Gastronomique

Cooking as an art has seen a popularity explosion in America over the last 15 years. From dedicated cooking channels to reality cooking shows, from the Slow Food Movement and backlash against the fast food industry to boom in organic/fresh grocers like Whole Foods. Cooking has and continues to be an activity where I find peace. To focus on creating something exquisite and present it for others to savor is not only rewarding but meditative. I must own 50 cookbooks on various cooking subjects and recipes but it is Thomas Keller's French Laundry Cookbook that inspires the name of this blog.

Rather then the typical organized listing of recipes, Keller entitles many of his chapters "The Importance of ___". From building good relationships with specialty vendors, to big pot blanching, to the importance of staff dinner, each chapter helps the reader understand why professional cooking is a holistic approach to both people and ingredients. I find Keller's philosophies and passions apply to so much of life outside of cooking that I hope this blog will serve as my personal interpretation of this idea in software, society, and the Bay Area.

Underindulgence

I grew up in what would certainly be considered a modest to low income family in America. Both my parents were teachers in an affluent city whose primary constituents were doctors, lawyers, and retired movie stars. My family made due with what was available and if there was one lesson we learned it was sharing. Now most people think of sharing as that altruistic forfeiture in which one makes some sacrifice so that another may benefit.

20 Years later I have witnessed a variation of sharing which has become the horror of my place of work. Normally, I shrug this type of offense to the office idiot or perhaps the nameless dirty neighborhood filth-leprechaun who sneaks in to perform some vial offense that employees later come upon in the kitchen and exclaim "Holy Christ...who filled the sink with leftover curry?!"

This particular Offender has decided that whatever free office breakfast, lunch, or snack is offered they will partake of exactly 1/2 an item and leave the rest for another (sharing right?). Now the polite, if not sanitary, way to do this would be cut the item in half. Hey there is even a knife right there! Unfortunately, evidence would suggest The Offender simply uses their mighty cake-hole grinders to tear off a piece of the item leaving behind the rest for some poor soul to stumble upon and ponder "What the hell happened here?".

In the spirit of my advice to voters this last election who gave Bush the deuce run; I plead to The Offender... If you can't finish a whole muffin, consider abstaining this time around.