mike sucks at writing

Let’s do something different today. i’m a little tired of talking about how crazy i used to be and how tomorrow is going to be a better day. This isn’t an Anthony Robbins blog, goddamnit.

i really enjoy cooking. (i promise that this will be relevant.) I prescribe to the Robert Rodriquez mentality about cooking: we’ve all got to eat: might as well try to be good at it.

The History

i’m not the type who used to cook with my mother, or even my father, when i was younger. We ate out quite a bit, truth be told. My mother worked very very long hours, and my dad’s repertoire of culinary dishes was limited to about 4 or 5 items, some of which i can’t even stomach anymore. My mother is and has always been an excellent cook, with an inherent gift that i will never have. The problem is that it was easier and faster for us to just go out to dinner than for her to try and cook something after she finally got home.

The biggest influence i had in terms of my family is my grandfather. He was the type who worked very hard throughout his entire life–a child of the depression–and all of his jobs were hard physical labor. By the time i was cognisant of it, however, he had retired. He was home all of the time, and he didn’t believe in going out to dinner. He also grew all of his own vegetables during the spring and summer, and his garden was the stuff of legend. When my bother and i were young and spending our summers with him, he was tending a garden on an acre of land that belonged to a friend of his. He still has racks upon racks of jars in his basement of canned tomatoes and pickles–also legendary–and though his garden is considerably smaller these days, it’s still more than most people would ever care to undertake.

He was the cook in the family. I’m not sure how it came to happen since, according to my mother, my grandma was the one who prepared all of the meals for mom and my aunt and uncles when they were young, after she got home from work. Something seems to have happened after the children left, after they both retired but before my bother and i were on the scene, that caused my grandmother to abdicate and my grandfather to take up the mantle. Maybe he was just bored, maybe she was exhausted; i don’t really know. What i do know is that the old man is a damn good cook. He was also tenacious in his pursuit of his goal, be it the perfect recipe for pasta sauce or the best pizza. I will never forget the summer when he decided to perfect barbecued chicken, including his own sauce. We ate very very well for those few weeks.

But, making food for myself didn’t really become a relevant thing until i moved into my first apartment. Before that i was living in a duplex with a girlfriend, the mother of my oldest son, and our life together was such a mess i sometimes wonder how we even carried on without daily domestic disasters. I lived with my parents again for a while, but my son and i moved into an apartment together shortly afterward, seeking some small independence.

Living with my ex, the most cooking i had attempted was Hamburger Helper and failed attempts at frying bacon. They were the types of experiments that a child would make, trying to understand the world around him by destroying mama’s favorite perfume bottle. These were dark times for me personally, not just for the food, but all around. i was happier living on my own, me and the boy, but there were still many steps to take before i started to understand the preparation of food.

We all know how that first apartment looks and feels; how life is while you’re there–broke and messy, ambitious in all of the wrong ways, trying to keep up with it all. I found myself alone one night in particular (my son was at his mothers) hungry and completely without money. So i started to scour the kitchen–which was not much larger than a walk-in closet–looking for whatever i could find to make myself for dinner. In the process, my desperation turned around, and i found myself looking for things that would compliment and augment my main ingredient, which i believe was ground beef. if i remember right, i think i ended up with a pepper-crusted hamburger. What i will never forget is the feeling of satisfaction that came with creating something that was entirely from my own mind and experience–and that actually tasted good. i’m hard on myself sometimes when i cook–this was overcooked or that was not seasoned correctly–but that sense of satisfaction still glows in my chest everytime a dish i make comes out right. Especially when i’m making food for someone else.

