Emptiness Beyond Hunger

Waiting to be filled.

In our last adventure I brought up the word Emptiness as a dynamic currency exchanged in certain circumstances. I want to unpack this word and share with you the view that I have of this condition...

Underlying all experiences, like a humming noise you're so used to it rarely comes to your attention, is the paradoxical emptiness-yet-sufficiency of Being itself. Experiences come and go, life waxes and then wanes, but a part of us remains unchanged, ever-new, ever-content, without hunger or desire. I could give you the Vedic breakdown of how a physical form comes to nestle around a spirit, and remind you about karma and other classic concepts that have been bandied about in the West since Paramahansa Yogananda arrived on American shores - but I am no scholar, and really the words themselves don't matter so much as the feeling I need to convey on these topics I have observed and lived in a visceral way.

Emptiness feels a bit alien to our day to day experiences - after all, we are driven by real, hot signals within our own biology to Eat, Mate and Shop at Ikea. However, as the experiences pile up from day to day and year to year, even the good ones take their toll. (New study has discovered that wakefulness (conscious experience) is actually toxic to the brain, and during sleep the brain is flushed and healed.)

The feeling of emptiness starts to become unavoidable, and you have to figure out how to respond. Maybe you end up saying to your friend or spouse or family "Let's go out to dinner." You may need a place to meet and question this feeling, and let others do the cooking. Or you may need the time away from the routine to contemplate and share. You may need a way to feel new - by incorporating something new into your life via your mouth and stomach. Sometimes it's hard to tell emptiness from hunger. You end up in a restaurant trading your emptiness for fullness, while the restaurant accepts your emptiness in return. See previous post.

So, the call of this emptiness within you is like a little tug on your attention. Like driving by some beautiful meadow every day for years and then one time noticing it and wondering what would happen if you stopped the car and walked out into it. And then driving by dozens more times until at some point you get a flat tire and instead of fixing it right away, you find your legs carrying you into that space. (Here's a song I wrote about this exact situation.) We tend to avoid the empty until we have a breakdown.

The call from the emptiness gets stronger in me the more I work, the longer my days go and the more I push my body. Exhaustion brings me a feeling like I am close to God. It changes my perspective and sense of sight, and the internal monologue of my own mind grows distinct.

At some point we humans lose interest in the drama of it all and start asking "why?" As any parent of a toddler can tell you this is the question that can never resolve except at the point of infinity. There is always a pre-existing moment or condition to be explained every time you give an answer to this question, so the line of questioning inevitably ends with the Big Bang and then a leap into whatever came before it, before space/time was created and all was one. (If you enjoy speculation on matters of Deep Time, I recommend this surprising series of folk-tales on the topic.)

Anything that leads to infinity or stirs our sense of nothingness helps us understand ourselves. Also, the contradictions of language help turn ideas on their head.

For example the word "nobody," is another name for God (that One condition outside space/time.)

"Nobody knows why." Right! That One with no body, no form, that is outside of space/time, has a perspective on mysteries opaque to human consciousness.

"Nothing can help us now!" Exactly the opposite of the hopeless statement it seems to be. The physical limits of the situation can only be changed by a shift in the underlying condition that we have in common, that is not a thing at all, but a no-thing.

Which brings us to the location of this source-condition: "Nowhere."

We can't look around ourselves and seek the source of a feeling of emptiness. We can't look at an Ikea catalogue and divine the nature of our condition. We can certainly furnish a very modern room for our condition that way!  But does the condition even care?!

The emptiness is, and always is, and always will be yours. You can trade a part of its infinity and still have plenty left. You can sell it as art. You can drink to forget it. But it's the one thing you can't lose.

Tell 'em, Tom!

Embrace it, feel it, and be empty. Happy. Empty.
Namasté.

Intangibles

I want to describe to you a kind of unseen commerce that occurs in restaurants.
Not theft. Not graft. Something elemental that you have all participated in, likely without knowing it.

There is an exchange that happens beyond the tidy commerce of receiving a meal and paying your bill. It's not a long story. Are you in?

Little Dose of Summer

With school underway, it's time for a moment of reflection on the essential pleasures of summer. I would like to offer you a taste of peace and renewal from my own summer this year.

Here. Try a wild blueberry.

Or a Blueberry-Rhubarb cobbler.

Take a moment to consider the Arch.

Here's a good omen for the beginning of a Road Trip.

And here's a good destination. Great Sand Bay, in the Keweenaw Peninsula. The water and wind are chilly, but you'll never forget a swim in Lake Superior. Wears a body out in the best way.

