Crowding the Mushrooms

A couple of years ago when the movie "Julie and Julia" came out in theatres, I knew I had to see it.  Not only do I absolutely love cooking, but *obviously* have some interest in blogging as well, so I figured it would be right up my alley.  Actually, it turns out I was rather disappointed with the movie - the plot line was a little boring and I really did not find the "Julie" character to be at all endearing ... she whined way too much for my liking and I often found myself wishing the director would just stick with the story of Julia Child's life and leave the flashbacks to "Julie's" life in the ditch.  However, there is one line of the movie that has stuck with me.  It resonated in my head as soon as I heard it.  For some reason, it was one of those lines that you can instantly recognize for it's literal and metaphoric truth.   So ... after that great build up ... here's the line in question:

Don't crowd the mushrooms!

It really does make a difference!  Put too many mushrooms in the frying pan, and they just seem to get all mushy and gushy and don't saute properly.  But, if you just scatter them in their sparsely, they brown up in such a delicious manner!   The problem is, though, that I really don't want to take so much time when I'm preparing a meal.  I want the maximum result for the minimum time investment.  I want my mushrooms nicely browned, but I want to crowd them all together in the pan so I don't have to cook them in batches.

The same is so true of my life.  I want results but I often don't want to slow down and invest enough time in a project, a relationship, even in myself sometimes (!) to get the results that I desire.  I want to make a success of all that I attempt, but I don't want to spend time perfecting my craft so that I will be a success.  I want my relationships to be deep and meaningful, but can't we just text meaningfully back and forth a couple of times a day and make a go of it?   I want to manage stress better, but I don't always want to take the time to breathe deep, centre myself, and let go of the bad energy.  I want short cuts, recipes that involve nothing more than 3 steps, 5 ingredients and one pan, and problems that can be resolved in the same length of time it takes to play a few rounds of Bejeweled.

Since "Julie and Julia," I find myself periodically taking a deep breath and reminding myself not to "crowd the mushrooms."  With all the emphasis on "quality" vs. "quantity" that seems to pervade our culture, I need a constant reminder that there is no replacement for investing large amounts of time into the areas of my life that really count.  Whether it is my own physical and emotional fitness, my relationships, or my work, the measure of my success will in a large way be accounted for by how much time I have invested.   And the bottom line is that I am worth the investment.  We are given 24 hours in each day.   I'm determined in 2011 that I won't get caught up in "crowding the mushrooms" and racing around in those 24 hours, trying to fit so much in that nothing gets done properly.  Instead, I'm going to invest enough time into my own well-being to ensure success.

If my Nonna could hear me now ...

My Italian grandmother had a saying - well, truthfully, she had MANY sayings! - but the one I'm thinking about right now is:

"Primo non pensa, ultemo suspiro."

Not sure if I've spelled that right because I don't speak Italian, but basically translated it means "If you don't think now, you'll be sighing later." Or, in other words, if you don't think things through now, you will suffer later.

I want so badly to be able to communicate this idea to the next generation - only I don't know how. How do you take a body of knowledge, "wisdom" if you will, and package it up in some palatable form that a young adult or teenager will accept? Suddenly, I find myself feeling very old and at a loss to connect with my younger relatives. Was I ever that naive? That stubborn? That stupid? Okay, I freely admit to the stubbornness. I know I have always had a stubborn streak. But the stupid part? Not really - I did some stupid things, but I did them in a smart way. Does that make sense? I mean, I never went farther than I should have, never crossed a certain line into behaviour that would have put me at risk. I drank foolishly, but watched my back the whole time. There were times that I partied like there was no tomorrow, except, I always knew that there was a tomorrow! And that I had to go to work the next day, so I made sure I got just enough sleep to show up to work on time and even managed to be a hard-working productive employee.

I didn't know what I wanted to be when I "grew up," but I was ambitious enough to push my way to the top in the job I had at the time. It may not have been my life goal, but I was going to prove to myself and the world that I could do it, and do it well. And I took a fierce pride in my own ability to maintain my independence, to save as much as possible, even though it was a small amount, loving that satisfaction of a job well done, a paycheck well-earned, and a small but growing savings account.

