this book is not for sale, it’s staying on the shelf, I’ll take it out for moments of inspiration and when I die the kids will likely donate it to the local goodwill. I hope I raise them right. Maybe it’s time to get that “Cook free or die” tattoo.

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adventures in cooking

The Bourdain Connection

There are many things that I could say about Anthony Bourdain and while this book is dedicated to him I will try not to let his memory take over what should be a collection of stories about my time as a cook. I didn’t read Kitchen Confidential until almost a decade after it was published. The first time I picked it up was just after my ex-wife moved out and we were separated. Not long after that Medium Raw was released and that was the book that gave me some connection with the man, having gone through a similar time in my life and knowing the pain of separation. I was looking for something, although I didn’t know what at the time and somehow along the way Bourdain and a few others filled that void in my existence.
No Reservations became a big part of my life allowing me to see far away places while stuck in the same town that I had grown up in. at one point I even purchased a passport but it has never been used. My adventures are of the old school local kind and I am going to have to either make a serious of big changes or accept the fact that I am not destined to venture out into the world. Maybe I’m just not the traveling type.
There was a hope that had come from Bourdain, knowing that a man could spend the majority of his life slaving in a kitchen and with a series of fortunate events change everything in his life for the better. I started to look at my own life and wondered what I could do to change where is was and get out of the day to day funk that was my life. My career was a dead end. What had promised to be an opportunity to grow had dwindled to biweekly paychecks and no raises for 5 out of the 14 years I had worked in healthcare. The only people that appeared happy were those that had left the hospital who often used the hashtag #lifeafter__________ (fill in with your hospital of choice). I had 14 years of experience in a job that I hated and not much else to offer the world.
After my divorce I went out and bought a laptop. It sat in the closet for a year before I pulled it out and started writing. At first it was short stories but all of them were in the same world. Soon I realized they were tied together and part of the same story. A year later I had this thing that I didn’t know what to do with. I ran into a friend who had posted a kids book on Amazon and said “what the hell, people buy it or they won’t.”
Skipping ahead, that book turned into $20,000 in sales over three years with sequels and spin offs. The debt from my divorce was paid off, I had savings in the bank, and I learned I could do something beside mop up blood, pick up dismembered fingers from the floor, or learn that I was not going to have another raise after 14 years of service. I was fucking done with it all.
I put in a three week notice to give my supervisor time to find a replacement to work in the ER and even that was fucked up. They should have known something was amuck when there was a flood of people leaving out the door and nobody appeared to be upset about leaving. I took three months off, the first break from working since I was 16 years old and it taught me there was another way to live.
I am much happier now. Earning an income almost double what the hospital was paying, having a daughter, and a supportive wife who puts up with my eccentric ways. There was a time when I thought a person just found a job, went to work, and eventually retired. Towards my final years at the hospital I watch too many people reach retirement age and never make it to receive that first check. The older employees were dropping like flies and it was before they could have that retirement party. I did not want that to be me and because of Bourdain I realized it didn’t have to be. Life isn’t a closed book where you are destined to do the same thing over and over again. If that’s what you want then you can choose that for yourself but these days it’s a dangerous path to take. I know too many people who worked for a company for twenty plus years who were eventually escorted to the door, handed a small check and told to ‘fuck off’ in a polite way. I was determined not to be that person.
Bourdain also allowed me to look back at my year as a cook and find the good memories of a time that I had either forgotten or wished to forget. It wasn’t the best of times and the people I was hanging out with did not have my best interest at heart. I was an odd guy that didn’t appear to fit in anywhere and somehow attracted those who thought they could better themselves by being around me, but at the same time tried to bring me down to make themselves feel better. This was not a winning situation for anyone and I an glad to be done with it. This is why films like Good Will Hunting is a myth. When Affleck tells Damon that he better arrive at the house one day to find him gone, from my own personal experience those friends don’t exist. They resent you for trying to better your life and once you leave there is no coming back. If you are bettering your life you shouldn’t desire to come back. That was one thing Bourdain always feared, when would the trip be over and he would find himself back in the kitchen, too old to work and wondering what he had done with the time he had. You won’t find me working in a hospital ever again and there is a difference between enjoying cooking at home and running a line in a kitchen.
Some would say that chefs are the new rock stars of our culture and I would have to disagree. That mentality is dangerous and for those working the line there is nothing glamorous or sexy about slaving over a hot stove and being yelled at for 12-16 hours a day. It’s factory work with food. Think of the last time you heard about a famous person stamping out auto parts or the sexy guy or girl working the forklift. Working sucks and the best thing we can do is learn from it or at least find the motivation to do something else. Don’t wait as long as I did, you never know how much time you might have left to do what you really enjoy.

