I am not a saint. Don’t get me wrong, I think I am a genuinely nice person, kind to small children and animals; I even donate to charity on occasion. When it comes time, Saint Peter will welcome me with no reservations. But G-- f---ing d--- it, I swear like a whore whose pimp ran off to Mexico with the week’s bank. No f---ing kidding. I’m smart and restrained enough to pick my moments – I watch my mouth around kids and anyone else who shouldn’t be exposed the inner workings of my filthy mind. I go to a basketball or baseball game and I scream myself hoarse, but I steer clear of 4-letter words. When I’m alone, though, or around other cooks, the F-bombs rain down like frogs in a P.T. Anderson movie.
    Kitchens, of course, are notorious for their “earthy” environment. When I work in a kitchen and I don’t hear dirty jokes flying, it feels a little unnatural and surreal, like I am forgetting some crucial element of my mis en place. For a few months, I worked alongside a group of lesbians, and they taught me all about dromedary hooves and other indelicacies that had somehow been left out of my kitchen education previously. And that kitchen felt more like the norm, not the exception. Some advice for the politically correct and those sensitive to sexual harassment – consider another career out of the culinary world. It might be easier for the Sonics to stay in Seattle and win the NBA title than it is to go into a kitchen and clean up every single person’s language.
    Still, I wonder: what happens to food when you curse aloud or voice unclean sexual fantasies about Jack Mackenroth? Does your curse and negative energy get absorbed into the food? Or does it bounce off the food and get absorbed into the cook? I suppose it doesn’t matter which is the case if you are eating your own food. But if you are cooking for others, I think the curse may be amplified. There must be a scale of consequences for cursing while you are cooking: cry out “oh cr--" while you are cooking for your partner – your alarm clock fails to go off the next morning; curse and kick the stove while you are working to fill your freezer with soup – come down with diverticulitis; tell an onanistic dead baby joke while doing a plate-up for 400 – get thyroid cancer and require two surgeries to get it removed. I know a lot of people think curses must come from witches or voodoo Maman. But what if all the bad things that happen in the world are a result of people yelling, swearing, and reiterating their pornfolio while they cook? It’s a truism that you are what you eat, but these thoughts of curses make me think twice about what I am really larding into my food.
    Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. David and I were supposed to go away to Victoria for the weekend, thus allowing me to avoid the whole turkey ritual. Something suddenly came up, though, and now I am staying home and doing a small, modified turkey dinner for the two of us. Tomorrow, I won’t be stressed – I can take my time with the meal, prepping at a leisurely pace. Tomorrow, I will keep the F-bombs in my head, buried in my subconscious. Tomorrow, I will stay in the spirit of the day, happy and thankful for the company of my partner and some good basic food. Tomorrow, my food won’t be cursed. And you know what? The peace of mind that will give me might make my food taste even better.