leverage.

I haven't told many people this but I am fairly new to watching television. In my adult life, that is. While in Florida I was introduced to CSI Las Vegas. But upon returning home I realized that watching it again would be impossible. I don't own a tv and I never have. It's a real conversation ender. Co-workers say, "did you see that __________ episode/show last night?" And I think for a minute that I don't know what they're talking about and I reply, "I don't have a tv." Their face falls. Suddenly I am suspicious, un-American, no longer a co-worker to be spoken to, shared with. The worst is when they approach me a few days later, forgetfully, and although the conversation is just as short as the last one, this time I have hurt or insulted them. Now I am their tv twelve step meeting, "Well, I mean, you know, I only watch one show, or two if you count ________[fill in reality show # 428], and you know, the Nature Channel." Do I care? Me not having a tv has nothing to do with anyone else.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the word leverage. Watching certain themes and characters playing out roles is quiet time for me to see and listen closely for life similarities. I'm not like most people I know when it comes to media. I absorb it like a sponge that will never release the liquid it absorbs. Information goes to my dreams, and my emotions/responses are informed by what I take in. Newspaper stories can be hard on me. When my mother had access to the AP wire I became quite dark in conversation, always trying to relinquish what I had heard, the horrible gruesome details that, (if you can imagine), never make it to newsprint. Media informs my opinions, thought processes and it helps me to try and make sense of a world that, right now, is starting to fall apart at the well sewn seams. I am trying to get comfortable with trying not to make sense out of what cannot be made sense of. I am caring for someone very ill and she just happens to be my whole world.

The lesson I learned at a young age was, if I can organize things and understand them than I will be alright. I had it all figured out.

_______________________________________________________

Today while working at a large catering kitchen I had a lot of time to think. Almost no conversation happens while we are doing the same thing over and over for hours. I got into a groove, a rhythm. My thoughts started socializing with recent ones and ideas, reactions, emotions from long ago. I was showing someone how to line up and arrange things on a sheetpan, how to envision what 63 scoops of dough would look like. "Orchard style is what I call it."

Orchards are planted so as to facilitate humans harvesting that particular crop in the most efficient and safest way possible, with or without machinery. Fruit trees are flat-top cropped so that pickers will not have to climb high and so that fruits get the most amount of even sunlight. Whether it's what sunlight does to blossom or how humans come to gather, this is rhythm and organization made visual.

Kitchens are like forensic science labs. Cooks learn from school, books and practice why certain reactions take place and ask questions of the product and fellow cooks so that they can try and replicate the end product in a more informed manner. We listen to the weather, the ovens, the ramekins, and then we make calculations. We can impose ourselves however we choose, but in the end the evidence talks.

My stint at Jardiniere lasted just under one month. It appears that the kitchen was uninterested in welcoming me aboard their ship. They were just fine, thank you very _____[expletive deleted] -ing much. Funny because so many chefs said to me how they would have loved to have been able to have a position like mine in their kitchens. It's ok. Better that I find out by my own careful investigation. I listened to what many people said and I gathered information.

Leverage, n. advantage; purchase, hold. See INFLUENCE

---->The Penguin Roget College Thesaurus in Dictionary Form.

Leverage n. 1. The action of a lever, or the mechanical advantage gained by the   lever; also, an arrangement or system of levers. 2. Power or influence for attaining an end.

---->Webster's New International Dictionary Second Edition.

I can definitely be pesky in kitchens. I like to ask why a lot. It annoys some people. Especially those who view me as their charge. It's a fault, but sometimes it works to my advantage. I like investigating the whys of baking and cooking. In many kitchens people just make shit. They do it for a hundred reasons, none of which coincide with mine. I like to be nerdy and figure stuff out. I ask Harold McGee questions, ask farmers questions, talk to the egg guy and dairy scientists and read loads.

I come to food from an emotional place. I understand certain scientific basics and can throw around the lingo like any other linebacker chef. But at the end of the shift I feel bad if a dough, an appareil, fruit was mishandled or not paid attention to.

Sometimes the facts are to be seen only by you. I saw an ex lover briefly and unconsciously touch someone and I knew they were intimate. Both denied, but the truth was evident. The truth leaks. In a favorite song I hear the words, "you don't gotta be right, but you gotta be righteous." And sometimes you know something because if you have seen it once you have seen it one hundred times. But other people don't know that. Like the orchard planter we see patterns on the dirt before they’ve been drawn. In CSI they are always finding blood where someone said it wasn't. In Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, the father character is a doctor and notices the same discoloring on the bridge of his oldest daughter's nose as the one his late wife displayed when she bearing her first child. In the story she tells no one, not even her sister and that withholding changes the relationship of the family forever.

"Where are you cooking these days?" "What restaurant did you work at before? {otherwise known as the vague question: "Where are you from?"}

"leverage, n. advantage; purchase, hold." is the force behind these enigmatic questions.

I realize that cooking is a nifty profession but I must say that lately the first question from the above paragraph has recently made me feel homicidal. Or just come up with really snarky answers. The fellow cook/chef wants to know the answers for leverage purposes. We want to know immediately where we stand with the new “so-called” cook standing before us. It informs our decisions of how we will begin treating them. Me? I like to ask people what they do for fun.

Restaurant work is like ballet. It is always about right now, not your past career or previous hours worked. You have to be young to withstand the rigors and competitive enough to be able to fight for any respect that someone may give you, if only for a minute. These questions size people up. At Jardiniere the Chef de Cuisine let me know that his cooks were trained to ignore new cooks' resumes. One need fight for respect. He said that the restaurant was "a wild and woolly beast." Proud.

