Paved with Salt:

-Photo by me of me.

Foreward: This will come in unpredictable sections, stay tuned.

***

Driving into the city, Nora Jones on my iPod I wonder if it’s the smartest idea to purposefully put myself in a more melancholy mood than I’ve already been in all day.

It’s the weekend, Saturday, and Becca isn’t here but in the city that we would love to both call home someday, New York, and while I’m happy that she is there because she deserves it, I’m, selfishly, lonely and empty. I’m dwelling on how pathetic I feel for staying in last night, roasting brussels sprouts and sweet corn and portabellas for no one but myself. My apartment now will smell like balsamic for days unless I leave the patio door cracked. I drank half a bottle of Prisoner and fell asleep to The Wackness while the rest of the 20 somethings were probably out having a typical Friday evening…but I so wanted to be there too. Now I’m feeling equally pathetic for feeling sorry for myself.

Saturday morning and I wake up with a headache above my eyes and a crack in my heart like old porcelain. My MacBook comes to life and I’m pissed off that I’m behind on blogging about the amazing Greening of Detroit event that I will eventually have to get to later because to not write about it would be like throwing away a pound of perfectly sautéed black truffles, unheard of. But I want to get every detail down perfectly to do it justice. Ideas are flowing too quickly to get out on paper at this point and are escaping from my brain into the atmosphere probably never to be seen again.

I pull up his journal on LiveJournal because that is what I do now, every day, since he has sent me the link. And I’m not sure if I read it because I miss him so much that it’s hard to breathe or because his writing is so beautiful in a way that is devastating and surreal. I’ve heard authors describe women this way “devastatingly beautiful”, but I’m claiming this for his journal he gave up years ago. Somehow it inspires my writing but today all I can do is sit here and let lukewarm tears soak my cheeks with leftover mascara from the night before.

And now that I have this job, this job that requires me to check all baggage at the swinging kitchen door, there is a test of my emotions, of my personality. I not only have always worn my heart on my sleeve but my sadness in patches on my jeans and my jubilation in the crinkles at the corners of my eyes when I smile. But here, now, I have to cut and paste a smile on my face, glue my eyes forward, relax my jaw when I have too much on my mind, because my customers, though maybe not directly but in some sense like a sweat about to break on the surface of their skin, will sense a disturbance in the atmosphere, perhaps not when they walk in, or even through their bacon lardon salads and lamb sausages, but when the open their car doors to drive home, will know that their meal wasn’t the best it could be.

And that is not acceptable to me.

I know I just started here but I already feel I’ll never be cut out for this or be as talented as the people I work with. They can handle multiple tables and my heart races, breath shortens, speech becomes stuttered and tripped up at just 2 tables. Their fingers skitter across the expo. screen like deft machines, automatic and I bet they could close their eyes and still push all the right buttons. But it takes me 5 minutes to ring in one order.

All I want is their approval; I want them to know I can do this, that I can do it well, and I want nothing but to be here.

I wake up every morning in the anticipation of going into the city, waiting for the time to put on my ChefWare Apron, check the seating chart and grab a yellow polishing rag.

I love this life.

Cook for Me

My idea of a date:

I like white t-shirts and boys who can work their knives

Make quick clean severs in a way I think they would be quick and clean drawing a line across my palate with their own tongue, tasting every part of me

And if I were the smoke that rose from the burners I’d curl myself around his fingers, the scent of raw salt and olive oil, I’d stick to him the way the perpetual sweat does on the lines of his forehead when he concentrates.

I think my ideal date would be cliché with him, because he is food and all heat of the kitchen.

I think he would come to my apartment and we would walk a crossed the street to Holiday Market. It would be awkward, we’d smile for a brevity of seconds then look at the tile flooring or distract ourselves with produce, poking at fresh vegetables, wandering through the isles. I’d steal glances of him, unused to the street clothes, the dirty wash jeans and glasses, used to the checkered pants and black bandana. He’d ask me what I want for dinner and I, like a girl, would tell him that I’m indifferent and that I don’t care, that it is up to him, that he should surprise me. Finally I’d make a deal with picking the wine and beer. Jolly Pumpkin Bam Noir and a red blend, or maybe a cab for me. Somehow I think he’d be surprised that I drink red wine, that I seem more like a Riesling girl. I’d tell him that I used to be but am broadening my horizons...that I love a wine I can chew on. He’d smile at that and I hope he’d be thinking that the red I chose would make my cheeks that color later on.

