Tag: writing

Love, Love, Love

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have decided that Michael Curry is now my favorite preacher. No offense to Nadia Bolz-Weber and Thomas Long. You’re close seconds. But Curry’s sermon at the royal wedding was a barnstormer. I hope to God, literally, that everyone was paying attention.

…[Pierre Teilhard] de Chardin said fire was one of the greatest discoveries in all of human history. And he then went on to say that if humanity ever harnesses the energy of fire again, if humanity ever captures the energy of love, it will be the second time in history that we have discovered fire.

If only we could take the power of transforming love and apply it to ourselves right now, the world would be a different place. Love envelopes a grace and mercy not available anywhere else. It contains forgiveness that passes all understanding. It is the energy that drives compassion. If we could take the rose-colored glasses of love and apply them to every relationship, romantic and platonic, it would indeed set the world on fire.

It begs the question, if love is that powerful, why don’t we use it?

The simplest answer is that in all of our fallible “humanness,” we get stuck. It’s easy to love the people that love you, especially the ones that believe in your dreams and try to help you reach them. It’s so much harder to love people who have treated you badly, have stomped on your feelings, and though they may have done nothing wrong, the people you don’t know. We tend to be conservative with love when it comes to those people, even though people who have acted badly and the stranger need love the most.

For people who have behaved badly, it is the much needed peace of feeling secure in the fact that their sins against you aren’t held against them. No one should be trapped in the worst moments of their lives, unable to move forward. It is soul-crushing to lose important relationships because you were in an emotional place that carried no light, and aren’t anymore… but people still treat you as if the darkness is your only narrative. What would it be like to live in a world where we automatically assume that eventually, one’s internal candle will once again burn? What if we knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that people recover more quickly when they see that they haven’t lost love while their flames were deprived of oxygen?

For strangers, it is the extravagant welcome that makes them strangers no more. There is a reason that the parable of The Good Samaritan is incredibly powerful. We recognize how badly the people who just walked by look to us, but often we are unwilling to apply the parable’s lesson, because we are frightened. It is hard to overcome fear of the unknown, especially when society perpetuates it by demonizing strangers so that the extravagant welcome they deserve is lost. What would the world look like if no one merely walked by? What would happen with recognition that we are all citizens of the world, not just the community in which we live?

Both philia and agape are the tools we need the most right now. Philia is defined as “brotherly love,” and agape is defined as “the highest form of love and charity, loving one’s neighbor as they love themselves.” We are often capable of philia, because loving each other is so much easier than loving ourselves. Relationships with others become a reflection of how we see ourselves, and if we look in the mirror and see ugliness, that is how we move in the world. We may not treat everyone that way, but often those closest to us. It is easier for us all to treat people we don’t know well with kindness, because we haven’t let them into our inner circle. They don’t know us well enough to know our flaws and failures. It takes loving ourselves to be capable of both kinds of love, the higher power for which we reach, but often fall short in the process.

We can’t help it, because again, we are human. It takes reaching into the divine to see perfection…. and it doesn’t matter what you call divinity. For some people, it is the love of God. For others, it is the power of secular humanism. It is a spectrum that encourages divine love no matter what, because whether you believe there’s a God, or that we are all connected to each other through human bonds, that is the power of the universe. All we need to do is tap in.

If we are capable of finding fire a second time, this is the form it will take. We will have a collective recognition of chords run between us whether we are partners, friends, or neighbors across the world. Each of the candles that burn inside us will set the world ablaze……………….

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

It Still Hurts

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This morning was rough. The first thing I do when I open my eyes is check my phone, like most people, because I fall asleep early and I want to catch up with everything that happened from the night before. A large, large amount of my friends are on the West Coast, so hearing about their lives doesn’t even begin until after 9:00 PM my time. I also got a Facebook direct message that dinged last evening, and I was so completely dead to the world that I didn’t even hear my phone go off.

Speaking of which, if you’re trying to reach me in the evening, your best shot is to call, because the ringer plays longer. It’s set to Unsquare Dance by Dave Brubeck, which I hadn’t heard until I saw the movie Baby Driver (big fan of Brubeck, but I tend to listen to Time Out repeatedly….). Speaking of Baby Driver, the link is to the first six minutes of the movie, which I have watched, and this is a conservative estimate, 25 times.

WORTH IT. STOP EVERYTHING. GO NOW. I’LL WAIT.

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

This morning was rough, because the first notification was not from a friend in Oregon or California, but a birthday announcement. Carolyn Baker’s birthday is June 11th. If you’re bringing friends together, invite them by making an event. For the love of God. I have done everything I can, both on my own profile and on hers, to mark her as deceased.

This picture is the last one of all of us together on Mother’s Day, me FaceTiming in from DC. It’s the last one, and I’m blurry. I would give anything, including all future earnings, limbs, whatever, to be able to go back in time. 13138797_10153554247046596_1204332628069398810_n (1)But in order for me to know exactly how important this photo is, I would have had to know it was the last one, and you never get to know that in advance. What I do like about this picture is how happy and beautiful both my mother and sister look. It was originally in color, but given the situation, I think it looks better without it…. because losing my mother so instantaneously plunged me into a world of greyscale, anyway.

Perhaps Facebook still brings these things to my attention because an event marking her birthday’s importance even though she’s dead can be healing, but I don’t think they’re that observant. She also didn’t have a legacy contact, so there’s no way to go into her account and either close it or make it a memorial, etc. Because of this, I chose Caitlin as my own legacy contact, because I’m not planning on dying anytime soon, and she’s my youngest sibling by ten years.

Actually, I just thought of an idea. I wonder if I could find a way to e-mail or direct message Sheryl Sandberg, because if anyone would understand the situation, it would be her. I’m assuming that a lot of people already know this story because it was so public, but she and David, her husband, were on vacation when he was working out and had a heart attack while running on a treadmill, which caused him to fall and hit his head, dying instantly. Not only did he die young, but they were on a parents’ only trip, and Sheryl had to come back alone and tell her children, probably the most heartbreaking aspect of a sprawling mess. It reminds me of a quote from Harry Truman when Franklin Roosevelt died… Well, gentlemen, if you’ve ever had a bale of hay dumped on you, you know how I feel.

I think that’s the hardest part of my own grief now. Because my mother and I lived so far apart for most of my adult life, there are moments when the fact that she’s dead slips into the back of my mind, because we were not used to talking every day, anyway. I feel most of the time like she is still on the other end of the line, and pick up the phone to call her, the bale of hay dropping over and over again.

I am truly not that forgetful. I believe it has become a coping mechanism. Grief gets locked away so that I can still function, because living in the smallest emotional place of missing my mommy is intolerable in terms of still moving amongst the living. My inner child just cries out, unable to imagine a world in which my mother is not here.

Cooking, because of its fast pace and utter relentlessness, is the one area of my life in which I am too busy to dwell on my feelings. Even when orders aren’t coming in like gangbusters, there’s still prep and cleaning that has to be done fast, because you never know when a pop is coming. If I am knee-deep in grief, my mind wanders too much to be quick.

I come out of the kitchen, sore and exhausted, and grief still doesn’t bubble up because I am too tired to think about anything, much less emote. Most of my energy goes toward complaining about how much I hurt physically…. breaking a cardinal family rule about complaining before I’ve taken anything for it. I will rarely have a beer to take the edge off, because what I find is that my tolerance is so incredibly low that one beer, even at 3.2% alcohol, will knock me on my ass, and I feel like I can’t think clearly, the death of creativity for a blogger. I think it was Ernest Hemingway who said to write drunk and edit sober, but he wrote fiction. Diarists are a different breed, because they have to remember things accurately. I hate doing anything that makes reality malleable. But sometimes I give in, because that fuzzy feeling makes my back hurt less… or maybe it just makes me care less that my back hurts.

Whatever.

It also loosens my inhibitions so that I laugh a little easier, because I’m not all up in my head, working in the same way that cooking does. Using my hands takes me away from thinking, and sometimes I just need a damn break from the interminable march of Sundays away from October 2nd, 2016. At first, I counted them like a Lectionary, but let that go when I realized that no Sunday would ever be in Ordinary Time ever again. For the first year, every week was a terrible Good Friday on an otherwise lazy Sunday morning. For the first time in my life, I feel that I have lost my way with Christianity, and not the part that’s spiritual. The part that is community-based, because I don’t believe religion happens in a vacuum.

The difference between spirituality and religion is going into your closet to pray, as opposed to praying through shoe leather, working to foster the theology of liberation and inclusion. It will come again in time, but right now, every time I enter a church, I am enveloped in sadness that I cannot put away and just enjoy being in my community… even though getting through rough times is often why you need it.