The Inspiration

i wish i could point to the exact moment when i turned on the TV and discovered the idols upon whom i heap my culinary worship, but my memory doesn’t really work like that. i do remember what i found there, however, because that persists: Inspiration bolstered by information. I found myself inspired by people, regions, ingredients and recipes that i would have never been exposed to otherwise, but also the information that i had been so hungry for: the why and the how of food and heat and how they react together.

i went through an Emeril phase, a Bobby Flay and Mario Batali phase, even a Rachel Ray phase, but the constant throughout my makepiece training has been Alton Brown. His approach helped me understand how food works instead of just cranking out recipes. It’s the difference between teaching a man how to cook his own fish and serving it to him already prepared. It’s an approach that i’ve struggled to maintain in all of my personal experience and experimentation. I want to know why this spice and not that one, this technique and not the other, this ingredient and not another. I want to be able to recreate the dishes that i make as many times as i want, as effectively as i can. I also want to know what went wrong when it does (and oh boy does it.) Inspiration and instinct are wonderful, but this is also a science, and i want repeatable results.

My days trolling the Food Network are mostly over, however. i’m not a fan of most of their game/reality, contest-type shows, and those seem to be taking control. But, about a year and a half ago, i found another idol, one who has had as much influence on me as a writer and human being than as a cook: Anthony Bourdain.

He’s not just an admirable chef, but a wonderful writer. i’ve never actually tried any of his recipes–french food is a bit out of my context–but i think he would be the first to say that is okay. His perspective on food and on the world lights a fire in my chest dwarfed only by that i feel when i read/hear his lyrically blunt and harshly awestruck prose, especially when augmented by his world-weary New Yorker voice. i’ve recently found myself trying new dishes, searching for better ingredients, and trying to strip back my cooking to it’s basest components. I want to know, even if i can’t really understand, what a pineapple or asparagus or fresh basil taste like at their most minimalist level. This then informs how i choose ingredients to go together, each one playing a part in the overall piece that is a dish. i credit this quest to Mr. Bourdain and his similar search around the globe, and even more so his beautiful verbal depictions of his experiences.

The Point

Cooking and writing share some similar rooms in the Bradbury-esque mansion of my mind. There is the element of creation: the drug that i will never be able to kick. But also, when i make food, i do it best for an audience. If i’m alone in the house, i can eat just about anything and i’m okay with it. But, even if it’s just my wife and i, i work to impress (she is, after all, my ideal eater as well as my ideal reader.) The only thing in the world that gives me more joy than hearing that someone liked my food is when i hear that someone liked my story. But, there are differences between these pillars of my life, and some that i would like to overcome.

I feel like i am more natural a storyteller than i am a cook. I still struggle all the time with the dishes i make, and while i have some instincts that i’ve developed over the last 10 years or so, they’re not deep in my personal fabric like they are for my mother and my brother. When i write, ideas, characters, and stories come to me from nowhere, like little gifts from the gods that i just have to open and they are mine. Cooking is work, no two ways about it.

However, when i cook, i fall into a trance-like state of mind that i only wish i could find when i’m holding a pen or at the keyboard. i’ve described it to people as “meditative,” which i think is accurate. The nuts and bolts of it is that i have to spend so much mental power thinking about what i’m doing–how hot the pan is, whether i’ve gotten all of the ingredients ready, not cutting off my finger while i slice something, which spices do i need to grab, did i salt this already?, etc–that everything else in the world just slips away. It’s a state of mind that i crave if i go without it for too long, and it’s the best remedy for a bad day at work.

i see the world differently as a cook than i ever was able to before. Nothing is ever so scary as it used to be, because no matter where i am, i can at least feed myself. Coupled with the fact that i can sleep just about anywhere that i’m not likely to be struck by a car, and i am secure in the knowledge that i will survive, no matter what. But, what i really love about cooking, about the world, and about the human experience is that i am able to elevate that simple act of survival to a form of artistry, one that i can share in such a meaningful way with other people. i could draw metaphors between writing and cooking for the next three weeks without stopping, but what really interests me is this: what would my writing be like if my readers could consume prose in the same way that they can the food that i prepare? There’s a thought that truly lights that familiar fire and spurs me to craft and prepare better stories.