Too Many Cooks Read Online Free PDF

“Hmm.”
    I bristle, feeling the need to defend my reputation. “For what it’s worth, I actually think my lack of professional training has been an asset.”
    â€œAnd how is that?”
    â€œI write recipes for home cooks, who don’t have professional training either. So if a chef gives me a recipe, and I screw it up, chances are a home cook will screw it up, too. I streamline the process to make sure a dodo like me could follow it.”
    â€œAh. I see. How did you get into this line of work?”
    â€œIt’s kind of a long story.”
    â€œIs it interesting?”
    â€œSorry?”
    â€œThe story. Is it interesting? If it’s interesting, I’d love to hear it.”
    I hesitate. “I mean . . . I’m sure some people find it interesting.”
    An uncomfortable silence hangs between us. “Well?” she finally says. “What’s the story, then?”
    I gnaw at my thumbnail, wondering how to condense a long story involving Sam, an art history degree, a cake book, and a mom who loved fake cheese into a story that might interest one of Hollywood’s most famous stars. I’m pretty sure this is impossible.
    Nevertheless, I give Natasha an abbreviated version of my bizarre career track. As I talk, the panic I felt as I approached college graduation returns, pulsing through my veins as if I’m twenty-two again. By that point, all of my other friends had jobs or acceptances to law or medical school, but I had nothing—not even a request for an interview. Why had I majored in art history? Why hadn’t I done something practical like economics or accounting? The choice was so unlike me. Every decision I’d made before that one had been cautious and pragmatic—holding down multiple jobs, living with my parents for longer than necessary, learning Spanish. But when I attended my first art history lecture with Professor Lawrence Davis, an authority on modern art, I found myself hanging on his every word. I’d always loved learning for learning’s sake, but he took that passion to a new level. Who knew learning could be so fun? That not everything in life had to feel like a chore? Growing up, my favorite books and TV shows depicted college as a liberating rite of passage, four years of exploration and freedom and fun. Now I was experiencing that high for myself, and no one could stop me.
    The problem, I discovered, was that my decision to throw caution to the wind might have served me better if I’d majored in accounting and just taken up a crazy hobby. The job market for art history majors was bleak, and I cursed myself for following my heart and not my head. I was moments away from applying for a job as an insurance sales representative, when, to my infinite relief, Professor Davis emailed me, saying he had a job lead. His friend’s daughter was a pastry chef in Chicago, and she needed help writing a cookbook about how to bake cakes that looked like famous pieces of modern art: a Mondrian-inspired Battenberg, a Rothko wedding cake. Since he knew I loved to cook—I was regularly bringing homemade treats to our afternoon seminars—and was writing my thesis on Roy Lichtenstein, he passed my name along, and a week later, I had a job offer. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Professor Davis hadn’t sent that email—if I’d be in Michigan, selling insurance, or if would have found my way to this job eventually, through many years of trial and error.
    I give Natasha an edited version of this story, skipping the parts about the insurance job and my self-doubt, as well as the unfortunate incident in the Chicago bakery involving Andy Warhol and an oven fire.
    â€œSo . . . that’s pretty much it,” I say once I’ve finished my spiel.
    Silence.
    â€œThat wasn’t very interesting,” Natasha says eventually.
    As expected: professional suicide.
    â€œBut anyway,” she continues,