I have severe problems with losing it in public, and sermons often pierce my heart with a knife so that I can’t keep it together. I feel like I need time to grieve in my own way, and for now, my process is making food that brings people together… even though in my grief I often reflect on the fact that I might be making The Last Supper. It’s a dark thought, but losing someone suddenly tends to kick you in the back of the face. That being said, my thoughts aren’t always that bereft.

Getting this job as a cook is the first time I’ve truly felt Easter…. resurrection happening in the middle of the mess (Dr. Susan Leo). I am learning new things, because every kitchen is different, and it is opening my mind to have to think in both Spanish and English.

Dios te bendiga.

Amen
#prayingonthespaces

Let’s Get Some Shoes

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The tread on my Bistro Crocs was wearing thin, and I didn’t notice until we were cleaning the floors. I was sliding around more than normal, and started to calculate exactly how long it had been since I’d bought them. I got them when I was working at Biddy’s, so that’s at least ten years.IMG_0069 Plus, I’d gotten them a size smaller on the advice that they would stretch out, which they did, but they are also scuffed where my big toes stuck out in accommodation. So, it was time for a new pair. I asked my bosses what the rules were for crazy pants/shoes in the kitchen, and they said go for it. We don’t care. I probably need another pair of pants, but those can wait. I have a dish washing shift coming up next Sunday, so shoes take precedence. Bet you didn’t know I could switch hit.

Some of my chefs would agree with you that I cannot. However, there are long stretches of radio silence in which to catch up on a Sunday, so I’m not worried. I’d do anything just to be there. Being in a professional kitchen is where I feel the most alive.

I really want to meet Anthony Bourdain now, because he said on No Reservations that he’d never seen a white person apply for a dishwasher position before. I didn’t apply for it, that’s just where they needed me, but it still counts, right? Right?

Keep in mind that I would not be going for the crazy pants/shoes look if I was doing fine dining. I work in a brewpub, where our basic uniforms are jeans or chef pants and company t-shirts…. and most of mine are black and red, the logo for Lowest Lord ESB. Well, technically the logo on the beer tap/can is orange, but the t-shirt made for it is black with white, yellow, red, and grey printing. Even my official logo shirts are black. I am so in style now… well, for the kitchen. It’s not like I’m going to wear these to the opera (wait… I can’t promise anything).

It’s not enough to dress the part, though. Getting new shoes and new chef pants is just an adornment on what is often technically difficult and demanding work. For instance, we have the same french fry cutter that In-N-Out Burger does, the one that slices the whole potato into strings at once.

You cannot imagine how difficult it is for someone of my stature and lack of strength to cut through a huge baking potato lengthwise by pulling a lever that tends to get stuck halfway through, or the potato bends, without an enormous amount of pressure. Part of it is that my upper body strength is weak. Part of it is the placement of the slicer on the wall. I have even less body strength when I have to reach that far up. I’m only 5’4, and I always feel like I’m trying to slice a potato on a professional height basketball goal. For most of the guys, the lever is at their waist. On the plus side, I now have a gym at my disposal. Pretty much anything in the walk-in weighs at least 40 lbs, and cardio is 20 tickets on the rail and 20-30 that won’t fit yet behind them. Also pretty sure I could use the potato slicer as a chin-up bar (that was like, half a joke).

The reward at the end of the night is always a shift beer, but I’ve only taken them up on it twice. This is because all I really want when I’m done is a large pitcher full of ice water and a straw. But both of the beers I’ve tried were wonderful. One was Georgia Avenue White Peach Weisse, and the other was Third Party Belgian Tripel. I can’t recommend one over the other, because that would be like comparing donuts to Chevrolets. They’re both amazing in their own ways.

In terms of after-work activities, I don’t have any. I’m too tired. I’ve been watching a little TV, starting Fargo from the beginning. I absolutely love it 20 minutes at a time…. which is about how much I watch before I fall asleep and have to rewind when I wake up.

Last night I was so exhausted I left both Rachel and her sheath at my workstation. It’s not like anyone will steal/destroy her, but I am so possessive that if the weather weren’t this horrible, I’d go get her just to make sure. In a professional kitchen, I don’t even care if she goes through the dish machine…. or as my old chef reminded me, Leslie… it’s a dish machine, not a dish washer. What, you think when you press the button little elves are going to jump out and wash your dishes? Professional dish machines are mostly for sanitation, getting the dishes hot enough for reuse. Not much washing is going to get done in a two minute cycle.

That’s why human dish washers are so important- all the food has to be off the dishes and the pots have to be scrubbed before you put them into the machine, where the water is hot enough to burn Satan’s asshole.

Oh, look. My kitchen vocabulary is coming back. My mother will be so proud.

Oh My God

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

The past few days have been the most exhausting of my life. I had Sunday and Monday off, which I truly wish hadn’t happened. The only cure for muscles that sore is to keep going, and not having that level of activity for two whole days has rendered me into spaghetti. I go to work in two hours, and I hope to God I can still move afterward.

My cuts and burns still haven’t healed, so I’m not looking forward to wearing gloves in the kitchen, because here’s the thing. Sweat gets trapped under the latex so that the glove fills with water, and no matter what you put on a wound, whether it’s a Band-Aid or Superglue, floats off. I did not cut myself with a knife, but shredding carrots on a mandoline. It’s not bad, but it looks like a cat scratched my palm. The burn came from my workstation being up against a convection oven and my knuckles accidentally touched it for less than a second, but that’s all it took. A blister bubbled up immediately. I also bumped my elbow on it, but luckily the skin was tough enough that it just turned a little red and healed overnight. Why convection ovens aren’t cooler on the outside like regular ovens is beyond me. Sure would make being cornered against one easier….

It’s been a while since I was in a kitchen, made even harder by the fact that I’m not fluent in Spanish. I am learning, but I’ve taken it upon myself to listen to a Rosetta Stone course. It’s helpful that since I’ve studied Spanish before, I could skip to the more intermediate lessons. But not being fluent has led to some interesting conclusions…. like only being able to talk around the thing I need and not ask for it directly. I asked for a carrot peeler, or thought I did, and I was handed a mandoline. I needed it anyway, but still. At least I’m in total immersion unless I’m really having a problem and need to resort to English because I’ve worked myself into a corner and can’t get back out. Immersion is the only way. Truly. I learned more in Mexico than I ever did taking Spanish in school.

I have made friends, though. I am particularly close to the dishwasher, because she’s the closest to me in proximity as well. It came slowly, because she speaks no English and my Spanish is still questionable at best. But everything is made better by kindness. I asked her if she’d like an ice water. Hours later, she asked me if I’d like half a sandwich.

As a cook, my favorite thing about Spanish is that there’s only one letter difference between ice and heaven. When the kitchen itself becomes a convection oven, they’re truly the same thing.

I wish I had time to write more, and I will… but believe me that the reason I haven’t been pouring out my soul is that I’m just too tired to do so. When I come home, I generally put myself into a coma with Benedryl and ibuprofen because sleep is really the only cure for muscle soreness. I don’t even have time to watch movies or listen to podcasts, because I fall asleep roughly three minutes in. I did just drink two cups of very strong coffee, though, and I’m scheduled for a short shift today. Perhaps tonight I’ll actually get some real writing done because my brain might not be leaking out of my ear. If I feel industrious enough, it will be time for more Spanish lessons.

The last one I listened to was about holidays, and it reminded me so much of David Sedaris’ Jesus Shaves that I laughed out loud.

It feels so good to laugh, and to be tired from hard, hard work…. mentally and physically, because not only do I lift and cut and stoop and carry, I (try to) do it in two languages.

Big Night -or- Low and Slow

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I got to the pub around 4:30, because even though I wasn’t officially on the schedule until 5:00, I had stuff to do. I got some t-shirts, I took my time getting ready, and I just watched for a few minutes before I took Rachel out of her sheath. Then, it was business time.618uwbCFL3L._SL1500_ However, I did not get to use her as much as I wanted, because there was too much to do in other stations. I used her more with prep for the next day than I did during my actual shift, where I watched with trepidation as my kitchen partner used her for tomatoes. She made short work of them, but as I’ve said before, skins are death to a blade, but being only hours old, I reasoned it was okay and went to my happy place.

As I predicted, it was literally walking into a hurricane, as you are wont to do in a pub kitchen at Happy Hour on a Friday. I introduced myself to my kitchen partner. It was his third day. Luckily, we had an experienced cook coming to join us, because my kitchen partner only knew two days more than I did. There were orders coming through that no one had shown either of us how to make, but having been cooks before, we pulled it out of the fire, as it were. Once she got there, relief was palpable. We were “in the weeds,” and when it’s that busy, it took us hours to pull ourselves back out…. and I’m not sure that we actually did. Eventually, it just slowed down. At one point, we were up to an hour wait, not for the food, but the number of people waiting for tables. As I’ve said before, this particular pub is quite popular.

