from behind the stove

What I Learned From Waffles

A couple Mondays ago I was at the restaurant early doing my paperwork when I got hungry.  Going into the kitchen I started tooling around looking for something to eat.  As odd as it might sound, there are many times I get hungry at the restaurant and can't find anything that catches my fancy. I don't know how many times I've gone home hungry.  My dear friend Athena has a great story about me along these lines, but that's for another time. I'm sure many of my restaurant colleagues can agree with me here. 

So there I am going through the reach-ins looking for something, anything, to eat when I happened onto the buttermilk waffle batter we use for our take on the classic southern dish, chicken and waffles.  Plugging in the waffle iron, I got to work.  Now, I can't have waffles without bacon, so I pulled out some of the best damned bacon on the planet; Elmer's,from Maple Ridge Farm.  Elmer is the owner of the Maple Ridge.  He's also part of the Amish community down by Manton.  When I say his bacon is the best, I mean I usually have a tissue handy to wipe the tears of joy from my eyes as I eat it. 

So anyway, I put a skillet on the fire, got it hot, then put about 6 pieces of the bacon into it.  With the bacon frying, I fired the waffle and got a pot of tea brewing.  It was about 9:00 in the morning.  There was no one in the restaurant but me.  Because the sun was shining through the kitchen window I didn't bother turning on the lights.  The hoods were off, leaving the only real sound that of the bacon frying.  It was perfect.  One of those rare moments when I felt OK with the universe around me.  I dare say it bordered on mystical.  It was as if my kitchen, if only for a brief moment, was a temple.  I experienced what Freud called,"the oceanic feeling",  which he describes as a sense of indissoluble union with the great All, and of belonging to the universe. 

What made it so special this time?  I make waffles everyday.  I cook pounds of bacon every week.  But for some reason that moment was special.  For that moment it was just me and my breakfast.  Bank account balances were meaningless.  The next day's menu was unimportant.  The epic we now know as our pursuit of a liquor license was no where to be found.  For that brief moment, I was cooking for the sake of cooking.  I was cooking for no other reason than because I wanted to.  For that brief moment, my food didn't have to have meaning, or reason.  I wasn't cooking for a guest.  I wasn't cooking to pay the rent.  I wasn't cooking because there was an order hanging.  I was cooking...because.  For a brief moment, I found freedom again in my food.  Nothing else mattered.

I touched eternity with a waffle.  How simple.   In the process I've discovered a mistake I've been making all along.  I've mistaken cooking as the end and not the means; the path for the destination.   Paul Tillich termed this mix up, idolarty, if I can use a religious term, which he defined as, "absolutitzing the symbols of the holy, and making them identical with the holy itself."  I made cooking the absolute, not the symbol.  I mistook cooking as "the great All, when it really is just a vehicle for experiencing.  Cooking gives me access to the grace of life.  It's not life itself.  In this simple correction of a mistake long made, I have a much better understanding of why I cook.

I  suspect that whatever I do in life can serve the same purpose as my waffles did not long ago.  Cooking just happens to be the most readily available to me. I cook because it's what I do.  I cook because sometimes the stove unviels to me life as beautiful as I believe it is.  Cooking doesn't have meaning; cooking let's me find meaning.  I guess my bigger question would be, what do you do that let's you find grace within life?

The Twenty Fifth Seat

OK, so we are in the home stretch for getting our liquor license.  If all goes well we should have it by the middle to the end of June, which will mark the end of a very difficult year.  Yesterday the inspector who is doing the final investigation came in to set an appointment with us and give us a list of things he would need to give his approval.  He seems a very nice man is wants to make the rest of the process as painless as possible, which is a nice change of pace.

The number of seats required by law came up and he said we needed to have 25 seats to qualify.  "No problem", I said with a big smile on my face, "we have 28."  I was pretty proud of this moment because it was us who got the state law changed down to 25; not to mention we have put in a good deal of blood, sweat, and tears getting the restaurant up to the 28 seats we now have. 

"Umm, benches don't count", came his reply, "the seats have to be physically countable to 25.  You will have to take the benches out and replace them with chairs." 

I think I briefly lost consciousness.  The world went blurry for a moment and I could have sworn he said benches don't count.  "What? Benches don't count?"  He had to be joking.  Both Jen and I laughed because we thought he was.  No, no joke.  Looking around the restaurant I quickly counted 7 "seats" that were now un-countable, taking our official seat count down to 21 and leaving us now 4 seats short.  I felt like throwing up. 

If I had a bomb strapped to my chest at that moment I would have pulled the pin.  All I could say was, "You have GOT to be f*cking kidding me!".  In retrospect, that isn't exactly what one should say to the person who holds ones destiny in his hands, but as Theresa and Jen have pointed out many times to me, I do have a mild case of turrets syndrome and sometimes I just can't help it.  Jen could see I was going to implode and quickly stepped in.

Besides being  a darn good chef, Jen has other attributes that make her presence very important in the whole operation.  One of these being the ability to pull out things out of her back side in a tight pinch; remind me next you see me to tell you about her great Dover sole save of 2005.  Sensing I was about to say something really stupid, she piped in with, "The law says benches don't count as seats, but it doesn't say we can't have a bench, right?" 

"Right", said Mr. MLCC inspector.

"So if we can fit in 4 more chairs we can keep the bench?

"Yes"

"No problem", she says.

You see, the bench that runs along the wall is important because it allows us a great deal of flexibility.  We can set 4 deuces or push the tables together and make it a table of 14, so when he said we needed to get rid of the bench and replace it with four chairs I was dumbfounded.  Sure it solves the official seat count but it screws us on flexibility.  Good think Jen stepped in when she did.

So when he left we went to work figuring out how we could fit in four more chairs without cramping the guests.  Sure, in most restaurants four extra seats are a cinch to fit in, but let's not forget we aren't most restaurants.  Four extra seats is no easy feat for us.  After about an hour of trying different ideas we were still 1 chair short.  Our solution?  Great question.  We are going to take one chair, a special chair if you will, and paint on the back in nice lettering, "The Twenty Fifth Chair", and put it at the end of table #2.  This chair will never be used, ever.  It's only purpose in life it to get us to 25 official seats we need to get our liquor license.  Problem solved.

So when you come in around the end of June, or thereafter, and see a chair pushed up to table #2 that is not being used, you'll know why.  It's our special chair.