I’ve had a great time these last few nights reading book under the covers, much later than I usually would. There’s a bit of an art to making sure that all my brothers are asleep before I bust out the torch and start reading, but I think I’ve gotten it down. Ma noticed that I was more tired than usual at breakfast, but I just said it’s because of the cold.
True Jacoby clan members love the heat; it’s where we do our best farming work. It was a pretty good excuse, if I say so myself.
Anyway, the book is on the evolution of kitchens throughout the last thousand years, starting with the dark ages and going all the way through to these big commercial charcoal grills in the famous kitchens, with all of the new and fancy modern equipment. It’s exactly the type of book that would cause my brothers to disown me entirely, so I have to keep it hidden under the secret loose floorboard. Still, I’ve just had this fascination with commercial kitchen equipment recently, and the this is a decent enough place to start. Maybe I do have a bit of Jacoby bloodline after all: I want to do things with my hands, but I want there to be an art to it. Maybe if I just told Ma and Pa that I wanted to do renovations- or just building work, to keep it vague- they’d be okay with it. They don’t need to know that I’d be fitting fancy wok burners and marble countertops.
Anyway, it’s a stupid dream. I’m reading one book about kitchens and just latching onto it, because I have no idea what I want to do with my life. Just teenage stuff, I guess. At least I’m aware of it though, which is something. Most of my classmates have no idea what they want to do, an they think it means they’re going to end up working in a chip shop until they’re sixty. All things considered, a vague aspiration to fit commercial steamers and grills- even if it only lasts to the end of the book. I mean it could be much worse if you think about it.
-Forrest Jacoby Jr. Jr.