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adventures in cooking

Rob’s Lament

I don’t remember where exactly I met Rob for the first time. I assume it was in the parking lot of the Meijer supermarket we used to work for. We spent long hours walking back and forth pushing rows of shopping carts into the store. It was mindless manual labor and for a young man of that age it was exactly what I needed at the time. I didn’t fit in with the other kids I went to school with, not for a lack of trying from some people to bring me into the loop. Having a job is joining a tribe with a goal. Most people fail to understand this. When people aren’t pulling their weight and the chief of the tribe doesn’t appear to care, the tribe can fracture and you end up with sub groups within the tribe. I hated bagging groceries and so my tribe ended up being the cart retrieval crew, a group of young men wearing reflective vest, sunglasses, and carrying nylon rope to hold the row of carts together. We had our own language and culture out on the pavement. We were doing things with shopping carts most people had not seen until Jackass aired on MTV. Cart surfing was a fun pass time, riding the side of the cart and balancing on two wheels while cruising down the hill.
For safety we were paired up and sent out in teams. There had been multiple stories of abductions and assaults in that parking lot so were wore beepers that would sound an alarm with security if we saw something that needed their attention. Rob and I would team up, grabbing carts, talking comic books and movies, our taste in many things were almost identical. This was during the great comic boom or the roaring 90s, that time just before the crash when people had invested thousands of dollars into over printed magazines with fake fans and inflated prices. Rob and I were some of those shmucks that bought into the boom with hopes of cashing in or joining the ranks of those in the industry. I wanted to be an artist but found my calling with writing instead. Rob on the other hand possessed a natural talent for art and even sold pictures at work to co-workers with the cash. Juvenile cartoons with a hint of realism were his trade. One bagger paid him twenty dollars for a commissioned piece of a man penetrating a squirrel. It sounded funnier at the time. While I studied art and graphic design at the local community college, Rob sat at home with his sketch book learning on his own how to draw.
There was a sad mood that hovered over Rob. When you looked at him you would see a young man, dirty in appearance, malnourished, and a sense of style that could have been pulled from a Quintin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez film. To look at him one would not thing he had much to offer, to listen to him was to find out otherwise. He was smart, a sponge of useless knowledge that would vomit from his mouth and leave people mystified and feeling dumb. There were people that loved him and others who despised him for the reason of wasted potential, but that was all of us. To be a young man without direction wandering out into the world could only lead to three things, self-destruction, sloth, or success. At any given time, we were guilty of all of these things.
Rob grew up out west on an Indian reservation. I won’t pretend to remember which state he lived in because I don’t remember. I had no idea he was native American until he told me, he could have passed at Italian or Greek. His parents weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed and had a long list of horrible mistakes in their past that they expected their children to fix. I was hanging out with Rob one night when he asked to stop in to see his family. I was the only one that owned a car at the time. We pulled into the Airport Inn where his mother, father, two brothers, sister, and nephew were living in a one-bedroom hotel room. His mother didn’t speak much an had a scowl on her face that would make the average Russian woman of the Stalin era appear chipper. It was up to the kids to pay their way and most of them had dropped out of high school to find jobs. Rob earned his GED at 16 and therefore had an advantage over his other siblings. Paychecks were handed over and money was used for rent, food, and cigarettes. When big purchases were made the parents were the soul decider and the kids were to keep their mouths shut. For the life of me I can’t figure out what his parents were thinking. The kids left one by one as they discovered their independence causing a divide in the family. Whoever left was shunned and not allowed back until nobody was left. The youngest brother left first when he was hired in at a local factory. When their parents demanded the pay check he told them to “fuck off,” found an apartment, bought a van, and moved out. The pressure to make up for the loss was put onto Rob and while he supplied the family with money it wore on him and eventually, he was kicked out. That was how he ended up as my roommate.
Let’s back up shall we. Rob had met Nate before I started to work at Meijer and Nate left not long afterwards. I didn’t remember ever working with Nate but he was fond of telling me they thought I was a stuck-up asshole when I first started working there. Rob was a follower and while he had the potential to be so much more, he decided to be the side kick to Nate’s world of debauchery. If they could be compared to anyone Nate was Jay and Rob was Silent Bob with it being unclear who was leading who. It was the easy path and it was the road we all preferred at that time. We didn’t have a cause, a great war, something to motivate us to do anything. Nate and Rob were caught up in the MTV world of seeking out “bitches and money.” The cold war was over and there was no 9-11, all we had was a blow job in the White House and people constantly reminding us we were poor. Fight Club would later become our religion.
Coming from a nomadic people, Rob was constantly shifting through jobs, leaving and coming back always thinking the new job was going to be the big one, the money maker, the job to solve all of his problems. The job itself never mattered it was the pay that was motivating factor. In between, Rob would pick up shifts at Olga’s as the dishwasher and in his words, “I get paid and there is free food.” He wasn’t referring to screwed up orders from the kitchen either.
I think there is a time in most people’s lives when they are permanently scarred and while they don’t realize it, they never move on. Rob’s taste in women goes back to the reservation, a place with little to offer and few options for the young. Rob had a girlfriend when he was 13 and they soon found themselves pregnant. Trying to do the right thing, Rob took a job at the local Seven Eleven to save up for his coming family. The naïve delusions of youth can be a powerful thing until your world comes crashing down. While leaving work Rob passed the dumpster, heard something inside, and found his girl inside, wrist cut and bleeding to death. He climbed inside with no help on its way and watched her die taking their child with her. Later, he would try to join her and was sent to a psychiatric institution. I learned all of this years later on a drunken night where we tried to out do one another on who had the shittiest story for a game I would like to call Victim Porn.
For a while it looked like we were all getting our shit together. Rob was out of his parent’s home, he had a car, a union job at the local trash company, and there was talk of him becoming a tattoo apprentice. I landed a job at one of the local hospitals. Nate was still being Nate and that was what needed to change. The moment any of us started doing well the hammer would fall and we were beaten back down to the lowest position in the group. If Nate wasn’t doing well nobody would feel like they were doing well. Of course, it was a woman who would end the group. I met my ex-wife at the hospital and while we all hung out together there was a divide taking place. For Nate and Rob to be single while I had somebody was unacceptable. Rob sided with Nate trying to make Christie feel like shit and it was over. One night, Nate and Rob stopped by and while Nate stayed in the car Rob came to the door asking if I wanted to hang out. “Oh, porking the pig?” he asked seeing Christie walk to the kitchen. “Fuck you Rob.” I said before telling him not to come back. Nate stayed by the car yelling some crap about “bros before hoes” and they never came back to the apartment.
Rob and I once attempted our own comic book, an action crime thriller with vigilantes and drug kingpins. I wrote the script and worked on inking while Rob drew the panels and penciled the characters. We were about three pages in when Rob stopped working on the project. To this day I still have those pages filed away just in case…
I ran into Rob years later. His first question was “so when did you get divorced?” At the time his assumption was wrong and Christie and I were still married. Meanwhile, Rob told me about the stripper he married named Scarlett and how they split when she went back to work to pay their mortgage. There was a pattern, a lifestyle that Rob was accustomed to, and it wasn’t feeling secure. Rob had finally started that apprenticeship and was on his way to become an artist. A few years after that, when I was divorced, I spotted Rob at a local coffee shop. He had large gaged earrings, multiple tattoos, piercings in places that looked uncomfortable, and a perfectly shaved head. I don’t know if he recognized me as the new bald man that I was. We never spoke and to this day I wonder how far he had gone on his adventure to become an artist, the only one of us still following that path.

