Jason Leehow
From the beginning Gabrielle Hamilton’s book Blood, Bones & Butter, gives a riveting account and description of her life and love of food. In the book we see her transformation as well as journey throughout life to become the renowned chef that she is today. It is this journey that brings about the geographical aspects of not only the book itself but also in analyzing her life. From the onset we observe the nurturing of her passion for food and temperament in the small town of New Hope, Pennsylvania, which would eventually guide her toward the prestige of being one of New York’s best restaurateur’s. Hamilton presents herself as a blank canvas waiting to be filled. Although from the beginning it is apparent that she has a curiosity for food as a child, it still unclear which path she will ultimately take to fulfill those desires. However, throughout the book she works or experiences the various parts of the food industry that begin to shape her culinary identity. More importantly, this notion of a blank canvas revolves heavily around geographic themes such as place and space as well as proximity and distance. With each new location and experience, Hamilton in a way fills her canvas.
Hamilton’s first experience in the food industry comes through the interactions with her mother. Her mother is French, which thus gives a young Gabrielle a peculiar culinary upbringing – not by normal standards. She writes, “She taught us to articulate the “s” in salade nicoise and the soup vichyssoise, so that we wouldn’t sound like other Americans who didn’t know that the vowel “e” after the consonant “s” in French means that you say the “s” out loud.”(8). Hamilton’s mother’s role is that of a quintessential housewife of the 1960’s and 70’s who creates the home as a space of work and consumption as discussed in Rosie Cox’s House/Work: Home as a Space of Work and Consumption. Thus, with Hamilton’s curiosity for food and her mother’s mentoring they form a closer bond than the rest of her siblings, eventually culminating in a trip to Greece. With her mother’s subsequent absence due to the divorce however, it becomes clear that she ultimately nurtured Hamilton to understand the kitchen as a place of work and an important cornerstone in holding a family together.
Hamilton’s first real exposure to the restaurant business was when she decides to work as a busser in a restaurant in her hometown. This becomes her first experience in the restaurant component of the food industry and following her relocation to New York, she works as a waitress in a Café. Hamilton thus becomes exposed to the realities and harshness of the restaurant industry but also laments on the easy money and lifestyle created through working in such a place. She writes, “The cocktail waitresses ran a cash-and-carry business. We bought the drinks from the bar ourselves, and then we sold them to the customer at the table and collected his money on the spot, making change if needed, from our own cash in our apron pockets.”(47). More importantly it is this work experience that allows her to gain an understanding of the hierarchy within a restaurant. As explained in Prole’s Abolish Restaurants: Worker’s Critique of Food Service Industry, the division of labor within a restaurant means that certain individuals or groups are subordinate to those higher up in chain. Hamilton realizes this when she is barked at by the bartender for a lousy tip-out. Even though the cash-and-carry scheme the waitresses ran was illegal, they were still subject to many of the hierarchal rules already in place.
Following her failed stint as a Café waitress, Hamilton decides to return to her hometown for a summer. Although it was a relatively short period of stay, she lives with her father and attends to his chicken coop. It is here, that Hamilton comes in contact with for the first time, and through her own means, the slaughter of an animal – a living creature. Although apprehensive at first she accepts to commit the act, despite her qualms with it.
“The bird started to orient. I was still holding its feet with one hand and trying to cut its head off with the dull hatchet with my other when both the chicken and my father became quite lucid, and not a little agitated. The chicken began to thrash about as if chastising me for my false promises of a merciful death…I released the bird, finally, and it ran around and around the yard, bloody and ragged but at least now silent…”(62).
The slaughter of the chicken is resonant with current issues within the slaughter industry, namely the humane treatment of the consumed animals. As noted in Amy Fitzgerald’s, A Social History of the Slaughterhouse: From Inception to Contemporary Implications, “Adding to the growing tension, as we move further into the post-domestic era, the number of animals slaughtered for food is increasing and their quality of life is diminishing.” (Fitzgerald, 59). Hamilton is certainly not a CAFO herself, yet, she exhibited in a brief moment the wrongdoings within the industry, such as the inability to humanely kill an animal as well as the rushed pace of the act itself, so evident in slaughtering. More importantly, the clash of Hamilton and her father within this moment is a clear indication of the transition of distance and proximity in regards to the slaughter industry. She writes, “He [Hamilton’s father] claimed to have grown up with chickens and said he had killed many in his boyhood, so I let him coach me through it.”(61). Due the movement of slaughterhouses to the geographic periphery and away from major populations coupled with the desensitizing of the consumption of food, it was no surprise that Hamilton felt uneasy about killing the chicken. The act of slaughtering an animal was never visible to her, while on the other hand her father who grew up before the new era of slaughterhouses (Fitzgerald, 62) was used to such as site. Ultimately, the slaughter of chicken is evidence of not the effect of distance and proximity on an industry but also on a generation.
The establishment of her restaurant, Prune, allows Hamilton to carve a space of her own in the restaurant mecca of New York City. Although she was not seeking to open a restaurant, the culmination of her participation within the food industry since childhood gave her the ability to run as successful business. Furthermore, Hamilton’s unique skills allowed her create a place from the decrepit space that had existed prior, a carry on from her early bonding experiences with her mother. Hamilton also becomes the head of her own kitchen. This is in stark contrast to her early endeavors as a waitress at the Café. In this position not only does she control the mechanism of labor but also the resulting product. However, at this stage it becomes quite obvious that the pressure of such an industry along with her personal life often led to difficulties, especially during her pregnancy. “When I found myself down on all fours after that pummeling brunch service, cleaning pancake batter off the reach-in fridge with a green scrubby while my belly grazed the mats and my staff seemed calm and assured that the ship still had a captain.”(195). Even though she is undoubtedly a workhorse, as discussed in Fine’s Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work, work in the restaurant industry is quite dangerous. “Cooking can be dangerous work – a danger not set by the choices of cooks but by the structure and content of the tasks that they must perform. (Fine, 85). In a way Hamilton over the course of her life up to opening of Prune has straddled various sides of the food industry in terms of the positive and the negative.
In the closing parts of the book, Hamilton takes a trip up to Vermont to visit her elderly mother whom she has not seen in years. However, the trip exemplifies that she has filled her canvas and due to distance and proximity is in a way removing many of the old components in order to perfect the overall image. Her uneasiness with her mother but also her departure shows that she has no qualms about eliminating parts of her past. “She holds my left hand and tugs me outside behind her house and weepily shows me the tree she has planted for Todd, and I try to take my hand back because I still feel uncomfortable when she touches me. I hold Marco so close to my chest I can feel him swallow and breathe as I kiss my mother good-bye on both cheeks.”(193). Although her mother has undoubtedly played a pivotal part in not only her upbringing but her passion for food, we observe Hamilton through her transformation into someone who is not afraid to severe ties with the past.
Blood, Bones & Butter presents a very interesting and compelling story of one woman’s journey to the top of the restaurant business. Despite the trials and tribulations that she faces, she is able to utilize the skills that she has acquired in order to succeed in her goals. Furthermore, Hamilton’s transformation over the course of the novel also fits within the realm of geographic concepts that play a heavy role in the story.
Bibliography
Cox, R. (2013). House/Work: Home as a Space of Work and Consumption. Geography Compass.
Fine. (2009). The Kitchen as Space and Place. In Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work.
Fitzgerald, A. (2010). A Social History of the Slaughterhouse: From Inception to Contemporary Implications. Human Ecology Review.
Hamilton, G. (2011). Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Prole. (2010). Abolish Restaurants : A Worker’s Critique of the Food Service Industry. PM Press.