In Which Claire Misses her Old Job

I've just finished watching "Kitchen Confidential". Yes, the one based on Anthony Bourdain's very famous book. Its a pretty good programme, and makes me laugh, but it also serves the purpose of reminding me of a few things.

Firstly, I miss the kitchen. Its insane, and hot, and my God it is so hard on your body, but theres a certain mad energy that comes from putting out 40 meals an hour and its addictive. You start work in the middle of the afternoon and the first few hours are a frantic rush to get everything prepped (Mise en plus, if you're posh) in time for service, then about 6 o'clock you get five minutes to stuff some food in your mouth, knock back three short espressos and smoke four cigarettes before the madness begins. Then there's about three or four hours in which you literally don't have time to stop even for a minute, because there's always ten things on the grill, and five pans on the go, and you're both screaming at and being screamed at by fellow chefs and wait staff and trying to coordinate the larder chef with the meats chef and get clean plates from the kitchenhand and get the wait staff to get this fucking food out now if they send it back because its gone cold it'll be your guts for garters why can't wait staff take their jobs seriously and all the while you're trying to find three seconds to get some water in your mouth because its hotter than hell and there is sweat running down your front and your back and in the summer down your legs too and it runs down your face and gets in your eyes and then your fingers and legs start to cramp up because you're having major salt deficiencies because you've sweated out every mineral known to man and a couple of others nobody has heard of and then all of a sudden its "last order in" and you collapse out the back of the kitchen with a bucket sized cup (no glass in kitchens) of coca cola because you need the sugar and caffeine because once you've got your breath back you have to clean the kitchen from base to apex.
And all the while you're supposed to keep your cool, because you're a professional, and not throw your very expensive knives at people, no matter how much they might be begging for it. And you get home at 2am and can't sleep until four because you're so buzzed from work, and then you get up at midday and do the whole thing again.

And strangely enough, I miss that. I miss the madness and the energy and the creativity and working as a team and the satisfaction of having done a really good job. Secretly I also think one of the reasons I miss it is because I miss the gratification of having visible results to my work. I put the effort in, I cook something awesome, and for a second before the wait person takes it out, I can see that I made something good.
You don't so much get that in academia.
Also, I miss playing with my knives.

Another reason I think I miss cooking professionally is the sheer earthy pleasure of it all. You push your body to its limit, but then you reward yourself with the finest food, and good wine, and life becomes far more focused on the sheer physical and tangible delights of the culinary arts.

I have been thinking recently about things like body image and food, and I have come to some decisions.
I could be thin.
I could stop eating beautiful crumbly Danish feta, and hand made tortillas and chili I made from scratch and grilled chicken salads with olive oil, basil croutons and blue cheese dressing and Indian style curried vegetables with cashews and peanut satay stirfrys and corn crackers with organic peanut butter and spaghetti bolognaise and stop drinking a glass of wine with most of my meals and cut down on the raw sugar I put in my tea and always say no to dessert.
I could do all that.
But really, whats the point?
I would be thin, but what else. If anyone can tell me a reason, besides being thin, why I should give up all those beautiful things, I would be keen to hear it.
I think I would be miserable as all fuck.
I don't believe that one should eat everything that comes across ones path, and I've noticed especially in this country that there is a lot of really average food out there, and I do believe we have a responsibility to those around us to stay healthy, but to deny oneself the purest pleasure of good food, cooked well and enjoyed without guilt, is to deny oneself an essential part of life. Good food doesn't mean its bad for you. Most of the time in fact, the opposite is true, its just that so often people are hung up on the latest fad diet. We've been cooking food as long as we've been around, I think we might have got a couple of things right, don't you?
We have to eat, there is no way around it. It really does my loaf that so many people have so many hangups about food (especially women) because it can bring so much pleasure.
Food is sensual, in every meaning of the word, and why live on rice crackers and celery when there are literally worlds of gastronomic pleasure out there waiting to be explored.
So you can be thin?

Seems like too high a price for me.