I love evil

After 4 years of scraping sandwiches, burning eggs, over salting foods, I've taken to the kitchen to slice and sear out a better life. No more filling stomach vacancy with processed oreos, or finishing every dish with 3 dollar gyoza. Cooking. Ingredients. Well.

As for many chefs I have my mother to thank for the goodness at the table, and thus the goodness in my mouth. At every visit home, I am mystifyed at the amount of food consumed versus the notches in my waistline. It's a bubble in the natural laws of physics. In a yellow stucco house, tortilla soups, meat and potatoes, hash browns, homemade egg rolls are all consumed with such joy; such enthusiasm, yet my body displays none of the baggage. Another testament to eating cooked food instead of frozen crammed pre-dinners.

Being a confessed believer, one of my guilty pleasures is reading memoirs of chefs. Are all cooks unbelievers? Hardly, but I've noticed that all great chefs have some common endearing qualities, battle scars, a great sense of pride, and mouth profane as a sailor. I probably shouldn't savor his words or his writing... but i do. It's reading

One of my current inspirations, Anthony Bourdain has done me two great favors in this endeavor.
1. Never be a cook
2. Hard Work pays off

Never be a cook - cooking is fun. it's a lot of fun. A professional chef, cook all the time right? Wrong. You work late nights, you haul out a lot of meals, farm little thanks, and often do menial tasks day in and day out. I imagine I would be crying after a week of washing dishes, and then suicidal after breaking down chickens for 2 years. I will stick to my minor experiments in the kitchen, and bow in humility at professional chefs that live a decidedly very different lifestyle.

Hard Work pays off - Some of the greatest chefs, the leaders of food with heart and soul are those that labored from janitor to assistant chef, to line cook, ot head chef. Their knowledge was rarely confined to a single location. Often their mental library was written crooked page by crooked page though a twisted journey through small kitchens, fast food shacks, hotels, mom and pop shops. And this journey unlike frodo baggins, took years to get started, and even once the success started to stick together, it took more years.

It is such a hope. Such a image of what much of the christian life is! Hard work, hard work, hard work. Chefs specifically place hotshot chefs in lower stations to teach them discipline, and to check their egos. As anthony bourdain has said:

I can teach skill. I can't teach character.

In a similar fashion, anyone can read the bible, anyone can skim and teach the bible. But who is there that has the bible character. Close the trap, and when the endless chatter stops, what story with a person's actions tell?

And what of the menial and grueling bible reading and meditations on God? weeks and years may pass before a whisper of gold will be spun, but that gold thread will be twice the strength of hypocrisy, or shallow character.

How weak, how simple i am right now. To struggle with the basics. how shall i assemble a full view of God, when i do not know all the parts of his word? How will i stand tall in adversity if i do not reflex in scripture? And how will I not serve if my actions and my temperment is not hammered and discipled in Godliness? And how shall I pour forth rich fountains of knowledge, and the vibrant life of Christ if my tongue has not been scolded by the fruits of the spirit.

Oh wretched man am I.

Wrapping up: In the same way that many chefs have become great by paying my dues, I hope to attain the holiness, or the vision of God by paying mine, even if I may be on the level of spiritual dishwashing. I guess some good does come from reading evil.