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adventures in cooking

Gary, an urban legend

To understand Gary, you have to know a few things about him. Gary’s voice was a cross between Mushmouth from Fat Albert and a sloppy French accent. Add in his use of very localized Ebonics and speaking at a high rate of speed and the gibberish is something that takes years of practice to translate. I didn’t have years, we didn’t go to school together, except for a short period of time we didn’t hang out regularly. We worked together at the local supermarket for two years and we weren’t close. Everyone knew Gary, that was one thing you quickly learned about him, the man knew how to get around.
By the time I had met Gary at Meijer he was already a bit of a legend but not in the way that he would have liked. There were dreams of becoming a professional football player but in his words, he was never given the chance to show his skills. He took steroids and swelled up so fast he had stretch marks covering his biceps. Football was a dead-end road at the end of high school and Gary had no plan B. His athletic abilities showed in the classroom though.
At St Monica’s I went to school with another kid named Cam. He was overweight like me, came from a white trash family, and didn’t have the best of luck in life. His dad was a biker and both of his parents were insanely large people who could have produced the next Andre the Giant. As two white trash fat kids in the same prep school there wasn’t room for the two of us. We had a feud those years and it would be years before we ran into each other again and buried the hatchet. After St. Monica’s Cam transferred to Loy Norrix and he was in a place he wasn’t familiar with even though he should have fit in. Switching from a private school to a public school after having only one black classmate in eight years was a bad idea.
Cam and Gary detested one another right away. The two would go back and forth and one day Cam slipped calling Gary a stupid nigger and that was when all hell broke loose. Nate and Rob were in class that day and as they described it, Gary soared through the air, over five rows of desk, colliding his fist with Cam’s face. The desk tipped over pinning Cam on the ground and leaving Gary towering over him raining down punches with the teacher unable to react. The teacher stood in front of the room panicking, asking Gary to “stop it” and the assault continued until Gary was finished. Cam never called Gary a nigger again.
I ran into Cam at the local strip club one of the nights Nate was paying Jordan’s rent. We talked for a bit and he was working as a tow truck driver. We laughed about the fights we used to get into and he asked what I was up to? He made fun of me being a cook and I asked if he knew Gary. Cam instantly tensed up and pretended the two of them were friends. That was the last time I ever ran into Cam.
All four years of high school Gary had the same girlfriend. As far as I knew he never cheated on her but things went down hill senior year between the two of them. When Gary was born there was a birth defect. The doctor had told his mom that he would never be able to have kids and that was the end of the story. However senior year his girlfriend, a short blonde that adored his dumb ass, found herself pregnant. Every bad way of handling the situation happened. Gary accused her of cheating, starting fucking other people, and for nine months tormented her at school letting everyone know she was a cheating bitch. Then the paternity test came back. Gary, you are the father!
He tried to make amends and wanted her back but after the hell he put her through she wanted nothing to do with him, except child support. Gary never received a football scholarship, he wasn’t drafted to the NFL, he was lucky to receive his diploma after being kicked off the football team for failing classes. Gary’s mom decided to sue the doctor for child support saying it was his fault that Gary got a girl pregnant thinking it wasn’t possible. As you can imagine that was thrown out of court.
When I ran into Gary again, two years after Meijer, he was living in the same apartment complex as me. There was the free pipe tobacco from the cigars he would dump out while rolling blunts. He would eat anything you had in the house but his own fridge was a toxic waste dump of micro bio experiments that had gone wrong. His television sat on top of his old floor model television. There was one chair in his apartment and the mattress sat on the floor by itself. He worked down the street at Summit Polymers, he had no car, was behind on child support, but he always had weed. There was a long line of girls that he was seeing at the same time. The list of things wrong with them was just as long. Drug addicts, obesity, anorexia, cursed with falling down the ugly tree, shitty human beings, and depressed psychos were among the list. Gary made them sound like the most beautiful women in the world and when you saw them your body shuttered.
“Gary, how the hell…”
“Matt, ugly girls need love too. Besides they all look the same in the dark.”
And that was how Gary made sure he was always getting some love somewhere. Over course he never learned his lesson and the 16-year-old redhead two buildings over was pregnant. She needed $300 for an abortion and Gary pawned his Play Station 2. Three months later she was pregnant again. Gary tried doing the same stupid shit of accusing her of cheating then quickly changed his tune. He liked this redhead and they would try to make things work. The girl quickly smartened up and left Gary to have the child on her own and filed for child support. Then Gary lost his job at Summit.
Things were never good for Gary. He dreamed big and the payout never happened. With Nate and Rob, he was the token black guy that you could count on to always have weed and would be your wing man taking the ugly friend home while you hoped to score with the hottie. When it came to helping Gary out when things went bad there was never anyone there for him. He was always on his own and that only made things worse for him.
The military seemed like a good option for him. Making order out of chaos and paying his child support, it appeared to be a good idea. Gary signed up for the Marines and filled out all the paperwork. He went out and had a tattoo of the marine corps seal put on his shoulder. This was going to be the rest of his life. In Lansing, Gary and a group of men were staying at a hotel waiting to be sworn in the next morning. The recruiter had gathered everyone into a hall and played Saving Private Ryan on a projection TV.
“Pay attention, this is what you have to look forward to.”
The opening scene was the invasion of Normandy. Body parts flew in the air. Men tried to push their intestines back into their bodies. A man walked around carrying his arm looking for other body parts. Medics were shot trying to take care of the wounded.
Gary and a few other men said “fuck this” and snuck out in the middle of the night. Gary was never sworn in and he went into hiding. I don’t think the Marine Corps considered him much of a loss.
I ran into Gary a few years later. My wife and I were leaving for our honeymoon the next day and Gary had seen us outside of a shop called Scone Zone. He stopped in and we chatted for an hour. Gary was living with his mom on the northside of town. He had just bought a new car before seeing us, a ten-year-old Cadillac that looked good but when I asked how the motor ran…
“Matt, let me explain something to you. You know I’m black right?”
“I had no idea.”
“Matt, as a black man we do things differently. We fix our cars from the trunk to the front. If it doesn’t have tunes, it broke. If it doesn’t have speakers, it broke. If it doesn’t have bass, it broke. If it doesn’t have rims, it broke.”
“Gary, if the engine doesn’t run the rest of that shit doesn’t matter.”
“Matt, you ain’t listening. From the trunk to the front. It’s a good car I checked it out myself.”
Gary was in the middle of a law suit against the last people to sell him a car. A dodge Neon that had a bad transmission and stopped running after a week.
“Those mother fuckers had to know. There is no way they didn’t know.” He lost that lawsuit and the one for the Cadillac he just bought. A month after I saw him the transmission went out and his boombox on wheels was a pile of crap sitting in the parking lot.
I ran into Rob a year later at the quarter bin in the only local comic shop in town. We flipped through thousands of comics looking for those rare gems that somehow made it into the bin.
“Have you heard from Gary?” I asked.
“He’s in jail.”
“Child support?”
“No, well that too.” We laughed.
Rob went on to tell me about how Gary was still living with his mom at one of the low-income housing complexes on the northside of town. One night, while his mom was at work, Gary ran out of the house with his gun after the car alarm went off. He kept the theft there until the cops showed up. The only problem was that nobody could understand Gary. The man had tried to get into his car after leaving a party and owned the same year, make and model of car that Gary owned. The only problem was that he went to the wrong car and the key didn’t work. Next thing he knew a crazy man speaking gibberish was aiming a gun at him. The cops pulled their guns on Gary until he put his down. They tackled him and cuffed him while he screamed the other guy was trying to steal his car. Gary had an unregistered gun and was behind on child support for all of his kids. Gary was arrested for being a black man on a Friday night. That’s not true. He was a dead beat. I wouldn’t trust him with my wife. You couldn’t rely on him for anything. He couldn’t have avoided everything by joining the military but I’m sure that would have been screwed up in some way as well. Plus 9-11 happened less than a year after he was supposed to be sworn in. He thought he had dodged a bullet, but in prison the military looks like a vacation.
That was the last time I had heard anything about Gary. That was the last time I heard a lot of things. He was always spitting out new terms like “slinging deals” which of course sounded like “slingin deas” and I had to have him repeat it five times until somebody else translated. I have never met anyone to this day that could speak the mush mouth gibberish that he spoke. It was his own language and it didn’t serve him well. Sometimes I wonder what ever happened to him but I’m scared to find out. I’d like to think that he still has his harem of girls that only he could love. Maybe he landed a good job that he would be able to keep without flunking a drug test. There aren’t too many options for a man like Gary. The best he could hope for is being the urban legend that he is. He’s no Luke Cage but to the women who like him he was an iron man and unlike the comics Gary was real. That was Gary’s talent, keeping it real and sometimes a little too real.

