Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, By Anthony Bourdain

 Yesterday, as I browsed the shelves of a thrift-store, I saw this title, Kitchen Confidential. For a dollar and a half, it was mine. It peaked my interest, not because I have a desire to become a professional chef and slave out my days in the kitchens of high profile restaurants, but because I currently work in the kitchen of a very casual, family-dinning type restaurant. It’s the kind of place that specializes in so called home cooked meals, like meatloaf, chicken and mashed potatoes.

I know all too well the string of a hot metal against skin, the way steam can burst up and leave a patch on your arm like a bad sunburn, and the blistering that oil burns leave behind. I know what it’s like when the orders seem to shoot out of the machine faster than I can get the chicken into the broaster and the vegetables into the steamer. I’ve had servers on my back, begging for their fish and chips, ‘cause table seven’s already been waiting fifteen minutes.'

I guess by reading Anthony Bourdain’s book, I was reminded that the kitchen I work in is a relatively low stress environment, compared to the places that hire full-fledged chefs. In fact, Bourdain’s world is far removed from mine. Some of the details Bourdain writes sound like they’re coming straight out a Hollywood movie. He’s got trash-talking chefs, crooked seafood salesmen, drug addicts, and even the mafia. The frightening part is that it all sounds true and as far as this reader knows, it is.

Bourdain’s book is autobiographical. He traces his life through food, from his first taste of an oyster as a child, to his first restaurant job as a dish washer—incidentally I’ve been a dishwasher too—all the way up to jobs as a head chef at high profile restaurants. He’s brutally honest as he describes the colourful people he’s encountered over the years. He’s honest about the work and dedication required too. In the restaurant industry, when everybody else is getting off work, the cooks are just getting on. When the rest of the world is enjoying Christmas Eve, or Easter Sunday, or Canada Day, cooks and servers are putting in extra hours, dashing about with sore feet and fraying nerves.

As for this book, if you don’t mind the language and sexual innuendo, Anthony Bourdain has written a decent read. The book is good motivation; I’ll definitely be working hard at University this fall because I’d rather not spend my life in “the life.” 

The Holistic Garden by Karen York

I feel a sudden desire to spread used coffee grounds under my rose bushes, to get a rain barrel and to spray my powdery mildew infested roses with a mixture of nine parts water and one part milk. Suddenly, I’m imagining landscaping projects, new plants and what my lawn would look like if I tore up all the grass in favour of the natural, wildflower look.

All I did was sit down and read Karen York’s book. I’m a gardener and good books about gardening get me excited, but this one is especially unique. York addresses the concept of the garden as a place of healing and stress relief.

The “healing” York has in mind is not physical healing, but rather the process of using nature “to restore a person to spiritual wholeness,” and to set right the relationship between ourselves and the earth.

It comes as no surprise to me when York notes the therapeutic effects of nature and of the act of gardening. I discovered a number of years ago the power weeding as a method for stress relief. The more time I spend in my garden, the happier and more peaceful I feel.

In her book, York covers everything from soil quality and landscape setup, to rooftop gardens, wild flowers and edible plants. One of the most interesting chapters was the one on soil, titles “A Sense of Humus.”

In chapter one York discusses eight elements of the “Healing Garden” design. An inviting entry, diverse and interesting sensual stimulation, enclosure, a sense of mystery, natural forms, light/ dark, and places for one person or more, are all important aspects of York’s ideal garden.

One of my favourite observations made by York is a reminder that “the garden is not an escape from reality; it’s an escape to reality.”

York is concerned with having things in harmony with each other and with letting the garden be natural. She stresses biodiversity and water conservation. She criticizes the modern concept of having a monoculture lawn, calling the traditional yard a “blandscape.” She rejects tilling and favours natural remedies for pests and plant diseases over chemical ones.

“One person’s wildflower is another person’s weed,” York writes. The line is telling of her whole philosophy. It all comes down to synergy. Every system in nature is synergenic, meaning “the whole produces a different effect from what the parts produce on their own.” Because everything interrelates, it must be balanced.

York’s gardening advice is not just practical, but is philosophical too. This makes sense. When it comes to gardening, the practical and the philosophical have always been interwoven in my mind. If you’re a serious gardener, or becoming a serious gardener, this book is definitely worth a read.

 As a final thought, York says, “The garden grows with you, and you grow with the garden in a mutual search for balance and serenity.”

My Antonia, by Willa Cather

Last Christmas, while on vacation, I picked this up at a bookstore in the states. I have to admit, most of the pioneer literature I have read up until this point has been Canadian literature. I’m not opposed to American pioneer stories. I just prefer Canadian ones because as a Canadian, I can relate to them more. It also seems to be my duty as a Canadian to prefer Canadian over American literature. Preferences aside, My Antonia was a fair book. It was more than fair, actually. I loved it.

I was in need of a good story, rather than something intellectually stimulating. Willa Cather knew how to write good characters, although at first I questioned her POV choice. How could a female author looking to explore the life of a pioneer woman chose a male narrator? After my reading, I think I understand part of why Cather chose a male narrator.

The pioneer women of the novel are in a world run by men. In the case of Antonia, the woman whose life is most closely examined, she is forced to be a breadwinner for her family, working alongside her brother in the fields and then going to town to be a maid, while giving the majority of her money to her brother and to the farm. Antonia, like many of her friends,  lives in a world where she must try to play both a man and a woman’s role in order to survive. By having a male narrator tell the story, Cather displays the similarities between Antonia, a woman, and the narrator, a man, in the pioneer world. The result is that Antonia appears as a strong, heroic woman.

My theory aside, the characters and life of the setting were superb. I really loved the way the land is described by the narrator. Through his eyes we see the beauty of Nebraska and the wildness of it at the time that the narrator is recalling.

Next time you’re in a book store, head to the classics section and give this one a try. My copy is a Barnes and Noble Classics printing, which I paid about $5 for. 

The English Woman in America by Isabella Bird

The English Woman in America is an older book, first published in 1856. The slow paced memoir details the author’s experiences traveling in North American in the 1850s. Although Isabella Bird seems to be the stereotypical English snob, she does offer insight into what some of the cities of the Canada and the United States of the 1850s looked like.

At the time of publication, English women probably identified quite easily with Bird. She was the daughter of a clergyman and seems to have followed and understood most of the normalities of her society. The things that cast her in bad light today were perfectly normal frames of mind at the time.

Throughout the book I can see clear evidence of her anti-Catholic and anti-Irish point of view. She even bashes the French for introducing Catholicism to the native peoples of Canada. If that weren’t enough to make me dislike her, she also puts on airs, describing the impropriety of the way ‘the help’ in Canada behaves. She relates a story of servant who, after serving the family a meal, sits down to read a book on the family’s sofa. The family reprimands her and she refuses to work for them any longer, saying she will not work for a family that refuses to let a young lady improve her mind. Bird makes light of the fact that many of the servants in Canada see themselves as respectable, or as ‘ladies.’

At one point I really had to laugh at the airs she put on. While on the road from one city to another, she laments at being served mint tea instead of the regular china-leaf variety. In my reading of memoirs I have encountered few more infuriating narrators.

While Isabella Bird was no doubt adventurous, she did not possess the capacity to be opened minded to anyone who was not like herself. In describing the world around her, she sets everyone who is different from her, as below her. Perhaps she did it unintentionally, but she did it all the same.