Cascading Success: Little Wins and Granting Grace

June 30, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

I’m writing this post while sitting at a beautiful new desk in the corner of my bedroom. It’s a 1940s Chippendale reproduction secretary desk- the kind that opens outward and contains cubbies, drawers, nooks, and secret compartments inside. It’s seen better days, but except for a little hardware and some polishing, the desk is in excellent condition.

It’s the kind of desk that fits my “dark academia hobbit” vibe perfectly. Sitting down at it just makes me want to write, and even better- I got it for free off of someone’s curb. It belonged to the original owner’s grandmother and it’s just “had its time with them.” They were glad it was being adopted by a writer though instead of winding up in a landfill.

I bring it up because, in the last week or so, various aspects of my life have turned for the better. I’m finally starting to lose weight again, my money management has improved so that I’m actually able to save again, and I’ve successfully pitched two new desserts at work in addition to getting a cost-of-living pay increase.

My dad would say “Don’t question it, just say thanks and carry on.” It’s a typically Jewish superstitious mindset- “When good things happen, don’t question it and don’t express too much happiness or it’ll all go away.” I catch myself in that all the time. I rarely say “everything’s great”- it’s always “I’m doing alright.” “Things could always be better” as a Jewish mental/emotional/spiritual/supernatural insurance against things getting worse.

I am starting to question and wonder about this, though, simply because this isn’t the first time it’s happened. A feeling of something “clicking” into place and unlocking a cosmic level-up. The best that I can tell, it’s because success cascades, and “winning” once can inspire you to succeed in other areas, consciously or not.

A deskscape of an old-fashioned secretary desk with a laptop, a candle, a wine glass, and an ipad playing music. — A better computer that can fit nicely inside with the front closed will be next, but you have to admit this is classy and cozy as hell.

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Seeking Stillness for the End of the World

June 16, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

“The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day.”
– Marcel Proust

All you can do some days is keep going.

I come into the kitchen and assess the production list for the day, keenly aware of my struggles to lose weight again.

Next comes reviewing the banquets for the day and make sure I block out time to individually decorate and tray the desserts people paid for, knowing that people I called friends are agitating for my death (intentionally or not) because I’m a Jew.

I build out the list, grab ingredients, and start mixing the day’s breads, fully conscious that my government is a joke and that folks like me are continually convinced to focus their ire on each other than the higher-ups with every reason to keeps us all angry and hateful all the time.

I make my silly little pastries, bake my silly little breads, and carry on like none of it is disappointing and hurtful and frustrating and sad. I do it because I know someone out there IS disappointed, hurt, frustrated, and sad, and what I make can be the One Good Thing that they get to enjoy today.

I can grieve. I can rage and piss and moan and cry… but not when I’m baking. There’s someone else’s day at stake then, and it’s not mine to ruin.

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Let The Rain Fall

May 6, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Someone told me long ago
There’s a calm before the storm
I know, it’s been comin’ for some time
When it’s over, so they say
It’ll rain a sunny day
I know, shinin’ down like water
I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?
I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?
Comin’ down on a sunny day

– Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Have You Ever Seen The Rain”

The back deck of Belmont Station on Stark is almost uncomfortably warm. They have the heaters on, and it’s nearly empty except for a young man flipping through his phone, an older man talking to the Lord, and me. I’d probably be more comfortable without my sweater on, but I don’t want to look after something else or give my neuroses one more thing to check the seat for when I eventually leave.

It’s the light, on-and-off rain that Portland knows so well tapping on the windows and skylights, and I wonder if their sealing heat was part of the calculus that called for the (not cheap to run) electric heaters. Any notion of “spring” out here is only confirmed or denied by plant life and we all know that they just go on instinct. A sweater and a denim cloak in May? That’s about right. “Putting away heavy clothes” is something other places do.

The beers are dark and good, short 4-ounce pours so I can try a few without breaking the bank. Belmont always has an interesting selection, and it’s rare I do the same beer over and over again in a sitting.

Let it pour. The beer, the rain, the words, the times- let it all pour.

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Spruce Tips and Rum Sips

April 28, 2024April 28, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

I get so tired of this world sometimes.

The ignorance, the arrogance, and the eager cruelty on parade into our eyes and brains (whether in caution or praise) gets to be way too much after a while.

Earlier this week was Passover. We didn’t do a Seder this year because timing and activity didn’t work out in our favor. Instead, Emily made chicken satay for dinner. I sat on the porch typing away at this piece after having scrolled through far too much nonsense. That’s one reason this blog post is so late- I simply haven’t had the bandwidth after coming back from Philadelphia.

I finished a small glass of grog (because rum is alright for Passover and I had rice lager waiting to be paired with dinner) and I chatted with a dear friend about the logistics of making Sephardic matzo for a change- as opposed to the hard, cracker-like Ashkenazi matzah I’ve had my entire life.

I wore white linen, watched the light change on Mount Tabor as the sun went down, and I’m listened to Ladino music as I wrote (but Zac Brown Band’s tribute to Jimmy Buffett, “Pirates and Parrots,” is still in my head.)

I spent the day in the sun. Here’s what I have to say about it all.

Glad I finally found a tweed vest that goes with that hat. Thanks Goodwill!

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A Brief Homecoming

April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

“A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

I knew that a lot had changed at my old culinary school before I turned off the Black Horse Pike in Mays Landing into the campus. There were better and brighter signs on the road to the parking lots, for starters. I peeked down drives slowly, trying to remember which lots were for students and faculty and which ones a visitor would go unnoticed in.

The larger one in the back of the campus- now shaded by sun covers that doubled as solar energy panels- fit the bill and it was right near the main entrance that I rarely used as a student. Students always went in a side door near a smaller lot, closer to the majority of the classrooms and kitchens. Not that too many young culinarians still used it. Class sizes apparently plummeted due to COVID and the Culinary Industry Brain Drain. Even coming from a community college, culinary school wasn’t a winning proposition for young people tight on money and prospects. It was a place now for two kinds of students- the passionate, and the lost.

Fortunately, those are exactly the kinds of folks that have kept the industry moving for years. I walked up the wide, low concrete steps and pushed open the door. Rather than noise from busy kitchens and clamoring students in pressed white uniforms, I’m greeted by silence- and the mingled smells of butter, hot fat, flour, bread ovens, and cold vegetables. I can never forget that smell. Some things haven’t changed at all.

“Welcome back, Matt.”