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adventures in cooking

Adventures in Cooking: part 13

Towards the end of my time at Olga’s I was invited to go out to Karaoke night at Brann’s Steakhouse located next door to the Mall. This was the first and last time that I would hang out with many of the servers and cooks who I had worked with. The manager that had come out had a reputation for belting out late 80’s pop songs. Many of the people tried to perform 90’s rap/ hip hop and a few tried to get me to sing “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-a-lot. I declined and eventually, through the aid of much alcohol, picked Ænima by Tool. Nate Dawg made some comment about me of all people picking a 6-minute song and I didn’t care. I had to listen to him rapping some track by Ol’ Dirty Bastard.
When I finished singing one of the only songs, I had memorized the bar was silent. “and that was Matt, the only guy I have seen able to sing Tool. Very nice.” The DJ said before announcing the next up to the stage. This night I learned about putting myself into horrible situations. I was too drunk to drive, knowing this is a good tool to stay out of trouble. The bad part about know this was being taken to Karen’s apartment across the street to sober up. We didn’t have Uber back then and I didn’t want to pay for a cab. I argued to sleep in my car, but it was below freezing outside. I caved in and fell asleep on Karen’s couch, coat still on and my large case of CDs wrapped in my arms. Back then people would steal CDs from cars which is unthinkable today. After Karen checked on her kids, she came back into the living room. I pretended to be asleep and I was in a state of panic as she stood over the couch. After a long moment there was a deep sigh and she disappeared.
Early that morning I woke up and found the apartment dead silent. Karen was still asleep, and I wanted to be out of there as soon as possible. I grabbed my CDs and went out, walking across the street, finding my car in the Brann’s parking lot and driving home. I needed something different. I needed to get out of Olga’s before I ended up as a trophy on somebody’s wall.
There are places in Kalamazoo that appear impossible to get into. Pizer, Stryker, Bronson, Borgess, the list goes on but the institutions that offer a living wage had their doors closed unless you knew somebody on the inside. My mom snuck her way into the hospital through a loop whole in their hiring system. She was working at a daycare center operated by the hospital however it was a separate entity and the employees were not regarded as hospital employees. One of the other women she worked with bid on a job that was only inhouse and she got the job. Others started to do it and soon HR learned about these women who shouldn’t be bidding on these jobs but not before my mom was in.
One of the floors in the hospital was short staffed for cleaning people and I was given a paper application. That paper was handed to the manager who gave it to HR and before I knew it, I had an interview. The job was 12 hours a day, three days a week and I took it. This was the first time I had health insurance, I didn’t have to worry how many hours I had to pay rent, I wasn’t standing over a hot stove and I didn’t have anyone yelling at me ever twenty minutes. This was a complete change from where I had been working.
I still had some credit card debt from college and wanted to save up for a new car. I continued working at Olga’s and after working 60-70 hours a week for 6 months I left. I still remember the moment I was standing in the kitchen and my mind shut off, looking into nothingness and snapping out of it half awake and dragging myself through my task. I had money saved up, the credit card was paid off. It was time to relax and start living like a normal human being.
I went up to the manager’s office and found Meagan sitting at the desk. I think she had just finished putting together the next schedule and I told her “I can’t do this anymore.”
“You’re quitting?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied with the intend of giving her a two-week notice.
“Today?” she asked. I had not considered this. I fully intended on giving them two weeks and find someone to cover for me, but after all the short shifts, all the double shifts, the times I worked by myself what difference would it have made. Knowing I didn’t ever have to come back was a blessing in disguise. She never should have asked that question.
I can do that? I thought to myself. “Uh, Ya. Today.” Meagan started to cry, and I said “sorry” before turning around, hanging up my apron and going downstairs.
“Motherfucker, where are you going?” Nate Dawg asked as I walked past him in the kitchen without an apron.
“My shift is over,” I said.
“We’re short staffed. Want some more time?”
“I just quit,” I said.
“Oh, you get a job at the hospital and you think you’re better than us now?”
I thought for a second, after all the insults, long nights of Nate tearing me down to make himself feel better, the constant ridicule for not liking the same things as him, I had had enough.
“Ya, I am better than you.”
“Get the fuck out of here motherfucker. Piece of shit. Fucking asshole. I can do this whole fucking thing myself. I don’t need your help uppity asshole.”
“Nate, go fuck yourself.” I walked out and never saw Nate again.
There was a weight off my shoulders. A burden had been lifted and, in the end, I had to wonder if it was ever worth it. What is the purpose of running a business that treated people like cattle pushing them into the butcher shop every day? Who thought of these business models and at what point did they ever seem like fun or a useful profession? I understand making hot food, serving those who need to eat, helping keep the rest of us going, but this was something else. Olga’s never figured out if it was fast food, or a bistro for lunch, or (heaven forbid) fine dining. It wanted to be everything to everyone and in the end, it failed its customers and the employees the most. I was now free from the grips of Olga’s and I only went back there once in the last 20 years. Some of the same servers still worked there. I spotted Junior working in the kitchen with his hair now white and his frame thinner than I remembered. I wasn’t curious about some of the other people I worked with and therefore didn’t ask. That time was gone, and I was grateful to be out of there. My membership card to the brotherhood of the spatula had been revoked.

