Just Cured - Experience Fine Foods

It is 6 o’clock on the morning after Christmas, Boxing Day to the rest of the English speaking world.† Elsewhere in the city, shoppers are converging on the malls and shops and stores searching for bargains.† Here in my work neighborhood, it is silent.† I am certain that the mice — and their larger cousins, the shave-tailed squirrels — are stirring, but they are being very quiet about it.

I first break the silence with the clinking and clacking of the retracting overhead security door that fronts the warehouse, the racket masking the whir of the electric motor.† The beep-beep-beep of the alarm panel reminding me to disengage the system pierces the interior stillness.† Once I enter the alarm code, the building resumes its state of silence, the white noise of florescent lighting fixtures and basement and roof mounted refrigeration compressors accentuating the lack of any other sound.

I† have only 45 minutes of work to get ready for my morning television appearance.† The silence is comforting as I accumulate the tools and equipment I will require, dividing them into two stacks, one to take to the studio and one of things I will need before I leave.† The clicking of my knife blade against the cutting board ticks like a clock, on steroids and speed.† I complete my mis en place

more quickly than I anticipated, so much so that I have time to wash the few dishes I dirtied.

Sometimes I think I wash dishes constantly.† Without conscious thought, I begin: rinse and scrub all three sinks, close the drains, run hot water into each sink, squirt detergent into the left, drop sanitizer tablets into the right.† The running water rings against stainless steel; silence returns as I close the water valves.† Wash; rinse; sanitize; dry on rack.† My dipping of the dishes into and from each sink reminds me of a nearly still lake lapping against dock pilings or a boat hull.

In the silence of the warehouse, I am alone with my thoughts.† I find myself in this condition often.† Even when my landlord’s business is in full swing, my corner of the building is sufficiently isolated from his operations that I cannot hear his din.† I have gotten used to working alone and, most days, am at peace with the solitude and those thoughts.

On this day after the holiday, I reflect on the year past and ponder the future.† It was precisely one year ago that I registered the justcured.com domain name.† I shake my head and grin at the thought of some other names I considered.† The name seems so obviously right to me today that I marvel at how I struggled before landing on it.

I’ll save for a post shortly after the new year begins my scoresheet of successes and failures, of good decisions and bad, of triumphs and battle scars.† For this day, as I reflect on all those things, it is enough that I am happy — with my decision to enter this crazy business, with my execution of the start up, with my life.† Not satisfied; there is too much yet to be accomplished.† Just happy.