Morning Solitude
I have a love/hate relationship with early mornings on workdays. After years of cooking, my body is conditioned to wake up before the alarm almost always. While I used to despise missing 30 minutes of extra sleep before the alarm, I have grown to embrace it. The morning for me is always a new slate. The projects from the day before seem to welcome the nightly pause as do I, but new projects, with a fresh set of eyes, seem to be calling me as much as the double americano that I so enjoy.
To this day, I still relish my morning time alone: writing a prep list, visualizing the process of a dish, or freshening up on a cooking technique that will be featured at some point in the day. It also seems that a flood of inspiration is easier to capture fresh out of bed rather than late in the day after handling food all day. In any event, the calm of the morning is good medicine and something to savor.
The fire is lit!
Recently (and as I’ve done many times before), I woke up at 3:30 am to light my trusty off-set Klose smoker to smoke brined and rubbed brisket that was going to be pastrami 7 hours later. Early in my career, this early wake-up would be met with me literally running to the smoker, chopping more wood, sending six emails, and getting the meat on sometime later. On this morning, however, the fire was already built the night before, just needed to light it, the coffee machine was ready with ground coffee – just press ‘start,’ and my phone was on silent. I have learned over the years that this time is precious, so why not set myself up the night before to make it even more special.
Lighting the smoker early in the morning is meaningful. It’s the start of making something truly special with just wood and steel. But it's also a morning routine that I relish. It occurs to me at that point in the morning that it's just me and the smoker; everyone else is asleep, and I enjoy it. I enjoy the quiet, but more so, I enjoy the connection to my cooking and the peacefulness that I feel in that moment as opposed to say 2 pm when a thousand things are happening.
I also appreciate that everyone has a different morning routine that may find them some peace and solitude, but mine for sure is that coffee, a pad of paper, and firing up the smoker, or the oven, or maybe the grill!