One more time, from the beginning

Sometimes, you have to start with a dumb idea.

There's a whole Zen thing - and I am not even remotely well versed on the subject so don't yell at me if I am slightly off in my interpretation - about having a beginner's mind, Shoshin.  You come to an activity with a willingness to try everything, no preconceived notion of what can and cannot be done - no idea that something is a dumb idea.  From there, you allow yourself to explore possibilities that wouldn't occur to the expert, rigid in thought and process.

The idea that mixing ice cream and flour could make bread, for example.

I find weird ideas like this exciting. Of course I had to try it.  To me, the batter immediately suggested biscuits, rather than bread, so that's what I made - butter pecan biscuits, topped with raw sugar.  The only bad parts were my hands got really cold mixing the dough, and now I have to keep a supply of self rising flour around the house.  Because I don't already have enough flours around the house.

The good parts?  I have been inspired to play more with my baking. Not just with this recipe (although I really want to try using a good pistachio ice cream next. Or maybe beer and chocolate ice cream), but with bread in general.  What makes bread? Most bread doughs are variations on the theme of 5 parts flour, 3 parts liquid, plus leavening and flavoring.  But what does that mean?  If the liquid is water, I can develop a passable baguette, but what if I use the liquid I strain off yogurt? What if I just use yogurt?  How do different fats affect things? Different flours? So many possibilities.

There's a trick here, though.  It wasn't hard to get excited about an idea that involved two ingredients, little time and intuitively seemed like it would work.  Also, there was cheating involved on my part - someone else had already tried the idea and presented it to the world as something that works.  But when there isn't someone else showing you the silly, weird, odd ideas that shouldn't work but maybe they could work, where do they come from?  Being open to all possibilities means being open to bad ideas, as well; how can you recognize those ideas, and do you try them anyway?  Crazy Brain Me says yes, you should try them anyway, because you still get answers from failure.  You just need to not let those failures and successes stop you from trying more ideas.

Good thing I have biscuits to sustain me through the process.

I figured out the disconnect

We work a lot in this business. I hear it with my friends when we do manage to find a moment to catch up each other - ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hour days - but it's not a oneupsmanship game. More a statement of, "Yes, I'm still here, doing this."

It's a statement that means more than you think.

There are statistics everywhere about the terrible parts of this business. There are the numbers about how many restaurants flat out fail in their first year of business. Numbers about alcohol and drug abuse among those in the industry. Appalling pay scales. Injury reports (and you know those numbers are higher than the statistics.) My company has an HR person, and there are things like sick and vacation days for those of a level to have been offered such things. Our chef asks us to not get sick when it is busy. He doesn't even say please, and we're surprised at his need to even vocalize such a thing. Who would allow themselves to get sick when we're serving 2000 people this weekend in three places at all the same time? I know, on a certain level that all of my coworkers are scarred, slightly damaged, or else they would not do this. Then I smile and wonder what they might imagine my damage to be, if they thought about such things.

My damage? I love this work. It's my curse, my albatross and anyone who recognizes it in me, however subconsciously, has totally got my number and I'm screwed. It is so easy to take advantage of me because I will think about each detail that I didn't get right, and it bothers me when I have to work at a level below what I think is good. I have a crappy day and I want to come home and cook. When I'm too exhausted to cook, I'm thinking about food anyway, reading about it. I want to travel to eat. I want to call up people and bore them with food talks at odd hours, as my sister will attest. Sure, I have other hobby things I do but I mean, I have been known to crochet cakes. I am a seriously damaged individual.

And I can possibly think of one person, of all the prep cooks, event cooks (there are over a hundred) and other culinary staff besides me in my workplace who may get that. That one person is not one of the management team. My own supervisor doesn't bake at home because it is too messy. In a word, I have no idea what their motivation is. They make similar money, work in the same environment, for the same hours and they don't flat out love this stuff? They don't want to taste everything and find out what a dragonfruit is, and contemplate new pairings for watermelon? The mind boggles.

I was showing some pictures posted by a friend of mine of her Easter buffet and my boss, in astonishment, verified that yes, she was a classmate of mine, same level of experience and all he could say was, "Well, what happened to you?"

I didn't reply with, "I'm working in the wrong kitchen."

As for the watermelon, there are so many taste memories with this sorbetto from David Lebovitz's book and Friendly's watermelon sherbet coolers that I want to leave it alone. But watermelon and black pepper is pretty kicking. And cubes of watermelon with really good balsamic. Or some of those strawberries that are starting to come in. Or with tapioca pearls as a shot drink... I can keep going...