You Can Always Order Pizza

So, I love cooking.
You probably know this, as you've probably read here there or everywhere about the various cooking exploits I've been on on my own and with my wonderful SO.

I spend a fair amount of time mining the internet for new recipes and stuff, and so I read food blogs and food sections of papers and magazines.

Today, I read this.
In which an intrepid reporter from Chicago magazine has Grant Achatz, yes, THE, yes he of the 3 Michelin stars (that's hard to do in Europe let alone the U.S.) help her with a dinner party.

It's a great article, and a lot of that is in a bit of schadenfreude, I spose, and relating with someone who is nervous around people sometimes. During the course of her time with the chef, she frets about how he'll perceive her and the things she already has in her house, if he'll be stern and a taskmaster, and proceeds to drop a pepper grinder in a bowl of cream as well as grate herself (which I do more than I'd care to admit) and cut herself.

Achatz has accomplished a lot. And first off, he could've felt "above" this sort of story and not done it, and second, he could have done it and not been whole-hog with it. But the whole time he's a calming presence, even forming a sort of eye-rolling-but-in-good-fun role for himself that endears me to him, even having never met him.

He still does what he does and teaches, helping her every step of the way, but he makes himself unimportant and unintimidating. I *love* people like this, and there are far too few of them. People that can shake off the bonds of their fame and just be people are the best kind of people to have fame, if you ask me.

Anyway, the deal was he shops with her, emails her, and then the day of, helps her to a point til he has to go back to Alinea, to, y'know, run a 3 Michelin star restaurant in one of the largest cities in the US. Cuz...well, important.

In any case, one of the things that stuck with me on this was how the author finishes the story.
Because of course, you're wondering if somehow, in that last stretch without him there, she's gonna somehow ruin everything (the way that you feel like you would, if you're like me)

Everyone loves everything despite even  her perceived errors, like overbaking the dessert a bit.

But in the end she remembers Achatz consoling her in a moment of panic by saying that if everything is awful, "You can always order pizza!"

I love it.

On so many levels. I think of Michelin star chefs sometimes as these battle axe sort of people, who are unrelenting, exacting, precise and unforgiving of mistakes, from themselves and the people under them. And that's there, or else they wouldn't be getting the accolades they do. Consistency and precision are key to that sort of craft so that what you put out one day is still what people taste five months from now should they order it.

But as serious as he is about food, and about cooking...if it doesn't work? Fine. Order pizza.

It reminds me to chill the hell out when I'm stressing about whatever it is I'm stressing about.

Because really. You can always order pizza.

It's not to say not to be precise or not to try your hardest to do things as best as you can.
It is to say that if something goes wrong, maybe try not to beat yourself up about it and move on.
Learn from it, sure, but then just...keep on' keepin' on.
And order pizza.

So that's my thought of the day, followed by my sleep of the night.
Now I want pizza.