Sorry for missing last week, friends and neighbors. We landed the metaphorical plane on Thanksgiving, but the cost was completely wiping out my personal energy reserves. Last Friday, I literally spent half the day sleeping.
I’m feeling a bit more together now, and I really wanted to get this post out there before Thanksgiving was too far from our minds. Appropriately, I’d like to start this post off by thanking you all for your patience.
So… what does gratitude look like in the culinary world?
Idealism and practicality need not be enemies… as long as you keep your priorities straight.
Some time ago, I swung by a bakery I used to work at to try out a new pastry and see some of my old friends. The case and display looked much the same as ever, despite the high staff turnover. I picked out the new pastry- a riff on one of their staples- and took it outside for a discreet bite. That turned out to be the best course of action since no one could then see me throw the rest in the trash and quickly chug from my water bottle. I’d never really cared for that particular pastry in the first place, but somehow it had gotten worse since I left. The pastry itself was utterly tasteless, the icing oddly chemical, and the filling boring.
A while later, I texted a friend of mine who still worked there about it and asked what had changed. “Oh, yeah… we changed the recipe because the original one wasn’t coming out right from the new machine. It kinda sucks, but at least we’re not mixing it by hand anymore.”
What about the icing? This isn’t fondant…
“Nope, it’s this new stuff made with modelling chocolate, corn syrup… I think it tastes foul, but it’s easier to work with.”
As soon as you stop caring about making good products in favor of making sellable products efficiently, you’ve made a classic “deal with the devil”- and it won’t always end well.
The rain is dripping off my coat as I fumble finding the right key in the dim early-morning light outside the bakery. House key, house key, bike lock key, multi-tool, office key… got it. A little finagling and I’m in out of the rain. At least there’s that. Autumn in Portland heralds the rainy season.
“Isn’t every month in Portland the ‘rainy season’ though?”
Yes. Haha, you’re very funny.
Quickly locking the door behind me and switching off the alarm, I put the water kettle on to boil then turn on the lights in the kitchen. There’s some slight detritus from the last shift, but overall my team keeps things clean and tidy. I see the small pile of recipes at my station that apparently don’t scale correctly or need to be re-written, along with the daily production checklist I made for my team. I’ll deal with those later- there’s a bigger fish to dry waiting in the office.
Opening the office door, I drop my bag on the desk and switch on the light. Sitting in front of me in my boss’s spreadsheet outlining our Thanksgiving orders and their due dates. We have over 2000 pies due between now and Christmas, and private orders are still coming in. This was always going to be the biggest challenge of the year, and of this job. I knew it. I figured I’d be prepared. I’d done some banquet organizing and logistics work before, after all. How much more different could this be?
Staring down at the spreadsheet, I can already feel the television static fuzzing my vision. I’ve got a lot of work to do, and not a lot of time to do it.
Tea first, though.
It’s rare to work in a bakery where you are the first person in at 6:30 AM. I’ve spent a while waking up to start work at 2 am, and there’s other bakers who start work even earlier.
That’s not where I am now though. What I’m doing now is unlocking the door, shutting off the alarm, turning on the lights and starting the ovens leisurely late in the morning before I drop my bag at my desk. I have one of those now too- a desk, half an office, and “my station” in the corner of the kitchen where I can see, supervise, and be found when needed. I’m the pastry chef, after all.
Here I thought the Kwisatz Haderach could be in many places at once.
CW: Talk about suicide, suicidal ideation, and depression.
Eight months ago, alone at work with a heavy to-do list and late in the afternoon, I wanted to end my life.
I was beyond exhausted and frustrated. It was shortly after Passover and I felt lonely, lost, and hopeless. I felt like my career was at a dead end, and I was burning myself out in an increasingly thankless, stressful, and miserable job for no gain. I was drinking too much. I was taking too much caffeine. My relationships with my family were suffering. I felt resentful of everything and everyone.
All my coping mechanisms that had carried me through so much- meditation, exercise, reading, even writing- were failing me. I was sore and exhausted and bored with exercise. My meditation was rote routine and fruitless. Reading was still good, but I had lost the ability to calm down enough to read a paperback. Audiobooks were just entertaining noise in my ears. I was always stressed about the next shift, the next week, the next month, and what new nightmares would be coming down the chute that I would- inevitably- have to handle.
I never had a plan for how I would off myself, but I did debate how to take care of Emily beforehand. How could I quietly empty my bank account into hers to cover as many expenses as possible? How could I redirect bills? Farther and farther, deeper and deeper as I stared into an abyss of tart shells and almond paste.
Then I thought “What the actual fuck am I doing? This is fucked up. I need to pull out of this fast. I need to put something else in my brain.” Fortunately, I had just finished downloading a new Raymond Chandler mystery novel on Libby. I plugged in headphones and finished my shift to the sound of Phillip Marlowe getting his ass kicked by Los Angeles mobsters.
The nadir of my mental health at that point took about ten minutes. I have been an EMT. I have been in car accidents, lost patients, been actively threatened and assaulted by patients, tended to grotesquely injured people, some of whom didn’t survive.
This was the most scared I have ever been in my professional life… and it was because my mind, body, and heart just couldn’t take it anymore.
The Black Hat Baker 