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adventures in cooking

The Tale of Brendan

Neighbors came and went with the seasons at Maple Ridge Apartments and during the spring of 2000 a white pick-up truck backed up to a door and started unloading furniture. A few days later I heard a woman calling out my name in the parking lot and I saw someone I recognized but didn’t know, although she acted like she knew me. Karen was a cashier at the Meijer grocery store I worked for in high school. Two years later one of those cashiers was my new neighbor. Karen was ten years older than me with dark straight stringy hair, a thin face, and a bad attitude. This was the first time she had tried to be nice to me. In the two years I worked with her I could not recall anyone liking this woman. Then I met her husband.
Brendan was close to my age. A young decent looking guy who acted like he was always on a caffeine kick and had never heard of something called peace and quiet. His blonde hair was spiked with gel and he was still at that stage of eating whatever he wanted and still appearing in shape. When you met Brendan, you could not leave without hearing about his truck. It was a mid-90s white Ford Ranger that was nothing remarkable except that it had been totaled in an accident and rebuilt. To this day I can’t figure out what is so special about a truck that “has no value” as he put it and “I could never sell it since it doesn’t exist.” How much of this story is true, I have no idea? There were the holes I found in the story back then, how do you buy tags for the plate? How do you get a plate? Insurance, it’s not like they won’t look up the vin number. None of these questions were answered and he usually turned the topic to sex. Women he banged. Prospects in the apartment complex. Women, women, and more women was the constant topic of discussion, but he never talked about his wife.
The marriage was rocky from the beginning. These two were always fighting and Karen would storm out taking their kid, I don’t remember if it was a boy or a girl, to her mom’s place leaving Brendan to roam the complex on his own.
During that time, I had regular visits from Gary, a former co-worker from Meijer that knew Nate and Rob who were also regular visitors. Rob eventually became my roommate for a period, and it was during that phase Brendan and Karen moved in a few doors down. Gary lived in the building behind ours and as the social butterfly that he was. He knew most of the people in his building, who smoked weed, who was throwing parties, who was looking for some action, etc. Gary was not picky and as he put it, “they all look that same when the lights are out.”
Karen had stormed out of the apartment again. There was the usual yelling and screaming that had all the neighbors looking out of their blinds. A few minutes after she left, Brendan was knocking on the door expecting me or Rob to entertain him. I didn’t answer the door and went about my business. An hour later Gary came knocking and around that time Rob came home from work. He had the misfortune of landing a Union job for a garbage company and his task was cleaning out the backs of those trucks. And I thought I had it bad with the rats.
“Ya’ll gotta come ta muh building. Dis gurl haffin a party up in der.” Gary was difficult to understand. If you didn’t know Gary you would think he was drunk, or high, or maybe a speech impediment, or just had dental work done. None of these were true although sometimes he was high but that made it easier to understand him.
I was bored so I said to heck with it and followed Gary and Rob out the door. On the way Rob went to Brendan’s and that man came rushing out like a dog let off the leash.
There was indeed a party that was happening. Some girl that nobody knew had just moved in and was having people over. Her real agenda was to have someone bring some weed so that she could get high and Gary was happy to fulfill that wish. With a dozen of us in this one-bedroom apartment we sat around looking at one another wondering how nobody had something to smoke it with. Rob went back to the apartment and grabbed an old corncob pipe that he had, and Brendan assigned himself to pack it.
“I’ve done this before,” Brendan said. “I’m good at this.” Not exactly the thing to brag about when you are pressing your thumb into the bowl with all your might. He never broke apart the bud and instead stuffed the entire thing into the pipe. Gary sat back watching completely entertained. Eventually the bowl was lit but nobody could draw from the damn thing, so we went about drinking cheap booze and making small talk. Brendan was hitting on the girl the whole time. He would say he liked rap and she would reply she liked country. “I was just kidding. I love country. Country is my jam.” Then he started talking about his truck. To my surprise the girl started asking all the same questions I had regarding the truck being legal. Brendan changed the subject to what he wanted to do with it. “I’m going to lower it down, put some small fat tires on it and run some lights underneath. It’s going to be sweet.” The girl on the other hand said. “I like big trucks.” Brendan changed his tune and said, “I was just kidding. Ya, I’m going to get one of those kits and put some big fat mud tires on there.”
This act went on all night and I was one of the last people to leave. My job that evening was the cock blocker. I didn’t like Karen, hell I didn’t like Brendan, but who was this girl that was being pulled into their bullshit. When Brendan went to take a leak, I told the girl he was married, and they had a kid.
“He said he was single,” she whispered back. “How do you know?”
“He lives a few doors down and I worked with his wife. Look do what you want but now you know.”
I went home that night feeling a little better. To this day nobody knows what happened. The next morning Brendan came nocking on the door. Half-awake I answered and he told me about his sexual escapades with the girl from the party. “She had a huge bush and she blew me. It was so good.” These were the details that would be repeated and never expanded upon and I was fine with that.
The next day I saw Rob and he said he ran into Brendan after work. “He said she was shaved, and they fucked.” After comparing the few notes we had it was obvious somebody was lying.
A week later Rob came storming into the apartment with a large cardboard box. “You won’t believe what this guy a work gave me.” It was difficult to tell what it was at first, all the VHS tapes had the covers missing and the titles were in small print.
“What is it?” I asked.
“There is this old cranky Vietnam vet at work who doesn’t talk to anyone and is pissed off all the time. He comes in today and says ‘does anybody want this box of porn’ so I raise my hand up and he tells me its all lesbian porn because seeing another dude’s dick is gay. He didn’t have to explain that to me, but he did. Then he tells me that if I didn’t take it then it was going in the trash and I put it in my car right away.”
Rob starts going through the titles; Muff Divers volume 4, No Dicks Allowed 2, Carpet Burn, and the list went on and on. He was happy with his find and had the next day off.
“Just make sure you clean up afterwards,” I said rolling my eyes as he explained he wasn’t leaving the house all day.
That next day I went to work at Olga’s and Rob stayed home with his box of porn. What happened is as follows. Rob went through his tapes reading the titles. When he came across All Anal Action volume 12, he thought “this sounds nice.” None of the tapes were rewound so if you put it in the VCR you were starting at some random spot. This tape started with a close up, loins slapping and heavy breathing, Rob sat back on the couch and enjoyed, until the camera started to pull back. There was something odd he couldn’t put his finger on. The guy was odd enough, not exactly what the man at work had said these movies were. No, the problem was the girl in the movie who either had a serious case of hemorrhoids or…
Rob fast forwarded enough to learn he had been enjoying two guys going at it and for a few minutes he sat in a corner balled up crying. Then he had an idea.
Rob rewound the tape to the exact spot he had found it and took it out of the VCR. Then, he called Brendan. “Dude, you know that box of porn I got from work. I have something you need to see.” Brendan was at the door in seconds. “Now when you watch it don’t rewind it. It’s at the best scene.” Brendan grabbed the tape and ran back to his place eager to watch the film. Rob waited.
And waited…
And waited…
What he had expected was for Brendan to come back yelling and throwing the tape at him. Maybe a phone call where he said, “very funny asshole.” Some prank played on him later. But none of these things happened. We never saw Brendan again. We never saw Karen again.
When I came home that night Rob told me what had happened, and I too waited for a response. A week later the truck was gone. A few days later, Karen was moving out on her own with the kid. She never said anything to us. We had no idea what had happened to Brendan. The girl in Gary’s building disappeared that summer as well. It was like those few weeks had never happened.
Rob often wondered if he had ruined Brendan’s life, opening doors that weren’t meant to be opened.
“Rob, he tried too hard. You know this. He was living in denial.”
“What about Karen?”
“He picked the one girl at the bar that looked like a man. And she was always a bitch.”
“Ya, she was a bitch.” Rob smoked his cigarette and maybe felt better about the joke he had played. I could see why it would be difficult to move on. A marriage destroyed, a child’s life in limbo, and a woman with nowhere to go. I think Rob liked Brendan, for all of his faults, of which there were many, he was likable in small doses, really small doses, like not living a few doors down from you, or keeping a safe distance while passing on the street far enough away that you won’t end up talking, or not knowing that a person like him exist at all. That is the best way to enjoy Brendan’s personality.
To this day I have never run into Brendan. I don’t know if I would recognize him if I saw him. I never saw the white truck on the road. I never saw Karen again either. It was obvious from the beginning that Brendan had some issues the down side was that he had to take a few people down a road with him because he was too afraid to do it by himself. In the end I think the big old box of porn was a practical joke that turned into a two for one deal. When you work with garbagemen expect to feel a little dirty.

