The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones

work-as-meaning

• Cooking was something you did between other jobs; it was the last refuge for scoundrels, misfits, and tormented loners.

  NB-010

• Nobody wants to rub shoulders with the people who actually cook their fucking meal. That would destroy the illusion.

  NB-014

• She'd been faxing out resumes for a month already—with January coming up fast, every burned-out cook in New York looking for work.

  NB-015

ambition-and-status

• In France, you'd be working a split shift at some shithole patisserie making lopsided tarte au pomme and sweeping the floor after your mom.

  NB-013

self-and-identity

• Travel changes you. Life—and travel—leaves marks on you. Most of the time those marks are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.

  NB-004

• By three p.m. I was sitting cross-legged on a plastic-covered kitchen floor as they sliced into a seal carcass with unselfconscious glee.

  NB-001