Follow me. We have a fire pit by the water.

There's your marshmallow stick. . . We're driving home tomorrow.

Welcome back to the city.

What Should I Carry in My Knife Bag?

So you're starting out as a Cook, and you haven't taken enough courses at Cash Cow Culinary Academy to be "given" a knife kit. Or maybe you're a Line Cook trying to go deeper into the craft. You need a better knife, and they aren't cheap. So, what knives will help you the most and make a big difference at work?

The Mystery Set. . . except that one in the middle.

Well, let's explore what it is you'll be doing at your job, shall we?

The Beef

The Beef

I've written before about the challenges that come with tackling large-scale projects for Bailey's Restaurants. Our Commissary staff produces massive quantities of food to be portioned and finished at each of our 7 restaurants. We butcher 3-6 whole pigs weekly for making pulled pork, sausages and other goodies. We cook at least 1,000 pounds of bacon a week. We produce a hundred-plus recipes for use all over the company. In the last few months we have brought Whole Steers into our wheelhouse.

How to Almost Not Make Cranberry Apple Bread

True story of how new recipes get rigorously tested and tweaked in the house of a Chef.

Mission: Cranberry-Apple Bread.

Recipe As One Might Intend to Make It:

2 c Apples, peeled, cored and diced
3/4 c White Sugar
2 T  Vegetable Oil
1 Egg

Pie Project: Early Summer Stunner

Thimbleberry Coconut Raspberry Pie

Say WHAT??

The Thimbleberry described here is native to the Northern Michigan landscape where my lovely wife grew up. It is like a raspberry but pungently tart and floral, and so soft that one does not chew them, one crushes the velvety drupelets against the roof of the mouth with the tongue. They can barely be harvested and carried back to the house without crushing them, so the only form in which they can travel to Missouri is as a jam.

Cooking Hacks: Rapid Cooler Defrost

One of the most fun aspects of being a chef: it's a Decathalon.

Cook. Manage. Create. Repair. Solve. Improve. Train (retrain!) Pay. Receive. Organize.

In order to succeed, you need to at least be able to cross the finish line in every one of these categories (whether or not you are the Best at them all.)

This post deals with the category of experience: Solving Problems You Are Not Trained To Solve at times when solving them is essential. Picture this: Restaurant chef stripping off white uniform coat with blue piping on the cuffs to shimmy into a dark, dusty corner and wrench a piece of broken equipment back to life until service is over. That's what we call "Living the Dream." (Culinary students take heed!)

A Big Slab of Trouble

It's Saturday evening, and I'm checking over the many coolers and freezers before checking out for a day of rest.

Oddities in Pictures

Yep! Weird food.

More of the strange but true encounters with food that I have all the time.  These are just the photogenic ones.

Dinosaur Egg? Quail Liver?

Pie Project: Ohio Lemon Pie

"Ohio Lemon Pie"

A rather cryptic name for a mid-last-century culinary fad, started by the Shakers.
According to Joy of Cooking, this pie was big news before the age of Ron Popeil; home cooks all over the Midwest were baking up versions of this pie with that Exotic Semi-Tropical Import: the Lemon.
I found the recipe intriguing and decided to give it a try.

New Year's Pie Project #1: Caramel Pumpkin Pie

Here at kitchenananda we strive to answer some of the toughest philosophical questions that humanity can raise.  Already, we have tackled:

Q: "Why are we here?" A: To feed each other.

Q: "What is consciousness?"  A: Who cares? It's delicious!

This post germinated before Christmas, while trying to answer this question:

Q: "What do you get for the Man Who Has Everything?"

A: Pie.   (Duh!)

Restaurant Oddities in Pictures

These are a few favorite images from my culinary life in the past year. I love to find unexpected beauty in the everyday world, especially the sometimes grim world of a chef's daily challenges: clogged floor drains, discount produce, decrepit second-hand equipment, wasted food, inter-staff friction, wacky customer requests we chefs strive to satisfy. All of these "issues" have a shiny side somewhere, like a dented-up roll of aluminum foil.

What the. . .?

Pool of Water Near Ice Machine Exhibits Strange Rainbows

Biofilm?

"My God, it's full of stars."
(Or maybe grease. . .)

Superior Technique Salvages 50 Pound Blue Pumpkin

People who cook always say that big squashes have no flavor. Baseball-bat zucchini end up in the compost every summer in many a garden. That big jack-o-lantern never really makes a pie worth eating. . .

