It must have been quite a conversation, when my older friend Earl offered some helpful advice to a "rookie" managing the rotisserie chicken cooker. Earl, dressed down in his most casual, had just bought a chicken, opened it, and pulled a drumstick just to check. Not done.
So, he quietly and politely told the "cooker" that it wasn't done, not near done. The cooker looked at the elderly man and proceeded to tell him that he didn't want any advice, thank you very much. Besides, what could HE know about cooking, anyway?
You can't (as Granny said) tell a book by it's cover. Earl had been an engineer for a large canning company, with a real focus on food safety, and with about 30 years experience. The "chicken-cooker" was one month into the job. It's not an age thing, it's just a human thing.
I've taken good classes. But I've learned some of the best things from just listening. Hundreds of times, it might be a pilot, a teacher, a musician, certainly a cook, a historian, we're surrounded by folks who have lived a part of their life we didn't know about. And then........ Some of the best education in life comes from letting someone tell you all about whatever it is that they love, whether it is the love of cooking, or the love of flying, the love of singing, or the love of poetry and drama.
Got a good story along these lines? I'd like to hear it.
B
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