At one point, I was moved to the back kitchen for the sole purpose of making one batch of fries after another, which I deemed the most important job of all of us, because pubs get judged on their fries more than any other thing…. especially at Happy Hour, when they become an entrée.

We serve ours tossed in salt and Parmesan. It was awe-inspiring watching the lead cook toss the very largest bowl in the kitchen, because she’s maybe five feet tall, and about my body build.WW-SantaCruzGarlicFries-Up Once I’ve been there long enough to make suggestions, I want to add garlic fries to the menu if its welcome, because the fries at The Laurelwood are some of the best I’ve ever put in my mouth. But my job is not to do anything but watch right now…. and some kitchen managers are open to menu suggestions, and some aren’t. For reasons I will not disclose, Jorgé does not work there anymore, so it remains to be seen what the new kitchen manager will allow. We’re hoping to get the position filled by next week.

As the fry cook, I was also in charge of salads and Brussels sprouts, which we deep fry until they’re crispy and toss in Ponzu sauce. Because the prep cooks had taken care of most everything, I didn’t get to use Rachel much at all, but my kitchen partner freaked out because my knife was also his favorite brand, and he has a Global. Here’s the thing about Globals, Wusthofs, Henkels, etc. They’re all amazing, and you can pass them on to your grandchildren’s grandchildren if you take care of them. But Chicago Cutlery is the absolute best for the price point, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they could be passed down with the proper care and feeding, as well. The handle is just so comfortable, and truth be told, seems to need less babying to achieve awesome. All our lettuce for burgers has to be shaved so thinly you can read a newspaper through it, and for Rachel, it was the easiest task ever. Before I had her, I was using a dull knife that just couldn’t achieve perfection. She also took down some spring onions like they were butter.

Also, a true achievement for me, I did not cut or burn myself during the entire evening, even though I was working with very, very hot oil. I just tried to work as clean as I could, as fast as I could, and it worked. I tried not to leave a mess by cleaning as I went so that the end of the night was easier to shut down…. although there were times when it just wasn’t possible due to the speed with which everything had to be done. With that amount of people, I would get a little messy, wait for the inevitable break, and do it to it.

It was a godsend to have three people in the kitchen, because there are two complete sets of fryers and ranges. That way, I could keep fries going at an alarming rate, the color and crispiness perfect.stainless-steel-bain-marie-pot-42-litre Towards the end of the night, the ticket machine became calm enough that two people could handle it, so I got out a medium-sized bain marie (the bottom pan for a double boiler), and filled it with a few drops of dish soap and lots of water, just like Kinkaid taught me, and went after every surface that still had oil on it. The dish soap wasn’t Dawn brand, but it was serviceable. While every blue dish soap contains a degreaser, there really isn’t a substitute for the real thing. You just need it in proportions that won’t leave bubbles on whatever you’re wiping down so that you don’t have to go over it again with more water.

Because I was cut before the heavy cleaning began (disappointed, truly), I didn’t get to clean the griddle. It’s my favorite chore, because few people can do it better. If you’re not in the know, you need to pour a little lemon juice or white vinegar and club soda on it while the griddle is very, very hot to basically deglaze before you start scraping and scrubbing. You don’t need much- otherwise all the liquid will fill up the grease traps and possibly overflow them so that everything runs onto the floor…. always a good day, and I’ve done it many times (dumbass attack). But the basic point is that you should let the heat do most of the work. By the time I’m done, it will look brand new. It was John Fot who taught me the soda water trick- the carbonation is invaluable, as is the acid. If the pub ever starts a brunch program, it is an even better method, because bacon and beef grease stuck on is les worst.

We do our burgers on an open flame, but when I’m making my own, I prefer a griddle to let the meat confit (cook in its own fat). An open flame makes all the fat drip off- probably healthier, but to my palate, doesn’t taste quite as good. However, it is a matter of personal taste. Some like grilled better, some don’t. With both methods, you have to respect first contact. If you put something on a grill or griddle, leave it alone. Keeping the meat flipping will rip it to shreds, because you are essentially removing the meat’s ability to sear on the outside so that it will lift on its own, also taking off the outside layer of crispy goodness. a63bc3e1-52f9-46e1-9451-d4e6e8c4091e_1.82a983e49d612bf851d8e35c2a88d911In a kitchen, you just don’t have time to do this, but the best way to cook any meat is low and slow. My favorite is  turkey Spam (bet you’re singing the Monty Python song right now), sliced thinly so that it’s brown and crispy like thick-cut bacon, with a tiny, tiny bit of mealiness in the middle. It takes 15-20 minutes to achieve that kind of perfection, but it’s worth it. For those who say, Spam…. ew…. you’ve never tried it the way I make it, so get the fuck out of here with your judgment. There’s a reason it’s insanely popular in Hawai’i. Just trust me on this one. If you hate the taste of Spam, it’s probably because you’ve just warmed it up, perhaps in the microwave, or taken it out of the pan before it’s honestly and truly finished. Again, respect first contact. Low and slow, completely browned on the outside, strips thin enough that you won’t even recognize it as Spam in the first place. If you really want to fool someone, cut off the rounded edges and feed them to the dog….. 😛

Now I’m getting hungry. I think it’s time for breakfast. I go back to the pub at 5:00, so I need some sustenance and a nap to restore at least a bit of lactic acid in my muscles and myelin on my nerves. I need it, because I am again, walking into a hurricane.

With Rachel.

1320

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The title of this post is the time I’m starting it. It’s amazing to me that I have until 1630 to leave the house, and I’m already chomping at the bit. COME ON! GET HERE FASTER! I’m not so good with the waiting. There’s a thousand things I could do in the meantime, but I’m also not good at keeping track of time. If I start a Project,™ like cleaning my room or organizing the directory system on my computer so that my photos from the last eight years aren’t all in the same folder, I run a great risk of forgetting…. “oh, hey. There’s work today.” I tend to underestimate how long things are going to take, and I don’t have a clock running in my head. Therefore, I have no idea when four hours have passed. When I’m writing, I have a fighting chance because I glance at the clock on my computer or tablet frequently.

I can hear you saying, “why don’t you just set alarms on your phone?” Because when I’m in the middle of something, the alarm goes off and I think, “I’m only five minutes from being done,” which is always a wild stretch of the imagination. It took me a long time to realize this about myself, which I mostly learned from being married to “the late Mrs. Lanagan.” I swear to Christ she would still be eating Cheerios in the bathtub 20 minutes before we had to be somewhere and I would just be sitting white-knuckled in the living room thinking, we should have left already. God almighty….

It was a true A-ha! moment when I realized I actually am good at showing up on time to things, but I have to pay attention. As someone with ADHD, I have to make allowances for the way my brain works, and do my best not to get distracted.

Especially as a people-pleaser, it embarrasses me beyond belief to be late, because even though I don’t take it personally when other people are late to meet me, or even a few minutes late to begin a shift, I’m worried that the other person will. My lateness is not a reflection of how important they are to me, but who I am as a person. So many people take lack of punctuality personally, as if I don’t know I’m wasting their time and am sick over it, because my respect for them wasn’t the issue here, Dude. I was on my way and “oh look, a chicken.” So, I go out of my way to try and ignore all distractions.

As a result, a lot in my life goes by the wayside, but I’m always on top of the things that really matter…. and by that I mean at some point I should hire a housekeeper. My living expenses are low and my hourly rate is high (for a cook, anyway), so perhaps if I truly get 40 hours a week it’s not inconceivable. Here’s the problem with that, though. If I get 40 hours in a week, my income will be too high for state-run insurance, and I’m not sure whether my employer provides it or not. So what I could have spent on paying someone to get my shit together, literally, will be going to the healthcare marketplace. I am not one of those people that can go without insurance and hope for the best…. most of the time, anyway. For a while, I didn’t have insurance in Portland, and it worked out okay because I was taking all generic medications on the $4 formulary at Wal-Mart, and everything else was covered by worker’s compensation. As a cook, it was 95% more likely that I’d get injured rather than sick…. and in the odd case when I was sick, it was cheaper to go to “Doc in the Box” (called ZoomCare in PDX) than it was to pay for insurance every month.