The CSI's are always working in pairs or all together. When big ego or an overload of empathy enters the case, a partner puts them in check.

But kitchens speak a different language. "The action of a lever, or the mechanical advantage gained by the lever; also, an arrangement or system of levers." Who's the top and who will bottom? Competition at the expense of the end result. {The opposite would be about diplomacy, saving face, building alliances and making compromises.} Welcome to capitalism.

At this moment in time I don't have the energy to fight a lever pulled by a heavy someone more interested in belligerent competition than receiving a gift that Traci [Des Jardins] had the long term vision to create for the restaurant. I remain honored that she took so many of my under utilized/recognized capabilities and fashioned a possibility from them. Forager. It's such an interesting garment. Was.

I learned a lot. I went to more farmer's markets than ever before. Initiated in depth conversations with the farmers/cheese makers I already know and love. I stayed right on top of what was coming down the pike and why. Now I have eaten edible chrysanthemum leaves and know how to pronounce their Japanese name. {shoonGeekyoo}. Rejoiced in garlic stems, found a mulberry grower {!!!!!}, saw a bin of green walnuts with a nocino recipe attached, discovered another Organic ice cream maker, gazed upon linguine sized leeks {gorgeous}, stroked young shallots, stained my car seat with Tayberries, and introduced some good people to the wonders of loquat fruit and their shiny seeds.

There's always more to learn. Even if it's how to keep your mouth shut when you see something you don't want to repeat. Maybe we can learn in a way that speaks, “ myself and others I will allow to trip. “

We do the research, collect information, have a conversation with the evidence, but in the end we make choices. Because people are a lot harder to understand than croissant dough. The only thing we can rely on is change. And how we feel about death doesn't line up in neat rows.

_______________________________________________________

I made another pie tonight. It filled the house with incredible wafting berry butter aromatic herb scents. It comforted me to know I could make something swiftly with what I had on hand. I don't have the energy to fight the leveraging battles of my colleagues with their fearful egos. I am wrestling with demons and the way I can subdue or distract them is to make life subtly serene, simple and bake. In times of sorrow we turn to that which comforts. The rhythm of the familiar. Conundrums, like cat's cradle, wherein solving is not the goal, but moving fingers in and out of the string maze and then releasing the invisible structure.

Comments

[bandit]

beautiful

[Sam]

sending love, hugs and respect.

[Melissa]

You write from your heart. I'm moved.

[haddock]

Shuna Fish:

What DO you do for fun?

[Amy]

Hang in there! Is it possible that teaching cooking is a true calling for you?

[Dr. Biggles]

Hey Shuna, yer kinda busy huh? Without TV to cloud your mind.
The Leverage works its evil ways in other walks of life as well. Over the years I've had to do many things to stay on top, not because I'm so much better. But because the other person was that much an idiot. Such as managing the help desk at Harper Collins publishing in SF, the man on top didn't like me. I threatened his existance, fine. He spent one and a half weeks working on some poor sots mouse, couldn't make it behave. He'd ordered a new motherboard and mouse. I went over and cleaned the GUNK out and it worked fine. That was five million years ago. I moved on and I've been with the same company for 15 years. Now I'm the existing idiot and I have to say, I LOVE the idea of not having to prove my mettle.
Do you get tired of having to go toe to toe?

Biggles

[farmgirl]

I have been sitting here typing nothing. Words to express how moved I was by your essay have completely dissipated into the humid, night air. Thank you for writing. I am sorry the foraging position did not work out--this time. And as someone who has not had TV in years and years, I can totally relate to your obliviousness. I simply rejoice in it! Besides, there isn't time to watch TV if one is busy baking. Baking cures all, as you obviously already know. Take care of yourself (and please e-send me a piece of that pie).

[Fatemeh]

Shuna,

Your ability to tie themes and words and seemingly unrelated ideas together to draw me into your mind and heart is amazing.

I can feel your sadness and disappointment through your words, at the same time as I can feel your graciousness at having been given the opportunity, if only for 4 weeks.

You are a true gem. We are blessed to have you. Traci knows it. We all know it. Those poor sots in the kitchen will know it only when it's too late.

Thinking of you,
Fatemeh

[chronicler]

Ah Shuna! Your writing is Like creme brulee for me. It is mellow and sweet with such depth. It can be ignored as too simple a dish, until someone who really knows, knows.

Thank you for sharing.

Funny, my husband brought home some shiny seeds for us this week. They will hopefully sprout and will grow to be fantastic trees.

[shuna]

hello friends,

thank you so much for your support and encouragement! I will just say over and over what a wondrous thing this blogging can be. And all of you are such proof of that.

Thank you for allowing this world to be an outlet of immeasurable comfort, laughter, inspiration, freedom, learning, and visual deliciousnesses. You are all with me on this bizarre and life changing journey, whether you know/like it or not.

xo Shuna Fish

[Linda Kinsman-Saegert]

Your writing is amazing, your use of words sublime. Take every experience as a class in school, use what you can and shelve the rest. I was never welcomed in kitchens, always asking why and trying to streamline stuff, never went out after to drink , never did coke, never slept with the staff, I never fit in, but in the end they loved me and I have become a better person for it. Move on with better ideas than you had when you started.

[Linda]

Got a gift this weekend of a really good cookbook The Sweet Kitchen, very well written, very user friendly and even an old baker like me learned a few things, I read cookbooks like a novel and this is a good one.