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adventures in cooking

Adventures in Cooking: part 12

In the cooking world there is no shortage of stupid that you will meet along the way. One of the most common phrases you will hear from newbs is “I didn’t know.” I used this a few times like the moment I threw the chicken tender away and quickly learned that it sets you up for a verbal assault from wailing banshees armed with spatulas and knives. It is best to yell an F bomb and just pretend you screwed up while making a mental note to never do that again.
During our monthly deep clean one of the new guys took a mop and cleaned out the walk-in cooler. He did a good job and maybe in his moment of pride he decided to repeat the act. He opened the walk-in freezer and dropped the soaping wet mop in the middle of the floor. That is the spot it remained for several days until a handful of us were smart enough to pour hot water onto the mop. Somebody thought of A Christmas Story and in the end no mops were harmed during this escapade. The man walked out of the freezer, looked around, didn’t tell anybody he was leaving, and walked away never to be seen again. I don’t know why these people think they will be fired or suffer some punishment so harsh it would scare them for life and maybe they were right. Perhaps they did do something like this before and were belittled in front of the crew, tarred and feathered, or bent over the knee and spanked. We will never know.
I have seen plastic utensils put into the deep fryers to take something out of the oil. Metal pans put into microwaves to heat something up. Dishes put into the washing machine with the glasses facing up. Gyro meat cut down while it was still raw. Food not rotated in the cooler. The list could go on and on.
There is nothing wrong with these people. They are not mentally defective or have a learning disability, although there is a chance they might. In most cases these are young people who have never functioned outside their homes and had most things done for them because their parents were too lazy to teach them how to do things on their own.
For all the immature antics that happen in a kitchen it takes a level of maturity to be a functioning member of the crew. If you are constantly screwing up people will not cover for you and eventually you will be out the door. Shit happens, we all know this, but when you keep repeating the same mistakes and you think that it is never your fault, the problem isn’t your co-workers or your parents or the school you went to or the friends you hang out with, it’s you. When there is no personal accountability or responsibility there is no trust. If there is no trust in you to do your job on the deep fryer, or working as the dish bitch, your ass will be out the door. You may get a second chance, hell I have seen people come back three or four times. Don’t think it’s because you have value. Nine times out of ten it’s because we were short staffed and having a body is better than no bodies. Some people thought they were hot shit when they strolled back in like they had been vindicated from their previous crimes. They say ‘hi’ to people who never liked them to begin with thinking they were best friends. They immediately become lazy, start doing the same shit all over again and the next day are shoved out the door. They should be glad because the handle on the walk-in freezer tends to jam and heaven forbid everyone goes out for a smoke break at the same time.
I can see it now, the plaque placed inside the walk-in cooler” For Guy la Douche, the dish bitch. May your memory last as long as your mop stood on its own in this freezer. You will not be missed. Sorry.” Meanwhile a large gym bag sits in the back corner of the freezer with a note that says Do NOT Touch.