It’s been nice not to have to worry about any of that stuff since. It will be a load off my mind when the US finally goes to universal health care, because I think in my lifetime, it will. Otherwise, it will be time to formulate a plan to expatriate. There’s a reason there’s 17,000 gringos in Ensenada, Mexico…. although I think I’d have more fun eating in Oaxaca, and if my knees aren’t shot by then, taking a whirl in a Mexican kitchen just long enough to steal all the recipes for home use.

It’s 1408 now. Time for a coffee nap. This means loading up on caffeine so that when I wake up, I am ready to take on the world, one order of chicken tenders at a time.

First Blood

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

My knives came yesterday, and the rite of cutting yourself with your own knife almost came too soon. You want it to be a story worthy of telling, not “I was getting it out of the package…” I have tentatively named her “Rachel,” because she’s as sharp as a Maddow takedown. That may change, because as your relationship with your knife grows, it tells you who it is. It’s not about anthropomorphizing an inanimate object. It’s about shorthand- one word to represent everything it is.

A chef’s knife isn’t just a knife, but an extension of their own hand… the only real tool we get to establish dominance over the ticket machine. Calling such a tool by a name everyone else calls it diminishes its importance in our lives.

Not only that, use a knife long enough, and you’ll see that they all develop their own personalities. It doesn’t happen in a week, or even a year, but as you begin to sharpen and hone the shape is different than when you bought it. It sits in your hand slightly differently, an adjustment you don’t notice because you’ve held it day in and day out…. even when you have a knife that cost $17.49, as opposed to the $300-1,000 range. I have used both, and I have seen no appreciable difference in function, just beauty.

This is because I am not excellent at sharpening knives. I would probably feel much differently if I was expert at restoring an edge. I would rather buy a cheap one, not to keep replacing it, but in order not to feel miserable that I just spent an hour honing in the wrong direction. There’s also no electric sharpener on the market that’s worth a dollar. Its only value is in not having to take responsibility for destroying your knife…. you didn’t do it, the machine did. Using an electric sharpener is like putting a Fabergé egg next to a troll doll collection.

Because I’m not so good at sharpening manually, I’ll gladly pay someone else to do it, because yes, I could go out and buy another knife, but then I lose all the history I have with this one. The good news is that I won’t have to worry about it for at least a year. Chicago Cutlery is solid, though I can’t say I’ve used anything but their chef’s knives. In fact, even though my coworkers at Biddy’s (now the O’Neill Pub in Portland, Oregon) often had more expensive knives than me, mine became the favorite. Dana got a thousand-fold from Sur la Table (Lenore) that everyone liked, but seemed to lose an edge more quickly than mine… and the one axiom in the kitchen is that if your knife isn’t just sharp as fuck, you’re going to cut yourself ten times more often. It’s counter-intuitive, but dull knives tear rather than cut, and rarely go in the direction you want…. mostly right over your finger, no matter how good your fingertips are tucked under.

The other knives that came in the set are tucked safely away in a drawer, because I’m not putting those into our community kitchen. It’s fine with me for my roommates to use them, it’s just that I want to be in charge of what happens to them afterward- soap and water, never a dishwasher. To someone who treats a knife as “just a knife,” this won’t seem important. They don’t know they’re dulling the edge in a way you can’t get back, and don’t see why it’s a big deal.

It’s a big deal.

Also, I’m not so impressed with using a different knife for every application. Pretty much the only concession I’ll make is an oyster knife. Everything else can be done with a chef’s knife or a bread knife. For instance, tomato and pepper skins will dull a chef’s knife quite easily, so it’s much better to use a serrated edge. If you must use a chef’s knife for a pepper, cut once on the outside, and put the skin against the cutting board, because you’ll have an easier time slicing the “meat” itself.

Cutting tomatoes reminds me of having to cut five or ten pounds at once for sandwiches, because I’ve never had worse acid burns. It’s worse if you’re wearing rubber gloves, because the acid gets trapped on your wrist and drips down into your palm and fingers. I have a love-hate relationship with safety regulations, because I agree that customers need to be cared for, but it often comes at the expense of keeping cooks safe in the process. I’ve mentioned this before, but wearing gloves while over a griddle or an open flame causes the latex to fuse to your hand, creating so much worse an injury because then it’s hard to get the glove back off to treat the wound… taking a layer of skin with it.

With the exception of making cold sandwiches, any heat applied to food is going to kill bacteria. There’s no need to add latex to the equation. I sometimes think that these rules are made by people who either haven’t been in the kitchen for a long time, or were never cooks to begin with. Otherwise, they would see that gloves take an injury and make it much, much worse. Hot plastic and rubber is a recipe for a trip to the ER…. which no cook will ever forgive you for because you got hurt to the point where you had to leave the line.

There’s no excuse for it, ever. Burned? Stick some Silver Sulfadiazine on it and get back to work. Cut? Super Glue. Ill? WHO THE FUCK CARES? Managers who send sick people home put targets on your back, as if it’s your fault. Even if it’s a bad injury, you’re expected to suck it up and deal, including the invariable nicknames that will arise. Dana had a coworker who cut himself breaking down a fish (salmon, I think) and they called him Filet o’Finger for years.

And as the story of your injury gets further away, the story gets bigger, jeweling the elephant. In three years, a one cm cut becomes a three inch gash that was spurting blood all over the kitchen.

In the time between now and my first shift, I need to work on my snappiest comebacks, mostly about my coworkers mothers, in Spanish.

That’s the other thing. In a kitchen, don’t count on there ever being an HR department. The best defense is a good offense. Words definitely come easier to me than cooking, and I’m pretty damn good at it…. well, in terms of palate. Technique could use a little work. I’m always striving for excellence, because I’ll never achieve perfection.

I suspect that no one ever does in the eternal war with the ticket machine. It is relentless, even with Rachel at my side.

An Open Letter

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Dana,

I couldn’t have done it without you.

kcstrI got the job at Denizen’s, seriously one of the most popular brewpubs in the DC Metro. Believe it or don’t, I haven’t tried any of their beers, which seems like a prerequisite for working there, but I’ve got time. I’m not so much on the alcohol these days, because living with a Middle Eastern family, it’s not that there’s any prohibition against drinking, we just don’t. My tolerance is so low that the other night I had a cocktail and I felt like I was losing my mind, and as we all know, I don’t have much to spare. 😛

It’s a different atmosphere than we’re used to. Front of house and back of house barely have any interaction, because the pub is built on three levels, and the kitchen is at the bottom. I feel damn lucky I got a job in BOH, because I cannot imagine with all my movement wonkiness that I’d be good at carrying food up stairs. It’s funny to picture, though.

But the thing that makes me the most happy to picture is learning to cook from you, and I remember everything in bits. When a ticket comes across, your voice in my head tells me what to do, and we debrief endlessly in my dreams about what I could have done better or faster.

The most important thing was ordering my own knife, because just like everywhere else we’ve worked, the community knives are not up to our standards. I got the same Chicago Cutlery we loved at Biddy’s before you got Lenore, and if anyone borrows it before I get first blood, I will have a hard time not coming unglued, as I have every right to do. This time, it’s personal.

They’re on sale if you happen to need extras, because the original price was $27.99 for 7-1/2-inch Chef, 4-3/4-inch utility and 3-1/2-inch parer, and I got them for $17.49, the cost of the Chef on its own. They should be here before I start on Friday, God willing and the creek don’t rise…. but I don’t think I’m going to carry them all. Just the Chef…. it’s all I need. The bread knives seem to be solid, so I’ll skip that, at least for now. Maybe a santoku later on….. I thought about buying a second set for home use, but I am terrified that someone will put them in the dishwasher while I’m not home to be vigilant.

I still have a shot at the job at University of Maryland, which is customer service for a new GPS app in the Engineering College, and I’m excited to say that the pub is flexible enough I can still work on the weekends if I succeed, because I can’t think of a better cure for customer service than continuing to follow what, thanks to you, has become and incredible obsession/passion. I knew that I needed to do something when I realized that I was cutting all my water bottle mix-in packs on the bias. They look very professional.

I wanted to write just to say that you’ve given me an incredible gift, because since my mom died, this is the first thing that has really “cut through” the fog of grief. For the first time in what seems like eons, I am excited about something, as if life is starting to bubble up from the spring in my soul. It is such a kick in the ass, one that will knock you down with incredible force, when you realize that your parents are not immortal. I feel like I have been crawling on my belly, and am just now starting to crawl on my knees. Maybe in a few months, I will even be able to walk. Let’s not talk about running just yet. I still feel like hiding under the blankets when I think about Mother’s Day.

But right at this very moment, it helps that your spirit is inside me, because I can do more and be more in the kitchen with it than I ever will be without. I’ll never be half the line cook you are, but it’s my goal to try…. and to never, ever give up. I am no stranger to working hard and with pure excitement, because few people would understand better than you what it’s like to feel that much adrenaline at once.

