Inspired by Julie's Blog Post

I was just cruising through my girls' blogs. It has been a while since I even treated on blog territory. Facebook has torn me away from my blog. As much as I appreciated the seemingly instant gratification of communicating one message to multiple readers at once (as is the case in blogland), nothing can surpass Facebook in terms of ease of instant correspondence.

Oh well....

I think I got intimidated by the long ass entry I would have to write after my return from France. I kept putting it off. Then, every time I thought about blogging, I knew it would require a huge time commitment.

Suffice it to say that I had a great time in France. Let's move on.

I'm going to forgive myself the failure to recount that trip in exquisite detail and just continue with regular daily banter.

Anyway, back to Julie's post. She encouraged her blog readers to grab the nearest book and copy the 5th line from page 56.

I am currently reading "Kitchen Confidential" (and yes, I know I'm supposed to set a book title in italics or underline, but I don't know how to do that on Blogger) by Anthony Bourdain. It is a great read.

So, line 5 as it appears on page 56 is as follows:

Line Cooking-the real business of preparing the food you eat-- is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way."

Julie then encourages her readers to convey the next two or three lines. Here they are:

The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going ot mess around with the chef's recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions.

I kind of enjoy reading about this profession. I have no experience with it. My culinary expertise consists of chopping veggies and tossing a frozen pizza into the oven.

Anthony Bourdain has a show called "No Reservations." You should check it out (and his book if you can). He is very articulate, very cheeky, and very entertaining.

Thanks, Jules, for getting me to break my blog ice after all this time. Go ahead..raise the topic of books and try to keep me quiet!!