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adventures in cooking

Adventures in Cooking: part 11

There are days that everyone dreads. Up there on the list of crappy days that you don’t want to go to work for are; holidays, Christmas shopping season, short staff days, and the dreaded health inspection. Nobody wants to be there, from the dishwasher to the manager this is a trip from on high looking down on those who have not followed the rules and any infraction can result in thousands of dollars in fines or being closed. A word of advice to the managers out there, tell your staff that it’s happening. Don’t schedule your biggest fuck ups, and don’t walk around like you’re trying to hide Jews from Nazis.
I didn’t know who the guy was walking around with Meagan that day. She looked scared and they kept talking in private. I wondered if it was corporate and she was looking at losing her job. Had we been making her job that hard on her? I went about my shift as I always did not thinking about it. Communication around the kitchen had flatlined and the staff walked around oblivious to what was happening. It was the health inspection.
I sharpened all the fillet knives and waited for the gyro meat to turn a golden brown. I was going to make sure we started off the shift right with some thin cut meat. I ran some bread through the roller and piled them up to be cooked on the grill. Then came the meat.
I sharpened the blade one last time; the metal had a ring to it that made the hairs on my arms stand up. I took a damp rag and wiped the blade off. The edge was so sharp it sliced through eight layers of washcloth and into my index finger. I didn’t notice at first, it wasn’t until the sharp stinging pain like a bug bite hit me that I pulled the blade back and saw the blood rushing from the side of my finger. I pressed the cloth against the cut and turned around to see Meagan and the health inspector looking at me. Her mouth was hanging down by her shoes, eye wide like the moment a deer realizes it’s going to that big feeding field in the sky a split second before the semitruck smacks into it. The health inspector kept that bland unimpressed look on his face as he said to her “did he just cut himself?”
I walked into the kitchen and into the back room where I found the first aid kit. The band aid wrappers were brown, aged through the passing of time. I cleaned off the blood and pressed the cloth band aid on hoping to stop the bleeding. A few minutes later blood was running down my fingers dripping off the tips. It didn’t matter what I did it would not stop. I went upstairs and found Meagan at her desk. The health inspector had left.
“I cut myself and it won’t stop bleeding,” Meagan looked at it and when I pulled the band aid off the cut started to gush all over again.
“Oh Jesus. Go to the hospital.”
I went downstairs and told the rest of the crew I had to leave.
“Good job motherfucker, now we’re short staffed the rest of the day.” I could see that Nate Dawg cared.
I went to the local emergency room and was checked in. the place wasn’t busy, and I was placed in a room surrounded by curtains. The nurse checked the cut and then the doctor came in. he pried the wound open and watched the blood come rushing out again.
“Oh, that’s bad,” the doctor said continuing to open the cut further.
This was the first time I had ever been in an ER and I didn’t think it would be like this. I wondered if they played with people’s wounds to encourage them not to come back in the future. My finger was left to soak in iodine and when it was done the doctor looked at the cut again.
“it doesn’t need stitches, but it needs to be sealed up.” He took out a tube of superglue, it had a medical name for it, but it was superglue, and applied the quick drying substance to my skin. I would be out of work for three days. At this point I was happy for the break.
I had no idea at the time that the room I was in would end up being the future spot where I would spend the next 14 years of my life. The ER would become my home, my purgatory for half of my life. To this day I don’t know why I stayed for so long, looking bad I wish I had left so much sooner than I did. That is all another story and we will come back to that later.
Injuries were common in the kitchen. People cut themselves, slipped and fell, burned, and battered themselves all the time. It was rare for someone to go to the ER; most would cover the wound and go about their business until the end of the shift. There was nothing a good toke break couldn’t handle. The fry cook would have blisters on his forearms from the oil spattering up. The dish bitch would have cuts on his hands from broken glasses and knives put in the trays in the worst possible spots. When things were stressful in the kitchen, punches would be thrown into shoulders, wet rags flicked into faces and in the heat of the moment knives pulled but never used. Working in a kitchen is already hard on the body. Long hours on your feet. All the important heavy stuff you need is stored under the counter where you are constantly bending down to retrieve something or worse finding that you ran out of god knows what and you have to run to the back cooler dodging servers, cooks, and dish washers who have their heads up their asses.
If you have been reading this blog and you find yourself saying “I think I want to work in a kitchen” seek professional help. Already have a counselor, check the medication drawer and see if you are taking your pills regularly. You have no mental illness and have no need for prescriptions, then you must be a masochist. I don’t know why you don’t like yourself and it’s not for me to judge. There are worse things in life to be into, like heroin. So maybe, the life of a cook is a better choice. Still not convinced that you should reconsider being a cook, fine. Here are some things to think about.
How old are you? If you are in your teens or twenties, sure give it a shot. Why not? You’re young, your body is still in one piece, and you have time to make mistakes in your life.do it now if you aren’t going to listen. If you are in your thirties or older find something else to do. This life is like the UFC the good years are before the 30 mark and there are few, the rare few people who can handle working in a kitchen past that age. You might be the Randy Couture of the kitchen world, but odds are you aren’t, plus there in the possibility of jail time when you find yourself surrounded by immature assholes who don’t respect you and shit on you any chance they get. When you are older you will have less patience for their shit and its not a good place for you or them.
So, you are young, what kind of kitchen do you want to work in? there are the places that serve the same thing everyday with nothing new on the menu and they are loved for it. Can you make the same shit everyday with nothing new to challenge you? If not stay away. It might be a good place to start and get the swing of things but leave after a year or so. Tuck it away on your resume and move on. If you like a challenge and always doing new things, find a place that constantly changes their menu. There are a few local examples I can point out. Rustica is a fine dining restaurant that hasn’t changed their menu in years. They have always had the roasted bone marrow, bouillabaisse, and grilled duck breast. People love this place, but it doesn’t have much to offer in diversity. Then there is Fuse a place that experiments with new dishes every week and uses outlets like Instagram to feature the new menu and was they have to offer.
There are of course other options. Bakery, chain restaurants, and diners can be a start. There is something appealing about those dives that leave you questioning the cleanliness of the place, but the food is so good you come back for more. At the local Ray Ray’s, I was shocked to see the owner/ cook working the grill with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. But I tell you he makes some of the best damn burgers in town. There are times that I have been there, and Rodger is smoking at the grill, cops come in to order their lunch and nobody says a damn thing. Meanwhile my friend and I are sitting at a table with two beers bought at the neighboring quickie mart. That is the power of being a good cook. When your food is something special, that which nobody else offers or doesn’t come close to matching you earn certain privileges others don’t enjoy. When you make the right friends through food, and your menu offers things people can’t refuse, there isn’t much you can’t accomplish.
You could go to a cooking school but why the hell would you do that? The local library I work at has three aisles of cookbooks available for the pickings. I have read about people spending a year going through the Julia Child cookbook. There is a man who is working his way through Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halle cookbook for the one-year anniversary of his death. There are other places to learn how to cook and not go into massive amounts of debt that can not be repaid on this salary. If you are planning on working for someone else do not go to culinary school. You will be buried in student loan debt and not make enough to survive and pay back the debt, something you can not claim when filing for bankruptcy. If you are planning to open your own place do not go to culinary school. You will be buried in student loan debt and then the debt of starting your own place. In the end, learn how to cook on your own, or work at some shitty fast paced restaurant that is nothing special and get the hands-on experience that is the most valuable part of working in a kitchen. Who cares if you can make a great filet mignon? What matters is if you can make 16 of the damn things at the same time for a large group and not lose your mind under the stress, then do it all over again twenty minutes later because another group came in. this is the reality of working in a kitchen. The job is never done except when the open sign is shut off and the last customer is out the door. That is when you can sit back relax and enjoy that drink or joint or whatever it is that you are into, but only when everything is out away and the grill is cleaned, and the floors are mopped, and the stock is rotated in the walk in cooler, and the left overs are dated, and the last dishes are run through the machine, then maybe you can relax.
Did I mention the dreams in the middle of the night about taking an endless stream of tickets off the machine? That happens. Or the ones where you are standing naked at the grill, but you have too many orders to go find some clothes. That one happens too.
My point is this life isn’t for everyone. It wasn’t for me. That is why I am writing about it but not still doing it. The last time I went to the Olga’s I worked at I saw Junior. He didn’t recognize me and even if I said something to him, he probably wouldn’t remember who I was. With the turn around the odds are he has worked with a few hundred people in the last twenty years. I was a small check on the list of people that have come and gone. Junior will likely be working there until the day he dies. If he enjoys it then there are few things better one could hope for. I know too many people that worked shit jobs they hated only to die before retirement and never had the chance to enjoy what they loved. If you don’t love cooking, stay out of the kitchen because you will receive no love in return.
To be continued…