Even though we don’t talk in words, I hope you realize that every time I pick up a knife, we are in communion with each other. You’ve never given me a better gift than your knowledge, and I won’t forget it.

Best,

Leslie

 

Wandering Through My Mind

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

We have black and pink tile in our bathroom with pink paint on the walls. Yes, it’s a bit outdated, but also ridiculously expensive to replace. So, we’re in the process of painting the walls white, and going to add pictures that are mostly teal of the water around the Mediterranean Sea. Though I don’t know exactly which pictures are going to be chosen, my guess would be the eastern shore, because Hayat is from Lebanon. It’s better than what I would have chosen, because I would have left the pink and decorated in jewel tones, turning our bathroom into a theme which suggests “Indian restaurant….”

Other than that, it’s a pretty uneventful day. I thought about going to Gay Day at the Zoo, but to be honest, I don’t want to deal with the weather. Walking around outdoors in the rain, while it might be cooler, does not sound like my idea of a good time. I don’t know why. I lived in Portland, Oregon for a decade and rain never stopped me from doing anything, because if you can’t stand the rain, you’ll never leave the house. Ever. Ok, ok, maybe three weeks in the summer. Good luck, God bless.

It’s a different kind of rain on the Mid-Atlantic, though. There are bigger drops of water blowing at you, while Portland is more “gorillas in the mist.” Despite the overabundance of wetness, however, my Oregon sensibilities will rarely let me carry an umbrella. Umbrellas are for tourists. If you live in Oregon, that phrase will be drilled into your head from day one.

I miss Oregon sometimes, but it’s fading further away as the sunshine makes me feel so much better. I didn’t realize how much the weather was making me sick until I sat outside in the heat for three weeks in Houston, ice and Jamaica Kool-Aid in hand (Jamaica is pronounced “ha-my-i-ca” and tastes like hibiscus). In Oregon, my vitamin D level went down to six, and as I learned in Texas direct sunlight, the pills did nothing for me. The weather in DC is much better for me, because even though it gets just as hot in the summer, it’s nice to have all four seasons. In Houston, the weather is like Tex-Mex…. mild, medium, hot, and “dear God help me.” The one thing that’s different about DC summers is that even though it’s hot as blazes, everyone else complains about the humidity and I’m all like, that’s adorable.

The other thing about DC that’s comparable to Houston is having to stuff a jacket in your backpack, because even though it might be over a hundred outside, most buildings crank their air conditioning down to Hoth. For this reason, I don’t often wear shorts in the summer. If I’m going to The Mall or the Zoo, fine. Otherwise, I spend most of my day shivering violently. Even with pants on, I’m generally comfortable because I don’t wear jeans much anymore. I have two pairs that sit in my closet while Dockers are the bees’ knees. I have them in almost every color they make. Besides, DC is a generally preppy place. I fit right in…. with the exception that I don’t dry clean my shirts with extra starch… like I should. There’s not even really room for a full-size ironing board upstairs, and those little ones drive me insane. Sometimes I’ll concede to fluffing my button-downs in the dryer. Generally, I just wear t-shirts… but nice ones. Nautica and Polo in solid colors are my favorite.

On casual days, most of my wardrobe consists of t-shirts from Chuy’s. Now that there’s one in Rockville, I probably have enough to outfit two people for a week. My favorites are a parody of Star Wars with “Juan Solo” on the front, and a parody of Breaking Bad- a Chuy’s fish with Heisenberg hat and sunglasses. Oh, and I would be remiss not to mention that I also love t-shirts with dinosaurs. They crack me up. One has a T-Rex lying face down and says “T-Rex Hates Push-Ups.” The other has a T-Rex with a piece of pizza in his hand, going toward his mouth and says, “The Struggle is Real.”

This is just one of those entries that’s going to be all over the place because I really have nothing to say. I am just babbling into the universe as not to let my writing muscle atrophy. It feels nice not to have any more deep, dark secrets to spill so that I don’t have to carry them. Weight has been lifted that I didn’t even realize I was carrying until I wasn’t moving in the world under the barbells of internalized rage…. and that’s all due to you. Without this space, and readers who jumped in and comforted me, I would not be in such a good place now. I mean, I do have secrets, but they’re just the ordinary kind that all women carry… not things that hurt, just ideas and memories you want to keep for yourself….. like just how many times I had to rewind one scene in Sideways…. but I’m not gonna tell you which one.

Speaking of media, the season finale of Homeland was amazing. CIA is fascinating all on its own, but the cast is just outstanding, as is the writing. I read an interview with one of the producers (forgive me, I can’t remember which one) that gave me pause. They said that some of the criticisms that have come this season have dealt with the fact that they’ve recovered ground, that Carrie’s mental illness has been done to death, etc. The producer’s answer was stone-cold awesome. Mental illness will always be a part of Carrie’s life… she doesn’t get a break from it…. why should you? CHECK AND MATE.

Without spoiling anything, it is amazing how Homeland episodes can be filmed months before something happens and then it’s “automagically” current. This season practically could have been a documentary, terrifying in its accuracy. Also, there are new characters this season that add to the reality, sometimes in funny weird (not funny haha) ways.

Saul has to go and talk to a professor in a CIA history class, and when he walks in, the professor is talking about how the Americans FREAKED OUT when Sputnik was launched because they thought it was a way to point nuclear warheads at the United States…. and then, all of the sudden, “space force” didn’t seem like so insane an idea. I mean, I ultimately decided it was ridiculous, but the show at least made me chew on the facts a little longer. My gut feeling is that CIA probably already has a division which gathers intelligence about trying to weaponize spacecraft, so why duplicate efforts?

This is batshit insane, tho:

Eventually, everyone understands we’re going to need to have fleets of starships as part of the defense, the same way the Federation had fleets of starships in Star Trek.

-Dale Ketcham, Vice President of Space Florida

Everyone? Really? Maybe I’m too old and just don’t get it, but a standing army in space seems like jumping the gun a little bit. It would be much easier and cheaper to launch something unmanned, a more likely possibility since we already do drone strikes now.

Next will probably be “Time Force,” to protect us from armies in the future we can’t know are coming. If Homeland films about it, we should start taking it seriously.

Did I mention this season was scarily accurate?

Oh, man…..

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I was completely worthless today.

Everything hurt, even muscles I forgot I had. If the stage was successful and I am offered the job, it won’t be a problem. I’ll be doing those kinds of acrobatics every day. I ran my ass off last night (which is bad… I don’t have much to begin with). I worked out more in four hours than I have in the last five years.

I woke up with the allergy attack from hell, and I still couldn’t make myself get up and take a shower. My arms and legs just rebelled. When I couldn’t find my Zyrtec bottle, I took some Benedryl and Sudafed, then padded downstairs for some Peet’s French Roast. Then, I did what any sane cook would do. I got back in bed.

After about four hours, when my allergy attack still hadn’t gone away, I got in the shower. Sometimes it helps to wash my face, because usually I’ve got dust or pollen on my skin. I also thought that hot water might ease the strain on my muscles. I, in fact, thought wrong. It’s almost 2330 and I still feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.

It occurred to me that I’m not 25, or even 30 anymore…. but I don’t think that’s the problem. I think having computer butt is the culprit. Someone who spends most of their day at a desk or in bed with a laptop is not going to feel awesome after a kitchen shift, especially when orders are coming in relentlessly for hours.

And, like most cooks, I woke up in the middle of the night- panicked because the ticket machine was going off in my head and I forgot to drop the taquitos and the pretzels were burning and everyone else had disappeared, even the dishwasher…… I ran back and forth between the dish pit and dry storage trying to find César because I was up to my ass in tickets….. If you’ve ever wondered how cooks dream, this is it…. a series of nightmare scenarios….. even after a night where everything went perfectly…. because it didn’t happen, but it could’ve.

Having worked front of house, I know waitstaff has their own version of snapping awake. They suddenly think things like, “I never did bring them their ranch,” and their throats tighten.

What I’ve learned over years and years, though, is that I’ve never heard anyone complain more than line cooks, but never, ever say to them that they could always do something else.