The food, at this point, is irrelevant because whatever is created by those deft and swift hands of his will taste of fervid longing and sexual tension, maybe the way marinated mushrooms do, or even a slow roasted animal of some deep forest. I would tell him to teach me to cook. That I need lessons, this is my fantasy. The apartment would be slightly warm from the pre-heating ovens and inadequate burners, puny compared to the ones he uses at the restaurant, but he will make do. He’d switch into restaurant mode, lose sight and care of everything around him but the pan he works in his grip like I hope he will do to me later, maybe on the cement floor so my back bruises and I can secretly relish in the bluish marks from contact with the floor below me and his body above me.

I’d say his name, look at him, smile, pop a raw tomato dripping with water from being rinsed into my mouth, chew slowly, watching him the whole time, and he would forget about the pan and guide my hands over his on the handle, the heat from the steam and popping oil trapped between our pulse points. If some searing liquid escaped the pan onto my bare forearm he would guide my wrist to the sink and hold it under the ice-cold tap. I’d shiver. He’d keep looking.

Heat of the Kitchen, Soul of a Server

I have to prove myself

I know these things:

I have a college degree

I am a writer

I am living on my own

Serving is a fucking difficult job. I don't care what anyone says.

"Why would you move here?" People give me the face of something moldy and stagnant, or give me that "oh you poor lost girl" look.

But

I

love

it

Last night I had 2 tables. Two.

How the hell can the rest of the staff do 15 tops and 8 tops at the same time? 3 and 4 for me and I lost my wine key, lost both of my pens, ordered the wrong beer (IPA instead of Dogfish Head) and stuttered like some shy 3 year old would when asked her age or favorite color.

College degree? That doesn't mean shit here.

But I leave at 11:30 smelling of roasted suckling pig and fried capers. My skin is sheen from evaporated olive oil over burners. I feel like a little boy with my new cropped, chestnut haircut, white oxford, orange tie, black chucks and knee length apron.

But its the bitten lips from nervousness, the heavy scent of toasted marshmallow and cayenne pepper, pan grease and rosemary fries that leaves me "hot and bothered."

Ive found I have to take the kitchen in doses for fear of becoming too sexually charged, afraid it will show in my cheeks and mannerisms, crossed legs, licking butter off the corners of my mouth, eyeing the chefs from the peripheries of my eyes.

Sweat drips down the crevices of my body but the heat of the kitchen drives me forward in more ways than you could imagine.

My nails are still marrow red.

Expo. Deux

Andy drizzles balsamic reduction onto the porterhouse that the menu suggests for 2 but could really feed a pack of wolves

Ingredients scroll though my head, followed by preparation and random facts as I watch him over the metal island, wiping stray flecks off the white porcelain.

Porter House

48 oz.

cut off the bone for convenience and a presented plated presented with the two parts of meat: strip steak and filet

served with a balsamic steak sauce

-onion, garlic, sage, rosemary, clove, celery seed chili powder

-balsamic and white wine vinaigrette

-ketchup, brown sugar, raisins

I know the sauce is simmered and reduced, then handed off to chef who finishes off the dish at the final plating station.

“Runner!”

“I’m your girl!”

“52 seat 2”

*

The knives are slow and steady now. It’s early and the only “rush” going on is happy hour, with the exception of the porter house, little wonders of goat tacos, fried brussle sprouts, goat cheese mac and cheese and the oh so sumptuously delectable Roast Burger served on an English muffin topped with a quivering fried egg, make their way to the front of the restaurant, via black stripped clad wait staff.

My face feels sunburnt.

People say a kitchen is a kitchen but being here makes me think of Zinc back in Sandusky and how different every component is, down to the last call.

When I watch those boys cook it reminds me of my writing, fixated, concentrated on every detail, pinched brow, eloquent hands.

“Dude I spend $35 on chanterelles this weekend.” Somewhere in the back of my mind I’m hoping Andy is interested in my love of food, that he gets that I’m not just working this job for a paycheck. I thrive on the heat of the burners and what he does with his hands and a large knife.