Well, maybe that's because we don't treat them right. Squashes seem to start out from the blossom packed with flavor which gets less intense as they grow. It's like the water that helps them balloon in size dilutes that original charge to a low and disappointing voltage. I happen to have a Prodigious Pumpkin from my friend Mike at Harvest St. Louis. . .

. . . Which gives us the opportunity to practice one of the Cook's Maxims: Remove Water to Intensify Flavor.

Will it work?

Milestone: First Appearance in Print

Work hard enough long enough in a town of this size and people will come to know you. . .

Well, that has worked for Dave Bailey anyway whose coattails I am happy to ride on. The good thing about being one of the Go-To-Guys in the Bailey's Empire is that I get assignments such as: "submit 3 recipes representing our restaurants, have them tested, typed and sent by the end of the day."

Non-Fancy Super-Crunchy 10 Minute Granola

Yes. You can do this.

Ever check out the Vegan or Raw Foods section of the Health Food store and come across these little snack packets of uber-granola weighing 2 ounces total and costing 9 American Dollars? I saw some the other week, and I thought: "This is it. Boutique Granola costs $56 a pound.  The end of the Roman Empire (take 2) is at hand."

Magic Dinner, and That's No Crock

'Tis the season. . .

. . .when long-cooked dishes return to our tables and life gradually becomes more and more busy as the Holiday Juggernaut approacheth. Maybe you want the time to bake cookies for everyone you know. Or put up jars of the last tomatoes of the year. Or recreate that long-lost spun-sugar Titanic that you made as a final project in Pastry School (too bad the ants found the original one!) But dinner still needs to be made, friend.

Well, you probably know someone who brags all the time about their crock pot and you think "I want dinner to be magically ready when I come home from work, too. . ." But you have a small kitchen without the parking space to plunk down one of those overgrown hot plates. We cooks know that the most important Kitchen Real Estate is counter-space. . . especially adjacent to a sink and power outlet (wow!)

Don't worry about that office blowhard. Have you got a regular old soup pot with a decent lid? Do you have a working oven? Chances are very good that even a crappy apartment oven can handle 225 degrees for a few hours. . .

Congratulations! Welcome to Magic Dinner Prep School!

Cooks Should Never: Hotwire Pasta Machines

Fried!

Let's say, hypothetically, that you were operating a newly-purchased, beautiful expensive Italian pasta maker/extruder and it suddenly stopped functioning.  And you traced the problem to a blown fuse, which no one in the greater Metro area can find. And say the machine was still full of dense semolina dough that was threatening to become cemented permanently inside the interstices of the extruder's delicate parts unless something could be done to disassemble the machine.  And imagine that the special Italian wrench for removing the parts in peril was NOT included with the machine by the seller for the simple reason that the parts can be easily loosened by running the machine backwards for 10 seconds. . . except of course it won't run AT ALL.  Time is passing as you and your boss make phone calls to every single electrical supply house within 50 miles and they all say "What size is the fuse? Really? We could order it for you. . . be about 10 days."

Robot Rehab

Operator Error

(The most common cause of equipment failure.)

The flat blade to our Robot Coupe dicer looked like it had been used to chop gravel. Getting a new one would take a week. . . There's 40# of fresh salsa to be made, a bucket of mirepoix to be chopped, and it's Thursday evening, Chef!

Caramel Squash Butter

Caramel Squash Butter

Here's a recipe that may provide welcome variety once you've made that squash soup, squash puree, and spherified squash gel. . .  It only takes a little bit of cooked winter squash to make a pint jar, and it goes down well on toast on these cold mornings.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups (packed) Cooked Squash (see below for techniques to maximize flavor)

1/2 c Sugar

1 pinch Salt

1/4 c Water

1/2 tsp Cider Vinegar

10 cardamom seeds (not the big pods), cracked 

How to Carve the Toughest Winter Vegetables

It has happened to all cooks: 

We are tempted to do something we KNOW is dangerous, but we really WANT to do it anyway. Take this beautiful hard winter Golden Nugget squash:

Its skin is like armor. It's going to be SO GOOD, if I can just get the blessed thing apart! And so we end up going at this spheroid with our knife while it rolls unpredictably, berserk, causing us to nearly lose a finger.


Well, no more of that for my readers! Here's a series of knife techniques that will allow you to apply big forces safely to bust into the treasures of tough winter vegetables.  No Rutabaga is too mighty to withstand these methods!