The BHB’s Latest Food Reads

Tuesdays are Tart Days.
After two days of prepping, making my fillings and setting up my mise en place, I walk in to the bakery of Tuesday, put my stuff down, put on my apron, and prepare to spend the first few hours of my day making upwards of 300 individual 4-inch tarts.

If my mise en place is perfect, I barely have to move. I can just pull down tray after tray, piping or scoop the fillings with an automatic motion, and slip into The Zone. I might perk up to answer questions, take in orders, or help out another baker, but otherwise I’m in my own world.

It’s a perfect time to get some reading in.

A series of books on a shelf. Visible titles are “Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain” “32 Yolks by Eric Ripert,” “The Art of Eaing by M.F.K. Fisher”, “Consider The Fork” by Bee Wilson, “The Physiology of Taste” by Brillat-Savarin,  Anthony Bourdain: The Last Interviews, “ and “Dirt” by Bill Buford
Part of my small food writing library. Recipe books take up another set of shelves.
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It’s All Energy- Personal, Physical, Financial, and Deciding Where It All Goes

If there is one rule I’ve learned that has radically transformed my life, it’s the Ten Words that form the heart of my book “Blood, Sweat, and Butter-“

You Always Have Time For The Things You Make Time For.”

The collary and counterpart to this best expressed with the phrase, “Where attention goes, energy flows.”

That doesn’t just mean your personal energy… and your bank account will tell you it’s not just some freaky woo-woo stuff. The sooner you learn about where you are putting your time, your attention, your money- in other words, your energy, the sooner you start making wiser decisions about it.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com
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5 Simple Steps to Do the Thing

I have been thinking about what to write in this blog post since I left work yesterday afternoon. In the time between then and now, I was preparing myself to sit down and write.
I also went for a long hike around Mt. Tabor, enjoyed a game night with my housemates, baked a pie, had a bit too much whiskey, slept in, ate breakfast, went for a run, meditated, showered, gamed a bit, and fixed myself a cup of tea.

All of it has been in service to writing this, because if you want to write about Life and Food and Joy and Good Things, a big part of it is getting those things in your life. The bigger part is actually sitting down and writing the thing. Far from being the sole difficulty of creatives, dreamers and nutcases like me, you can find difficulty in Doing the Thing in just about any human pursuit. I think it’s something to do with being sentient robots made of meat and untanned leather, stuck on a speck of dirt rocketing through the void.

So let’s go through my Five Simple Steps to Do The Thing together!

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The Long Train Coming- Finding Balance Between Patience and Relentlessness

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, first off- thank you!

Secondly, I hope that I have made one thing clear about my life “behind the scenes” of these missives; that is that I still consider myself a “work in progress.”

As much as a self-help advice tone as this blog takes, in all honesty I have to admit that it’s because I am working on it for- and on- myself. Given that and the fact that my own first book was essentially a self-help book (albeit focused on fitness,) it’s not surprising that I pick up some self-help books myself. You learn to write by reading, after all.

Most of them say the same kind of things; truly, some wisdom IS universal, and writers just put different curtains on it. One book I finished recently, however, pulled off a little twist that made me smile.

The author meditating
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Taking a Break for Ambition

When it comes to ambition, goal setting, and planning- whenever someone says “there wasn’t room for doubt,” I don’t think that’s true. I think they didn’t MAKE room for doubt.

That sounds almost cynical and defeatist- and I suppose it could be taken that way. I won’t pretend to be some grand philosopher on that. I’m an anxious person. “Doubting” is as natural to me as lemonade on a hot day- as is planning, contingency, and fear-setting, for better or worse.

If Jesus can have a moment of doubt at Gethsemane, I’m pretty sure us poor mortals can wake up in the morning and wonder if we’re still going the way we want to in life. Those moments are important, because that’s when you make the turns that get you there. Don’t cheat yourself by removing room to doubt.

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