“Yeah? The mushroom guy there? At the farmers market I mean.” Andy doesn’t look up from his brenoise of carrot and celery but I sense interest in his voice.”

“Ha, oh was he.”

“What did you do to them?”

“The mushrooms?”

“No, the mushroom people,” he snorts. “Yeah the mushrooms silly girl.”

“Roasted them, balsamic, lemon olive oil, a little salt and cracked pepper, nothing fancy.”

“Chef in the making, hmm?”

“Word”

*

And the heat is on. A 15 top walk in ordered 6 lobster salads and god knows what else.

The boys are on high gear, plates are shuffled and dealt like a deck of cards, perfection, in rose pink dressing, like sauce, chunks of watermelon and plumb pieces of poached lobster and shrimp in a neat little pile on the plate. Bright green dusting, a garnish of pistachio finishes it off. I’ve already tasted the dish and can feel the slight heat in the back of my throat from the hint of ginger and jalapeño.

*

“2 Out 16!”

“Fire seconds on thirty! “

“Sides on 40 on the fly!”

They each have their own dance. Andy stays smooth and steady like running water. Calm, even when the atmosphere around him is about to burst. I look at him sometimes and wonder what he is thinking, working these long hours only recreating a design, and artwork that is not his own. I want to know what his ideas are, what he would create if he had the freedom. Instead he ensures perfection of someone else’s vision. Is he stifled?

He wears rubber loves, chopping chilies the color of my nails.

“Fire 24!”

“Resting 24!

Every so often my nose picks up a scent of something new out of the familiar wafts of salt and oil.

“Here, try some of this.”

Norm hands me a sliver of Humboldt fog that tastes of vineyard soil after a midnight rain. Herbal, piquant, with a big of tang like orange or apricot rind. Maybe some asparagus too, like someone roasted the tips a big to long, ashy and salty but full bodied.

I’m wondering if I will last.

Stream of Conscious in the Kitchen

The pace of the kitchen is serene and steady, as much as a kitchen like this one can be. Behind the expo. station I have planted myself next to a stack of plates and over the metal island the tops of the chefs heads make a bobbing kind of horizon line as they prepare themselves for what will turn out to be an unusually hectic night. Now it’s calm before the storm, but a storm that this city needs to saturate its struggling economy.

Now there is time for jokes, cracking and spattering from their mouths like grease heating up on a tepid Caphlon pan. In the 5 minutes I’ve been observing it is obvious we are all our own animals here and they are cheetahs, graceful and stealth before sprinting into a beautiful flurry. I am a prairie dog, curious and peeking out over a vast land of wonders.

There is music, bebop rhythm of silver wear being polished, burners, fired, ovens whispering with open flame and the sweet hint of laughter and random conversation.

A film of oil and sweat highlights my cheekbones and neck, and I know I’ve absorbed this indefinitely, I secrete the kitchen. So this is the “soul of a chef”, I ponder, silent.

Condiments

*

“We are all condiments, in our own way, some compliment each other better than others. “

“We all have a taste that is yet to be explored”

My nails are painted marrow red, I told him.

He has a nice mouth and exquisite palate.

Balsamic and strawberries, is how I think we should be, his preference

A little tart, a bite of something wise and earth worn

Nectarous and piquant

He tastes, I think, what a fresh bruise on skin would taste like

You’re the boss applesauce

I will say

Relent as butter would on the steaming, soft center of fresh brioche

I tell him I want to flow and fade on his mouth that way

He tells me he succumbs like a slice of Iberico ham who’s fat melts at the touch of the lips to fork to meat, hint of acorn aroma to his nostrils, that I am complex that way

And I want to fall apart the way braised meat does at the slight touch of a fork, I want his hands to do that to me.

*

When we talk of fruits I tell him I am a ripening peach in his morning glow

And he says I would be the one he would pluck from the highest branch…one he would smell from miles and travel off the beaten path to sink his teeth into

And I told him he could extract everything from me, and run down his chin, past his neck

And that I’m smiling

He says my smile is a plump Michigan cherry, bursting with honeyed, provocative juices, a bite for something ever so small and delicate

*

And I can imagine his musk is something of braised short ribs, roasted whole chicken, golden like the crevices of his joints and the sweet/saltiness of bacon and mirepoix

His mouth would taste of bourbon and Guinness.