I’ve Been Changed for Good

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am a different cook than I used to be, because there’s no undercurrent lurking when I’m in the kitchen. I was focused and sharp. My mind never wandered. I only slightly messed up a few things, but they were tiny and standard for the first day. I didn’t cook anything wrong, there’s just two sets of dishes, one for the beer garden and one for the inside of the pub. A couple of times I had to re-plate, and that was it. It helped that everything was right in front of me because the prep cooks had taken care of most things, but I did chop tomatoes, lettuce, and onions. Even in the midst of incredible pressure, I was as calm as I’ve ever been. The chaos swirled around me and not inside of me…. although I have to wonder if part of it was the Klonopin. Not feeling the physical reactions to panic really helped me keep my shit together. But the other part was taking care of myself psychologically. I felt so much lighter not having to carry around this big emotional bag that had been dragging me down since 1990.

In fact, I made the kitchen manager laugh when he was prepping the griddle for toasting buns by spraying it with the industrial version of Pam.™ I said, “oh my God. That looks way too healthy.” In fact, I made him laugh a lot, which made me feel good, because I haven’t laughed this much in ages.

As I said in my most recent Facebook post:

I absolutely nailed the stage. #beastmode They have three other people to interview, but the kitchen manager was damn impressed and said so. If someone else gets the job, they beat me fair and square. I could not have been prouder of *myself.* Plus, my Spanish got a lot better, real quick.

Only some of the people in the kitchen were fluent in English, and I was so grateful that I knew enough Spanish to pick up even more. The funny part was asking César what different vegetables were in Spanish, and even he didn’t know some of them. We joked about speaking “Spanglish.” It was like this… I’ll write the conversation in English, but we had it in Spanish:

Me: How do you say this? (pointing to beets)
César: I don’t know.
Me: How do you say this? (pointing to carrots)
César: Zanahorias (but he pronounced it more like “cellerias”)
Me: So then, what’s celery?
César: I don’t know that, either.

And then we laughed… oh, how we laughed.

We danced well together, and for that, I am so grateful. It is the one thing about which I was truly worried- would I fit in well without incident? I think I did some things they don’t normally do which were extremely helpful, and that might have gotten me a few brownie points. Though I have to sit and wait for a few days, I know my efforts were solid. I might not have been Joe Gibbs, but I certainly wasn’t Steve Spurrier.

Everyone that signed my contract would have been proud. I made sure.

Hot.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

-Dolly Parton

I think getting the stage at the brewpub has given me a new lease on life. Whether I take the job or not, it is a huge ego boost. I feel something unfamiliar as of late. To quote Miss Hannigan from Annie, “do I hear….. happiness… in here?” Though I’ve had a few laughs, this mood lift has lasted, when normally, as soon as the laugh is over, I retreat back into my head.kcstr I went downtown and bought some chef pants and some white t-shirts that I can wear with pretty much anything, because I don’t know if there’s something special I have to wear once I get there. These clothes are pretty standard. If I get there and find out I can wear crazy pants, there are some mirepoix prints waiting for me at Fenton’s Uniforms. Yes, wearing pants (and maybe a coat, depending) will be hot AF in the kitchen… but you’d always rather be protected from all the food that inevitably splashes all over you than bare any skin. Also, touching the stove, griddle, or oven hurts less when there’s fabric in between you and them. Mario Batali always wears shorts, by which I am mystified. It would only take one pot of boiling soup spilling down my front before I decided that was a bad idea. I take that back. It’s a bad idea just thinking about it.

I also need to check out their knives, because if I don’t find one that fits my hand perfectly, I’m going to need my own. For the longest time, I preferred German, because they are heavy in my hand, and the heft feels good. Then, I tried using a heavy knife for eight hours at a clip and I wasn’t so impressed anymore. I’ve been to Sur la Table and tried just about every knife on the market, and I swear to God, I didn’t find anything as good as the one I got from Chicago Cutlery on Amazon for $15. I didn’t even have to sharpen it for a year.

And speaking of knives, I’m feeling one right through my chest, because Dana’s not here. I know that there’s not a chance in hell I won’t hear her voice in my ear all damn night. It’s been a minute since we’ve cooked together, but I’ve never had a better partner. Being so intimate with your kitchen partner is a plus, because you know each other so well you can have entire conversations with one look each, and every second counts. I just took a Klonopin.

My best wish for myself is that I find someone I can dance with tonight. Drew and I literally danced to Aqua in the kitchen (as Doctor Who fans, it took less than a second for “Dr. Jones” to become “Martha Jones”), but what I mean is that the entire night is a series of movements, not unlike ballet. What’s running through my head is that I hope I remember the most important thing…. communication with the others.

  • Behind you (with a knife)
  • Coming down the line hot
  • Coming around the corner (or just “corner”)
  • Heard, Chef
  • Answering “what do I need all day?”
    • That means looking at every ticket and counting items across them for the uninitiated….
  • Work clean

The most important, therefore listed first, is “behind you with a knife.” The way you carry it is blade down, and if someone bumps into you, you are way more likely to cut yourself than them. The reason that this is more of a ballet than at other restaurants is that things are not divided up by station. Everyone picks up everything, from sauté to pantry to fry station.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to have my professional tools back. There’s nothing like having the right ones, especially a large griddle and scrapers. My favorite chore is cleaning the griddle at the end of the night. I can make it shine like the top of the Chrysler building! I am not kidding myself. Even if it is just a stage, if we get slammed, no one is getting cut, and it’s Thursday. It’s how I know that the kitchen manager wants to literally throw me into the fire. Easing me in would be a stage on a Monday.

Please send good thoughts, energy, prayers if you are a God person, black magic prayers if you are not. I need to be at the top of my game, because when I’m on, I’m ON. I want to walk into the kitchen like I own it, because I know I’m capable. But there’s a chance that everything will be overwhelming and go to shit within an hour. A small chance, but that doesn’t mean I won’t overthink about it.

I think I’m going to meditate and stretch now. It’s been a long time since I’ve put this much pressure on my knees, and I need to concentrate on everything within my control going right, knowing that not everything is. Now that the Klonopin has kicked in, I no longer feel the knife in my chest. Dana is my guardian angel, and I know I can call on her when I need her. She’ll sit on my shoulder until closing time if I ask.

Just like in Eat. Pray. Love., I’m creating a contract to do well and having people sign it. Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain signed it. Chef Dana signed it. Julia Child signed it. James Beard signed it. Pati Jinich signed it. Vivian Howard signed it. Andy Ricker signed it. Auguste Escoffier signed it. The Two Fat Ladies signed it. Gabriel Rucker and Naomi Pomeroy  signed it. Michael Cordúa signed it. José Andrés signed it. Now, not only do I have one angel on my shoulder, I have a lot of them.

All of the sudden, I am at peace. I got this.

Depending on what time I get home, let’s get together and post-mortem. I am sure I will have a ton to say, depending on whether all the energy in my body has leaked out of my ear. Alternatively, I may be a live wire, adrenaline coursing through my body. It’s anyone’s guess.

Stay tuned.

A Whirlwind of Activity

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Every time my sister comes to town, it’s a whirlwind of activity. I half-kid her that I see her more now that I live in DC, because when we both lived in Houston she worked for the city. It made her practically unavailable. In her last job, she was working on different states’ bills, and Maryland was one of many in her territory. I absolutely loved visiting her in Annapolis, but in her current job, she’s working on federal legislation.31793386_10156075683775272_8143610859139104768_n Today we met up in front of the Supreme Court and walked to Nooshi (Capitol Hill/8th St.). A friend of Lindsay’s joined us for dinner, and then Lindsay said that she wanted to go back to the same restaurant she went to on Tuesday night just for the dessert.

Since we were in the neighborhood, said friend and I convinced Lindsay that she should branch out and come with us to Ted’s Bulletin. We all got adult milkshakes- mine was Bananas Foster. Lindsay also ordered the homemade version of a Little Debbie™ Oatmeal Creme Pie (they also offer homemade Pop-Tarts™). She only ate a few bites of it, and I hadn’t eaten all day. I unashamedly ate the rest, after having an entire order of chicken wings, several pieces of sushi, and 7-Spice Tofu Fries… not to mention the milkshake bigger than my head. I’m currently on the “I Don’t Have a Car” diet, which basically means I eat anything I want, any time I want, because I have to walk it off whether I want to or not. I enjoy this plan so much that I may upgrade it to the “I Don’t Want a Car” diet, because I’d like to continue to eat like a frat boy at all times. Don’t get me wrong, a car would be nice to have when going to the grocery store, but I found that driving around DC made every single part of my day sedentary unless the parking garage closest to where I wanted to go was full.

