From TV Reporter to the Chef I Always Was
I’m sure we’ve already had dinner together. . . on TV.
Nine years ago I left the one job I’d done most of my adult life. As a hotshot television reporter in New York the world was as they say, my oyster.
Along the way there had been a lot of awards and rewards for the storytelling I’d done. But still one day with a contract negotiation on the table I’d just walked away from a job at NBC’s owned and operated flagship station. I was 44 years old and there were things I needed to do. I embarked on an acting career. I started a television production company. And by everyday standards I did okay. But none of the things I tried reached deep enough into my soul space to soothe me. Then one day I made some biscuits the way my grandmother had taught me more than 30 years ago. I was making them for the pictures I was going to put on a website my partner and I were building.
So I made a movie about it. It was a silent movie with subtitles and some campy music but it was pure magic to me. Over a lifetime I’ve probably made those same biscuits hundreds of times and never really saw the process the way I saw it in that movie. And I never really saw how cooking had been the one thing in my life that took me to a nether place. In the cocoon of smells, textures, the heat and the cold I would always get lost. And by rote the recipes of my childhood would flood my mind like old friends who’d come to visit.
My brain was a cookbook complete with filmstrips of the conversations I’d had with my grandma and my mother. I could call up from the vault the nuances I’d gained from trial and error.
As a teenager I’d cooked complete Thanksgiving dinners from turkey and stuffing to the mashed potatoes and gravy. There were pies, cakes, cinnamon rolls, banana bread, macaroni and cheese and meatloaf. Every time I went into the vault I rediscovered pieces of the sanctuary that I’d found in a home that wasn’t always a safe place when I was a kid. Little by little I was acquainting myself with the one thing that was engrained so deep in the fabric of my soul it would take three lifetimes to remove all of the wonderful residue.
It had taken countless jobs and pursuits over my life to bring me to the one place that was just down the hall to the right. I’d had the same room everywhere I’d lived. Now as a middle aged man, my life finally had meaning. I had literally found the place where all the pieces fit. I had found my kitchen.