A spirit thick as a milkshake.

*

He is one who can handle spontaneity and multiplicity. A chef in the kitchen with every burner on high. I am his fire as his hand draws the flame upward into his palm.

Condiments. We compliment each other like poached pear and fois gras.

New Beginnings and Severed Strings

I have started a new life and thus have been absent.

My writing has come to a halt but shall reignite today.

Patience loves.

Lo

vE

-H.

Nerves

Encouragement would taste of fresh baguette and truffle oil, eaten off of a paper plate, unadorned, licking fingers at the finish.

"Step Delicately"

-Photo by K. Rowe

One becomes accustomed to a home, making it cozy and pulsating with the beat of the heart as if you have wrapped yourself in a blanket.

These are the things I have become used to and am unsure if I should find other things to replace them or relish them in a little Mason Jar, glowing like fireflies on ripe fruit.

Waking facing the sunrise in my bed, slits of my eyes drinking in the blue, burgundy gold of the sun spilling over the horizon, like a gooseberry stain on white cloth, the smell of 6AM coffee, sweet/sour and vigorous

My fathers heavy steps in the kitchen above my room shuffling and meandering back and forth from burner to counter to refrigerator, the rhythm of knives and clanking bowls on granite a kind of soothing folk or jazz melody. Not actually seeing him with my own eyes but the thought of him above me, apron clad and pinched but happy brow, colors dotting the cutting boards like a painters palate.

The dirtied dishes of homemade chocolate pudding and root beer floats and my mothers lessons of how importance indulgence is. And my 1AM excursions to the fridge to fulfill my own with whipped cream cans.

The restaurant I've made my home away from bed. The back entrance beckoning me with smells only the compact kitchen there, on that street, beside the brick alleyway, can divulge, the smiles, greetings, grunts, laughs, love touches. People I know beyond the white Polo's and black dress pants. Whose souls are as scrumptious as each dish chef prepares. I would drink their blood and sweat like vintage wine and aged balsamic.

I used to have a bad taste in my mouth about this town, sour and bitter, tainting my taste buds.

But now...

Brine of the Earth

Someone declared that there are 7 basic needs to survive

There are only two that exist to me

1. Love

2. Sustenance

Everything falls into place

There is an element of food and of sharing food with someone you have grown to love (in whatever way) that evokes something…primordial…instinctual…sensual.

And because I have no one to share that inherent hunger with, a hunger for food that awakens the senses, a hunger for another’s touch…you sometimes find yourself wondering…is it fish or meat or pasta I crave? Is it the warmth of the bread beyond the crust? Or is it is full, sumptuous mouth on mine?

Truffles, enoki, chanterelle, portabella, shiitake, oyster, trompette royal, hen of the woods. The terrestrial opulence of the thick taste on my tongue curls my toes the way they do when I’m half clothed, lying, waiting for him and his scent. Wondering how or why taste and smell are connected.

To Dine with him

To watch him eat with such grace

Like a calligraphist

Lissome fingers that balance and caress

To smell the smoke from the corners of his mouth

My father’s words echo

“I never could understand how chefs are able to smoke. It effects the flavor palate, the taste buds, taste becomes muted and dull, like watching black and white TV.”

He kissed me once in the wash of streetlamps and told me he smelled and tasted a hint of truffle right below my left nostril, hovering above the bow of my lip.

To drink with him. Delicate Silhouettes of wine glasses like spider webs after rain. I told him

“Wine glasses are men and wine are women. The glass embodies the more delicate fluid, the flowery, fruity, impregnated, pungent juices of a woman. But the male, the body, releases, brings out her hidden, discrete, barely perceptible secrets that make her unique from the others, blossoms her.

And that night he poured sweet wine from his mouth to mine, with the same eloquence in the way he ate.

Did not

Spill

A

Single

Drop

on hold.

Because I know some read my words when they first wake up, I say today, patience loves...I have a good excuse...a night of epic foodstuffs and a soulmate of company.

New things for your taste later-ish :)