Tomorrow, I’m going to work out even more. The reason I look so happy in the above photo is that I got a call from Jorgé, the kitchen manager at pub near downtown Silver Spring, wanting to know when I could do a stagé. I’m not nervous- it’s basic bar food- but I do feel weirdly self-conscious that I don’t have chef’s pants. I found a shop on Fenton that might have them, so I’ll check mid-morning. I just can’t picture being able to move well in Dockers or jeans. I do, however, still own my Bistro Crocs…. however, mine are basic brown and I flipped out at the new designs, so I may have to upgrade my kitchen shoes if I get the job. I really like the skulls and crossbones made out of eggs and bacon, and the black with chili peppers are just classic. You can knock on Crocs all you want, but there is no substitute in the kitchen. “Bistro” is a different designation. You won’t even slip if there’s frying oil all over the floor…. it’s a completely different tread, and no holes for ventilation lest you “drop it while it’s hot.”

Speaking of “hot,” Lindsay warned me not to burn myself, and I said, “oh my God… I have so many burn stories….” She then got super worried about me and told me to be careful. Since the last time I cooked, I lived in Portland, she didn’t see me when I looked like a Hell’s Angel…. just cuts, bruises, and burns EVERYWHERE. It was the best time of my life.

I was, as Anthony Bourdain said, a member of a tribe that would have me. Because I spend so much time in my head, working with my hands was such a blessing. I didn’t have time to worry about anything else but slicing onions correctly…. which is why a pub is the perfect fit for me and not fine dining. With monocular vision, I am not fast and accurate at the same time. When my field of vision changes, so does the direction of my knife. In that vein, the best part ever is that they want me as a line cook because all the prep positions are full. So basically, someone else has to worry that the batonets are perfect.

I am still going to interview with UMD if they ask, and will probably take the job if it is offered because I can’t think of a better way to pay for school. But I can’t worry about next week or the week after that. I am living in the moment, and what this moment is telling me is to enjoy the hell out of myself tomorrow. During the phone interview, it was like I’d never stopped being a cook. This was the funniest part of the conversation:

Me: How many covers a night?
Jorgé: I don’t want to scare you.

He also laughed until he choked when he said that most customers order the same thing and I said, “french fries with ranch?” If you’ve never worked in a bar, that joke is ridiculously funny.

When I got home, I sent an instant message to Pati Jinich and told her that I had an important stage coming up and could I have a blessing? She wished me luck and told me to wear good shoes. I was walking to the Metro when I got it, and just had this big, dumb grin on my face the entire way there…. actually, I think I’m still smiling.

For those of you just joining us, I met Pati when she did a cooking demonstration at the Mexican Embassy in 2017.22550261_10155565072125272_809704913041301676_o My dad had actually bought the ticket, but gave it to me when he didn’t end up making the trip. He and my stepmom have had this running joke that Pati is “his girlfriend,” so I told my dad that if he didn’t come to the cooking demonstration, I was going to steal his girlfriend away from him.

I told Pati this story at the beginning of the night, and we took a picture together at the end. The reason I am doubled over with laughter is that I thought she had forgotten all about our conversation…………. She reached over and kissed me, saying, “well, you asked for it.” It was just one of those jokes that was completely unexpected. I walked right into it, one of the funniest things that’s happened to me in DC.

I am so glad that the photographer (whomever he was) got just the right moment, because it is refrigerator-worthy. I think I’ll print out a copy for my Kindle case, which carries all my “important documents.”

I cannot close this entry without thanking my ex-wife, Dana, who got me interested in cooking in the first place (and helped me get my first cooking job).

I’d also like to thank Drew, Knives, John, JMSK, and all the other people who helped me along the way. I think I have a pretty good shot at turning an audition into a job, but no matter how badly it goes, they’ll still feed me (and possibly give me a beer). Seriously, what have I got to lose? I get to spend an evening doing what I love, with a tribe who would have me.

Every time Lindsay comes to town, it’s just a whirlwind of activity.

Donate! Donate!

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to all you wonderful people, Stories is allowed to continue for another year without annoying ads. You can keep reading me at work, in those moments when there’s nothing but cleaning products in the bathroom. I paid the fee up front, and have now been reimbursed…. and let me tell you, it saved my ass.

I thought it was a good idea to get my groceries delivered because I don’t have a car. I usually take public transportation to the store, and Uber back so that I at least have access to a trunk. FreshDirect offered me $50 off a purchase of $100 or more. The coupon code did not go through, and I was charged the full amount plus delivery fee. I canceled the order, but there’s still a hold on my funds. They told me it would take 24-48 hours for the hold to be released, and if that doesn’t work, I need an extensive set of documents… and, of course, the vendor says it’s the bank’s fault and the bank says it’s the vendor’s fault. I have been around and around with them on the phone. PayPal was able to transfer funds within two minutes.

I am so glad I have a bit of breathing room, because I went into full-on panic mode. I can’t say I won’t use FreshDirect again, but I can say that we are not off to a good start. This is because they’re the only ones that deliver in my area. It’s probably for the best. I’m not sure I have enough room to store $100 worth of groceries, anyway, but the smallest amount they’ll deliver is $30, and only $7.00 delivery fee…. Less than an Uber, for sure. Perfect when I am out of coffee and creamer…. maybe a box of cereal.

It seems to be feast or famine around here. I got a call back on a position at University of Maryland, and a full-time cook’s job at Denizen’s Brewing Company. They have a brewpub, and they asked whether I’d prefer front of house or back of house. I told them to put me where they needed me. Servers make more money, but cooks don’t have to deal with the public. Pluses in all directions. Besides, my cost of living here is so incredibly low that I don’t need a fancy pants job. You’d think that DC would be so much more expensive, but the room I rent is all bills paid and I don’t have monthly bills like car payments and insurance. It’s just too much when you add in maintenance and parking fees. Plus, one of the reasons I wanted to move to DC so badly is that I have monocular vision, which means that driving is harder for me than most people. With the exception of running into a guardrail because a 25 mph curve was not marked, I haven’t had an accident in years… mostly due to my complete dependence on Waze… although that has bitten me in the ass, as well, because I was lost and trying to find where I was going and got caught on a red light camera while looking at my phone- in the middle of my windshield so I couldn’t exactly see the light. For the most part, as long as I drive slowly, I’m fine. For this very reason, I am in love with cruise control. I try as hard as I can not to be a stereotypical woman driver. Now, I’m pretty good at it. When I was younger, not so much.

I prefer to drive SUVs because I sit a little higher and have more visibility, but unless I was able to afford a hybrid, that’s just not happening. And, of course, as a Texan I love pickup trucks as well. Same idea with the sitting a little higher, much better on gas mileage…. and I hear that the price of gas is going up. The plus is also not having a back seat (people in groups are a “no thanks”). It’s nice to have someone in the passenger seat with stereo vision. Four or five people are just too much of a distraction…. plus, they don’t tend to like how slow I drive, a #biteme situation. Plus, it’s DC. During the day, the traffic is awful. During the night, construction blocks everything. I’ve been caught in traffic jams at both 1100 AND 2300. You just can’t win. Plus, in most areas of Washington proper, the speed limit is only 25mph to begin with. It helps because it keeps you from hitting tourists too hard with your car, as much as you might want to. Did I say that out loud?

I am also dedicated to not talking on the phone in the car on most days, because even with Bluetooth, it’s just distracting enough. Podcasts are my favorite, because music doesn’t keep my brain as engaged. Here’s my list:

  • ID10T (formerly The Nerdist)
  • WTF with Marc Maron
  • Risk!
  • Two Dope Queens
  • Fresh Air
  • On Being, with Krista Tippett
  • You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes
  • House for All Sinners and Saints
  • Radiolab
  • This American Life
  • Reveal
  • Criminal
  • Invisibilia
  • Wait, Wait…. Don’t Tell Me
  • Car Talk
  • The Robcast
  • Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
  • Hidden Brain
  • The TED Radio Hour
  • The Moth
  • Casefile True Crime
  • Reply All
  • Ask Me Another
  • Snap Judgment
  • Pop Culture Happy Hour
  • Modern Love
  • Meet the Press
  • The Tim Ferris Show

There’s no way that I can listen to them all every week, so I generally download a few at a time over wi-fi so that a) I’m not using my data plan and 2) most of the Metro is underground and the sound doesn’t cut out when I’m in a no service zone. If I had to pick a true favorite, it’s a toss-up between The Moth and Modern Love. I will download those the moment they come out. Third is probably The Robcast, because Rob Bell always has incredible discussions on progressive Christian theology. The four part series with Pete Rollins absolutely blew my mind. One of the most interesting things he said was that theism and atheism are one of life’s great love stories, because in theism/atheism, the truth lives somewhere in the slash. I think I’ve listened to that series four times now. I should edit it so that all four parts are one file.

And now, a finely crafted theological joke, which means I didn’t write it. Attribution is unknown:

Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, and James Cone find themselves all at the same time at Caesarea Philippi. Who should come along but Jesus, and he asks the four famous theologians the same Christological question, “Who do you say that I am?”