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adventures in cooking

Adventures in Cooking: Part 10

It’s not everyday that a person is a victim of a terrorist attack. No, I’m not talking about 9-11 I’m referring to the Crossroads Mall Pepper spray gas attack of 2000. There are things that do not mix in nature. Oil and water, chocolate and vanilla, white trash and money, but sometimes they come together, and the outcome is never good. Look at the Kardashians for the last example.
It was spring and while the birds were chasing one another and the bees remained hard at work helping flowers have sex, the hormones of the mall were also in full swing. There weren’t too many feuds that happened in the mall. We never competed against the McDonald’s crew to find out who was better. There wasn’t a Greek food vs Asian food fight happening to figure out dominance, and by the way Asian food would have won hands down. The orange chicken at Oriental Express is worth swinging by the mall for. The one group of douchebags that we could not stand was the security guards.
For me this was an odd gang that roamed around in their uniforms for the soul purpose of hitting on girls while trying to look good catching shop lifters. Like any wannabe cops they collected any weapon they could carry except for a pistol. Their belts were customized towards each guard showing their different personalities. The one common element was the radio, everything besides that was a combination of handcuffs, which they couldn’t legally use, zip ties, baton, tear gas, pepper spray, flash light, and any doohickey that can attach to a keychain. There were moments when we would catch the guards hitting on the waitresses, fucking up our times and pissing off everyone in the restaurant.
“Lindsey, order up for 12,” Nate hollers out of the kitchen towards the doors.
Heads turn and the guard waves his hand telling her to ignore Nate. I caught this and popped out to see if she had heard. Their eyes were locked, and the guard was instantly pissed I was interrupting.
“So, you can arrest people? That’s so cool,” Lindsey says looking at his zip ties.
“Hey Lindsey, your order is up.” I look at the guard’s belt with a smirk.
“Hey buddy, I think she can take care of it.”
If there is one thing I hate about douchebags, its when they call you buddy. I’m not your bud or buddy. I’m certainly not your bro. unless there is some DNA test I don’t know about, I’m not your brother. Those guys can fuck off and this meant war.
“So, you know that you don’t have the power to arrest anyone, right. Plus, you can only restrain someone if they are a threat to themselves or others.” I said, knowing the laws.
He rolled his eyes and spit out a “pts” before saying, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He didn’t argue just tried to discredit. It was game on.
“Are you really going to strip every time you try to arrest someone?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“The zip ties on your belt. They are looped around but you connected the ends so the only way you can get them off is by taking your belt off and since it is going through the loop of your pants that mean the pants must come off as well. So, are you going to strip them into submission?” I waited for a response.
“Fuck you,” the guard said.
“Oh my god, he’s right. How would you get those off there?” Lindsey said.
“Lindsey, get this fucking order.” Nate yelled from the kitchen.
Lindsey went to the kitchen leaving me and security douche by ourselves.
“You’re a fucking dead man.” The guard said. “fucking cock blocker.”
“what are you going to do arrest me. Keep your clothes on, I’m not into that.”
“Don’t get mad at me because she wants some of this.” Then he took a low blow. “At least I’m not working some shit job in a kitchen.”
“Hey asshole I worked security for two years and we had to deal with protestors. You chase shoplifting teens out of hot topic. Have a nice day dick bag.”
“Fuck you.”
“Not if you took me to dinner and a movie first.”
The fight to have the last word went on until a call came through the radio. Elderly man stuck on the escalator. Real action-packed stuff.
The guards continued to come around, and in the end, things did not go well for them. The police were called. EMS showed up. The fire department came to the rescue. You know, the real men in uniforms.
Lindsey and the guard were in their usual mating ritual. Lindsey decided to be the aggressive one and pull the pepper spray from the guard’s belt.
“Hey, give that back.” Yes, it really sounded that pathetic.
Of course, Lindsey didn’t and played a short game of tag until her thumb hit the button and a mist went into the air. The guard jumped back, and Lindsey dropped the canister on the floor. The area was instantly cleared as people coughed and rubbed their eyes.
In the kitchen, I had an itch in my throat. Nate Dawg started to cough. The servers rubbed their eyes as they grabbed their orders. Customers coughed as they ate. I started to cough.
“Mother fucker, are you burning something?” Nate said rubbing his eyes.
The doors opened to the kitchen. “The police are clearing the mall,” the manager said. We learned the whole story outside.
In the food court a customer had a severe asthma attack. People in the Sears store had itchy eyes and horrible coughs. The people in Hot Topic discovered a new way to torture themselves without cutting. Some people feared it was a sarin gas attack like what happened in Tokyo with the subway terminals.
The police came out, long with every other first responder in the city of Portage. This wasn’t the act of Islamic terrorism, religious nutjobs, or societal anarchist. No, this was the result of hormones.
The pepper spray entered the ventilation system and was pumped through the entire building. Two levels of stores plus the anchor stores on the ends are all tied into the same system. One spray of the guards $5 toy cleared out an entire shopping mall. The police kept the building cleared for five hours to air everything out. While people like to say that pepper spray is harmless the category is technically ‘less lethal’ rather than ‘non-lethal’ force. This was the great Crossroads Mall pepper spray gas attack of 2000; Al Qaeda would have been proud.
After this event security was not allowed to carry pepper spray anymore. Management contacted the head of security and demanded that the guards no longer come around the restaurant unless they were called, which we ever did. It’s difficult to shop lift a sandwich from a place that you dine in. The mall eventually went back to normal and the event was forgotten. To this day when people say they carry pepper spray for personal protection, and when they work indoors I shake my head and tell them to find something else. There has never been a substitute to a good knife and there never will be.

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