Nothing was ever given to me, I had to work for it, and even though I envied some of my friends their sense of entitlement, I liked knowing that I could rely on myself to survive. I know that we all dream of some day winning the lottery, but truthfully, I can honestly say I don't know if I would ever have the sense of joy over a big lottery win as I could possibly have over my very first pay check. I remember looking at with such a sense of pride, knowing I had sweat buckets in a hot kitchen, scrubbed out pots and pans and deep fryers, peeled an immense amount of potatoes, and put up with the worst kind of sexual harassment that could only have happened to a 16 year old girl in the 80's, since no one in the work place would ever get away with that now. That was life in a hotel kitchen back then, male-oriented, fiercely competitive, and full of all the foul language that Gordon Ramsay now makes millions spewing on TV. No, nothing was given to me, but I earned every penny and along with the pennies, came an iron core of determination and strength of character that have stood with me all these years.

I wish I could translate that for my young relatives to understand. I wish I could instill in them a sense of determination and an appreciation for achieving a goal that you have worked hard to attain. But those are things you can not gift to another person, they have to experience for themselves by working at it. And in the mean time, I have to sit back and watch ... and pray ... and hope they don't make irrevocable mistakes, by acting without thinking now, so they will end up sighing with grief down the road.

If I had a scanner, I'd scan in a picture of my Nonna so you could see her, but instead I'll have to make do with this old photo I scanned a couple of years ago, taken when I was 17 and apprenticing to be a chef.  I'm in the first row, third from the right.  Don't we look silly in our tall white hats?  :)

What's Shaking?

Robin over at Your Daily Dose recently blogged about Compassion versus Empathy and she got me thinking about the times of struggle and pain we all go through.  Do you think there is a purpose in it all?  Robin suggests that it isn't until we have first-hand knowledge of pain that we can really be empathetic towards others.  I think she has a very valid point.

I've been looking at this big piece of equipment for quite a while now:

It's a soil screener belonging to a landscaping firm that rents property from us. At this time of year, whenever I walk to our shop in the mornings, this machine is up and running. Bumpy, rough soil is loaded into one end, and fine, nicely-sifted soil comes out the other. I keep thinking as I go by that I wish there was some kind of machine that would do the same for my heart!  Wouldn't it be great if we could put all the rough edges of our characters into a giant sifter, then stand back and watch while our attitudes, thoughts, and actions turned into fine, soft, productive "soil"?  There are so many aspects of my character that I would like to improve.  There are times when I am selfish, when I wish I would be quicker to put the needs of others before my own.  There are times when I am impatient, when I wish I was more tolerant, and slower to anger.  There are moments when I am fearful, when I wish I was courageous.  I want my character to improve, I just wish there was a magic machine that would do the work for me!

Another image caught my attention recently as well.  I was watching a program about agricultural improvements in Kenya and was fascinated to see how grains are winnowed.

Winnowing sorts the grains of wheat from the chaff.  The chaff, or husks, are lighter and so by shaking and rolling the basket of wheat, allowing a current of air to pass through, the heavier grains fall into a pile, and the lighter chaff is blown away.  Apparently there is a real art to winnowing and I can imagine it takes time to master the technique.

Watching the Kenyan women winnowing with such graceful motions, I was suddenly transfixed with the idea that although it looks beautiful from the point of view of the observer, if I was a grain of wheat, I might not be enjoying the experience nearly as much.  The grain is tossed about, rocked back and forth and shaken.  I don't know about you, but I don't like it when my life is tossed, rocked and shaken.  It's painful.  It's uncomfortable.  It's positively unsettling!  But maybe that is why we experience times like that in our lives, in order for the wheat to be sorted from the chaff.

I guess believing that there might be some purpose to the painful times of our lives helps us to get through them.  If we think it is all in vain, then there are times when it would be absolutely unbearable.  So the next time it feels like my world is being shaken, I'm going to try to remind myself that maybe I am going through a winnowing process, an opportunity for my character to improve and for me to come out the other side a little finer, a little softer, and perhaps as Robin pointed out, a little more empathetic towards others.