Karl Barth stands up and says: “You are the totaliter aliter, the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality of Christo-monism.”

Not prepared for Barth’s brevity, Paul Tillich stumbles out: “You are he who heals our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of our being and the ground of all possibilities.”

Reinhold Niebuhr gives a cough for effect and says, in one breath: “You are the impossible possibility who brings to us, your children of light and children of darkness, the overwhelming oughtness in the midst of our fraught condition of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and existential anxieties of our ontological relationships.”

Finally James Cone gets up, and raises his voice: “You are my Oppressed One, my soul’s shalom, the One who was, who is, and who shall be, who has never left us alone in the struggle, the event of liberation in the lives of the oppressed struggling for freedom, and whose blackness is both literal and symbolic.”

And Jesus turns around and says, “What?”

There is nothing greater than studying theology and being able to laugh at yourself. In my own life, I rely on both Henri Nouwen and Paul Tillich. The Wounded Healer and Dynamics of Faith are my go-to in pretty much any situation. Although I will never forget hearing Marcus Borg preach at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, Oregon. Before he got up to speak, Bill Lupfer, the dean, said that any time you had a theological question, you should go and drink beer with a Lutheran. This is especially funny because the first time I ever met Dean Lupfer, we were in a pub.

Speaking of which, if I decide to start cooking again, it’s time to buy a set of bandanas. I am sure Amazon will deliver without incident.

Dogs

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I woke up at 0500, as I am wont to do. I generally fall asleep to movies or podcasts, and last night it was Battle Royale II- Requiem. I made it through Battle Royale earlier in the day, because it just cracks me up. Yes, there is so much violence and not very much humor in the movie as a whole, but the instructional video makes me laugh until my sides hurt. I’m going to have to go back and watch the ending of II, because I should know by now that I cannot start a movie between 2030-2100. It reminds me of my dad coming home from a Covey seminar on time management, where the instructor told a funny story:

Instructor: I get my kids to wake up at 4:00 AM for a planning session every morning.
Guy in Class: How do you do that?
I: I put them in bed at 8:30 PM.
GIC: How do you manage THAT?
I: I get them up at FOUR IN THE MORNING!

I’ve puttered around the house for a little bit… went through the trash looking for recycling because my roommate is not so good about it. Made myself both a Hawaiian Punch and strong black coffee. Took all my psych meds so that I can ignore the “Meeting with Bob” reminder later (I call all my medication reminders “meeting with Bob,” and it really caught on when I was in the psych ward at Methodist. By the time I left three days later, I had my entire cohort saying “I have a meeting with Bob later.”

Yes, children. I checked myself in at Methodist thanks to an ass kicking by my precious Argo, who put everything succinctly: why do you expect everyone else to fix you? Can’t you see the common denominator is you? I didn’t realize that asking my friends to safety net me was in fact keeping me from moving under my own power, failure to take responsibility for my own actions. When you’re that far down into depression, anxiety, and PTSD, it’s hard to see. The kicker was suicidal ideation that I knew would go away with a trip to a psychiatrist who could adjust my meds, but I called and I could not get a new patient appointment for another three weeks. Anyone who’s been in that situation knows three weeks is way too long- halfway to SpongeBob Squarepants headstone (don’t think I won’t do it- not the suicide part, the hilarity of an actual SpongeBob headstone for all eternity).

Teenage trauma was compounded by my relationship with Dana ending in a fight to end all fights. Dana pushed me over and I just went off like a chihuahua with a God complex. All the fight was taken out of me when Dana punched me in the face so hard that for a moment, I thought my eye socket was broken. It wasn’t, but I had a pretty nice bruise under my eye that my glasses didn’t cover. I forgive, but I don’t forget. I concentrate on my hilarious memories with Dana now, because I cannot live my life in the smallest place possible. I take responsibility for not running away at the first sign that the fight was turning physical.

I, however, have stopped feeling that I deserved to be hit, because the fight absolutely made me come emotionally unglued. It took a while. The mobile assessment team that evaluated me at Methodist reassured me that I had a natural reaction to being pushed over, but that it was probably a bad idea to try and fight back with someone whose fist was three times bigger than mine. In the moment, my thought process was that it was a bad idea not to stand up to a bully. To Dana’s credit, she was immediately sorry and didn’t just give lip service to it. She really put herself through an enormous amount of self-help, which is why I can forgive her so easily. I wouldn’t be so laid back about it if I thought that there was a possibility it could happen again.

The one mistake I made was going home after hospitalization. I didn’t count on the emotional swings between us getting much worse. I made due by sleeping at friends’ houses and going to the house to pick up my stuff when I knew she wouldn’t be there. It wasn’t that I carried anger around. It was that I was trying to cut any and all fights off at the pass. It is a very, very difficult thing to go through that with someone you love so desperately, so my choice is not to be bitter and to remember all the things that happened between us that were overwhelmingly positive. It is enough that we are not in contact anymore, reducing the possibility of hurting each other again to zero, whether that means emotionally, physically, or both.

But that was a little over three years ago, and I cannot emphasize enough how much different my world has become. I’ve had an enormous swath of time to think things through and work on my own issues so that I’m less quick to anger, and trying to love my friends through their own problems, because so many people did it for me. I’ll never be able to pay it all forward, but it helps to try.

I am very open and honest about what it took to get past all this, but the stigma is there. People don’t always realize what it took to get you to the place of hospitalization, and only concentrate on how crazy you must be if you had to get that kind of help. It’s a black mark, whether it is deserved or not. I’d had severe psychological issues since I was a teenager, and I can’t help but think how much better my life would have gone had I been hospitalized in the moment rather than stuffing everything down into my socks. It made me feel like I was fine, thank you very much [Morgan Freeman: Leslie was, in fact, not fine].

I was able to lay everything out in front of Argo because she was a stranger on a train, not part of my physical life so she saw everything differently. She asked pointed questions that made vomiting up old trauma unavoidable, and I cracked into pieces. And then, with two sentences, I make no qualms about the fact that they probably saved my life…. yet another thing that I’ll probably never be able to repay.

I do, however, offer up prayers into the universe for her a lot. It gives me something to pray for her happiness, healthiness, and the joy of being alive with possibility. Her sunshine is bright, and it was a gift to stand in it. I simply would not be the person I am today had I not been able to see every place I went wrong in black and white.

It was an incredible motivator to keep going with psychiatry, talk therapy, and instituting behavioral patterns that keep me from going back to the dark emotional place that doesn’t allow for my own sunshine. I truly have a lot of it to give. It’s hard to notice when I’m spilling my guts on this web site, because most of my entries deal with problems I’m trying to process, but I am incredibly funny. My love is gigantic, from the personal to the international. I don’t just care about my friends and family, but the problems that arise with just being a human.

All of it shows more easily in person than it does while writing, something I am trying to change as both my marriage and the death of my mother fade further into the back of my mind. There are always going to be times when I’m incredibly sad over each, but especially my mother would be horrified to know that losing her caused me to lose my knack for both cracking jokes and laughing easily when others do it.

I am looking forward to a lot of laughter starting on Tuesday, when my little sister arrives for a work trip. What cracks me up the most about her is that when I say something sweet, her response is usually, “thanks, Boo.” It works on two levels; the first is that it is a loving term of endearment. The second is that my mood often bears a striking resemblance to Boo Radley.

Harper Lee is my spirit animal, and I will speak more as to why.

It is my unverified opinion that Scout and Boo are the same person, Harper Lee at different points in her life. Think about just how much she isolated after To Kill a Mockingbird was published, and I think you’ll see it, too…. keeping in mind that I’m wrong a lot. 😛 It seems to me, though, that there’s probably at least a grain of truth in my ramblings about somebody I don’t even know. The now unanswered question in my mind is whether Lee was reclusive before or after creating Boo…. did she base Boo on herself, or did writing about him put her into that place? Chicken, egg, etc. Either way, I’m not sure it renders my opinion invalid.

When I am able to support having a pet, I’d really like to get a dog. This seems unrelated, but it’s not. I often need forced interaction because it’s hard for me to do it on my own, and taking my dog for a walk provides just that. I know this because I used to live in an apartment complex, so letting my dog relieve herself in the backyard was not an option. Therefore, I met lots of other people who also had dogs, which not only gave me opportunities to socialize, but something about which to discuss that didn’t dig too deep. It was just fun. And, of course, if it’s a boy, his name will be Arthur. If it’s a girl, her name will be Louise.

Perhaps I should get a chihuahua with a God complex. Apparently, we’d have a lot in common.