Hello, everyone. Looks like I might be back.
I've been writing and self-publishing on the internet for about 10 years now, off and on. During that time, I've moved four times, graduated, and been through several cycles of employment. I started writing as a way to manage with what I'd term as a difficult living situation, one which I often wondered if I could escape through rather drastic and final measures. Suffice to say I didn't, and well, here I am.
Over the years I've helmed a few blogging projects, most of which can be found quite easily with a cursory search. Usually tied up in concerns of surviving mundane things like studying and struggling with the concept of responsible adulthood (or what passes for it these days), I sort of lost my way towards "the end", as it stands, and the immediate previous opus is not easily palatable as I struggle with my ongoing mental and physical health, and my career. Heavy going at the best of times.
However, on a more positive note, I author the programme notes for Truro Cathedral choir's termly "big concerts" - while it might not be the biggest gig in writing today, nothing really beats having your name published and having people enjoy your work, and I'm always looking for more (samples available on request). I enjoy a decent relationship with my copy editor, the Director of Music, and it helps keep my hand in as I slowly get further and further from any kind of regular routine as my graduation sinks gradually into history.
So what am I doing here? I suppose you could say I'm on a mission from God. Over the end of the choir term and tour to Slovakia, I read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Read might be an understatement; I had it on my everywhere I went, shoved into a particularly capacious pocket on the front of a pair of shorts, on hand for any second of professional inactivity that could be used as digesting every word. Although a comparative neophyte in the ways of Bourdain, I see a kindred spirit, a madman who kept at it and somehow succeeded. Someone who saw terrible darkness and managed to claw out of it.
Until he didn't.
The final part of Kitchen Confidential is now particularly difficult and bittersweet. As we reach the end of our book, Bourdain confesses the temptation of ending it all, but choosing not to, because he enjoys his life after all. All his talk of aspic vol-au-vents and shitty Sunday brunches are part of his monomythical journey, and really, really, he likes being alive.
And then he wasn't.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Don't even think I'm trying to compare myself to him in any meaningful and practical way, but something that struck me from the book is how fine the line between Lay Clerk and Line Cook is - both are to be found working odd hours professionally apart from most of the general populace, grumpy, distrusting of people, drinking heavily, all while under the command of a powerful visionary to produce goods at their behest as per exact orders for that most dreadful aforementioned enemy, the general public; even one of my best friends here in Truro is both. This is all a massive generalisation of course, but! My musical colleagues, please think of a time when your musical opinion of a matter is not in line with the decision your director has made, and tell me the tales of your success! There is benevolence, after all.
Reading this memoir, and indeed, purchasing Les Halles and Appetites has reminded me of actually how much I enjoy food as well. That said, there are some caveats. Living as an autistic person, I have quite a limited diet in many ways, down mostly to my sensory overload problems - I call this "Texture Creep", where something just feels wrong (feel free to borrow and use that term as you see fit for yourself, it's been very helpful for me) - I have big problems with mixing wet and dry foods on the same plate, which I understand is quite common, alongside various others concerned with consistency/temperature/intensity of flavour. I've made great strides over the years, but at the end of the day I'm still far more likely to just eat a big bowl of meat and rice and be done because it's safe.
What I'm doing here, well, it's good for me to write. And I might as well write recipes for food I like and make and enjoy. And I might as well try for something positive, for God's sakes. In hindsight, one of the mistakes for previous blogs I made was trying to set an overly-energetic rota for content that, honestly, I just didn't have the energy for. I have my ideas about this, so hopefully I can keep up with things and be okay! That's all we need at the moment: okay. I can keep all the hatchets in the doorpost and still turn out a plate of food.
I don't pretend to have any training, and thanks to my dyspraxia, my slicing and dicing speed and technique leaves a lot to be desired, but we get there. It can be done, just slowly and a bit messier than I would like. Anything I use here I'll try and link to - I don't want to sound like a total wanker but there really are some excellent local ingredients and suppliers round Cornwall, so it'd be rude not to.
If you know which end of a knife you should be holding, then you're in as good a place to start as anyone.
I've been writing and self-publishing on the internet for about 10 years now, off and on. During that time, I've moved four times, graduated, and been through several cycles of employment. I started writing as a way to manage with what I'd term as a difficult living situation, one which I often wondered if I could escape through rather drastic and final measures. Suffice to say I didn't, and well, here I am.
Over the years I've helmed a few blogging projects, most of which can be found quite easily with a cursory search. Usually tied up in concerns of surviving mundane things like studying and struggling with the concept of responsible adulthood (or what passes for it these days), I sort of lost my way towards "the end", as it stands, and the immediate previous opus is not easily palatable as I struggle with my ongoing mental and physical health, and my career. Heavy going at the best of times.
However, on a more positive note, I author the programme notes for Truro Cathedral choir's termly "big concerts" - while it might not be the biggest gig in writing today, nothing really beats having your name published and having people enjoy your work, and I'm always looking for more (samples available on request). I enjoy a decent relationship with my copy editor, the Director of Music, and it helps keep my hand in as I slowly get further and further from any kind of regular routine as my graduation sinks gradually into history.
So what am I doing here? I suppose you could say I'm on a mission from God. Over the end of the choir term and tour to Slovakia, I read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Read might be an understatement; I had it on my everywhere I went, shoved into a particularly capacious pocket on the front of a pair of shorts, on hand for any second of professional inactivity that could be used as digesting every word. Although a comparative neophyte in the ways of Bourdain, I see a kindred spirit, a madman who kept at it and somehow succeeded. Someone who saw terrible darkness and managed to claw out of it.
Until he didn't.
The final part of Kitchen Confidential is now particularly difficult and bittersweet. As we reach the end of our book, Bourdain confesses the temptation of ending it all, but choosing not to, because he enjoys his life after all. All his talk of aspic vol-au-vents and shitty Sunday brunches are part of his monomythical journey, and really, really, he likes being alive.
And then he wasn't.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Don't even think I'm trying to compare myself to him in any meaningful and practical way, but something that struck me from the book is how fine the line between Lay Clerk and Line Cook is - both are to be found working odd hours professionally apart from most of the general populace, grumpy, distrusting of people, drinking heavily, all while under the command of a powerful visionary to produce goods at their behest as per exact orders for that most dreadful aforementioned enemy, the general public; even one of my best friends here in Truro is both. This is all a massive generalisation of course, but! My musical colleagues, please think of a time when your musical opinion of a matter is not in line with the decision your director has made, and tell me the tales of your success! There is benevolence, after all.
Reading this memoir, and indeed, purchasing Les Halles and Appetites has reminded me of actually how much I enjoy food as well. That said, there are some caveats. Living as an autistic person, I have quite a limited diet in many ways, down mostly to my sensory overload problems - I call this "Texture Creep", where something just feels wrong (feel free to borrow and use that term as you see fit for yourself, it's been very helpful for me) - I have big problems with mixing wet and dry foods on the same plate, which I understand is quite common, alongside various others concerned with consistency/temperature/intensity of flavour. I've made great strides over the years, but at the end of the day I'm still far more likely to just eat a big bowl of meat and rice and be done because it's safe.
What I'm doing here, well, it's good for me to write. And I might as well write recipes for food I like and make and enjoy. And I might as well try for something positive, for God's sakes. In hindsight, one of the mistakes for previous blogs I made was trying to set an overly-energetic rota for content that, honestly, I just didn't have the energy for. I have my ideas about this, so hopefully I can keep up with things and be okay! That's all we need at the moment: okay. I can keep all the hatchets in the doorpost and still turn out a plate of food.
I don't pretend to have any training, and thanks to my dyspraxia, my slicing and dicing speed and technique leaves a lot to be desired, but we get there. It can be done, just slowly and a bit messier than I would like. Anything I use here I'll try and link to - I don't want to sound like a total wanker but there really are some excellent local ingredients and suppliers round Cornwall, so it'd be rude not to.
If you know which end of a knife you should be holding, then you're in as good a place to start as anyone.
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