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I’ve been in a funk lately, a malaise. For weeks I’d attributed it to the exhaustion of being on a book tour for months on end. I knew that focusing so hard on making Duck, Duck, Goose as successful as I could would naturally sap my strength to cook, write and to make Hunter Angler Gardener Cook as good a website as I can possibly make it.
But I’ve been home more than a week now, sitting quietly, and I know there is something else at work. The realization began to creep over me as I was catching up on other websites and reading colleagues’ cookbooks. It solidified when I thought of all the amazing food I’d eaten at my book dinners over the course of those four months. Clear-eyed and cold, I sit here with the stark realization that I am simply not that good.
Maybe it’s just age talking. As we grow older all of us begin to test the limits of our abilities. Our world narrows. The stars we shot for so long ago seem even farther away. It used to be that I could see a chef on TV perform some act of culinary prestidigitation and glibly comment that I could do that, given some time. Now, having seen in person real chefs perform real feats of magic in the kitchen, I am no longer so sure.
In Austin, I had all the time in the world to think about a dish to serve at the finale of my book tour, and all the time and equipment I needed to cook it. I made a German giblet soup called ganseklein, served it with acorn spaetzle, and drizzled a little Austrian pumpkinseed oil over each plate at service. It was a lovely dish. But I’d be a braggart and a liar if I did not say that my friend Jesse Griffiths, who made a German duck kasekrainer sausage with sprouted wheat, pickled radish and homemade mustard, did not blow my dish from the water.
Even in my wheelhouse I was bested. And this was not the only time it has happened. I am not being overly prideful here. I’m not hurt that professional chefs have cooked better duck dishes than I have: I am ashamed of myself for lacking the imagination and ability to either conceive of or execute some of their dishes. In their collective shadow, I’ve been proven to be a competent cook, but nothing more. My knives should be sharper. I need to become a more skilled baker. I ought to be better at sous vide. At desserts. At plating food. At the simple act of cooking beans.
The raw fact is that the exigencies of running this website pull me in so many competing directions I find that I have become the proverbial jack of all trades and master of none. I am a good forager but I know better. I am only an average hunter, and a somewhat better-than-average angler. I can break down animals and fish with the best of them, but even in this realm I know there is a lifetime’s worth of knowledge I have yet to master. Same goes for the act of roasting birds, or searing fish or making ice cream.
It is also a fact that I must earn my living from this website. To do that, I know that most people come here looking for recipes for things like venison chili or roast pheasant or salmon chowder. This is the sort of recipe that quite literally pays the bills, and I honestly enjoy making and eating them. But for every such classic I post on this site, I feel an equal need to create original dishes like Oyster! Oyster! Oyster! or The White Sturgeon or Dessert from the Mountain. In many ways this push-pull of the everyday and the esoteric are what make HAGC as fun as it is to create — and I hope to read.
Several years ago I wrote an essay called A Restless Craftsman. In essence the piece was about me trying to elevate the craft of cooking to an art. I am over that now. Art has become, at least for me, something unattainable in food — fancy plating and odd ingredients do not art make. Art moves the mind, sends it to higher places. Food simply cannot do that. Food can entertain, amuse, divert and even alarm. But can food spark someone to sit back and contemplate greater human truths? I doubt it.
Writing, however, can. A reporter asked me recently what, of all the skills I possess, do I consider that I am best at? Writing was the easy answer. I’ve written for publication virtually every week for 22 years. If there is any real art in anything I’ve ever done with this odd, meandering life of mine, it lies within the written word. Yet even in this realm I feel flat.
Which is why I am writing you this letter, dear readers.
I am still a restless craftsman. Only now I am hoping to renew and restore my love of the crafts I have chosen to pursue: Hunting, foraging, angling. Butchering, cooking and yes, writing. I spent almost the entirety of last year as a public person. I drove nearly 30,000 miles to and from events, traveled to 45 states, did scores of media interviews and talked with literally thousands of people. By the end I felt like a caricature of myself, and I began to hate the sound of my own voice. I will not do this in 2014.
I have found my limits, and they are humbling. Depressing, even. But they are only my limits today. Today I will learn something new, in the field, on the water, in the kitchen or at my keyboard. Today I will become better than I was yesterday. And tomorrow I will get up and do it again.
This is my vow to you. I hope you stay with me for the journey.
My friend
You made dishes that are amazing have for things some only dream about.
I say start planning your next cookbook and have some wine and a good cigar or pipe. You’ve inspired many people even the guy who wanted to hunt squirrels in his backyard.
Take care
Jim
“Art moves the mind, sends it to higher places.” I can assure you when you wrote, “Thankfully, more people interested in local, fresh, and sustainable food are taking up hunting, if for no other reason that it is more humane. Consider this: before it was shot, a wild animal led the exactly the life nature intended it to live. And a well-placed shot, which kills in seconds, is a far better fate than most deaths in the wild” you were writing as an author and an artist. I doubt if I ever would have started foraging without Samuel Thayer’s writing, and I don’t know if I’d ever have started hunting without your work. You’ve been an important part of my reconnection with nature and the Earth. There may be better chefs than you, and there may be better hunters than you, but no one connects nature, the kitchen, and the public as well as you do. Thank you for work. You have made my life richer.
Dear Hank –
Ah . . your words are more than familiar to so many “doers” or those of us who are driven by our curious minds. So many people find you accessible in ways that they simply cannot with foodies that make sustaining ourselves a bit too precious.
As others have stated here in response, it is sharing at the table of life that counts in the end.
Rest, Recharge and Be Well.
Great post. I think we all can relate. Rest assured, you’re site is a valuable resource for all of us weekend warriors. Thanks for all of the great writing and recipes…
I often have people tell me how creative and clever I am. Then I have those who look at my work and do that blank stare/half smile because they don’t get it. That’s the life of an artist – any one who creates. We all have our talents. I get lots of people in my store who say they wish they could be creative. A few minutes and I’m able to show them they are creative. They don’t make anything, I just ask a few questions. There are so many creative things we do each day that people over look them. I, highly, admire the recipes you have on here. I enjoy the images and the stories. Food does more than inspire the mind, it feeds the soul. That’s art – it’s heart and emotion. Sometimes it taps the mind but more often it gives the mind a chance to rest and just be. That’s where your food is.
Hank, Take the time for “Yourself” first. Believe me when I say we out here love what you do and the books and messages in your blog. I refer to them often to do the things in my life that I love. I have always been an outdoors man since I was 5yrs old getting lost in the Adirondacks. I worked for the USPS for 33 yrs but got away from the outdoors raising a family. I have recently retired, now I am doing the things that I love so I can pass it on to others. I live in Oregon and have gotten back to foraging, cooking, hunting ,fishing gathering, prospecting, wine & cheese making and meat processing. A lot of that have been influenced by You. One of my favorite quotes is Live Free, Love Often, Eat Wild. Take care of yourself first and the rest will all fall into place.
Hank,
You have significantly and permanently altered my life for the positive. The joy I get from reading your blog, trying your recipes and learning new foods to forage adds up to an immense amount of happiness.
Thank you,
Matt
This is a really beautiful piece. I feel this very thing quite often, and while I try to be happy for those who are better, smarter, more clever, more talented, etc. it is often excruciatingly humbling.
But these feelings can never shake the fact that I get to wake up and do the thing I love. I get to wake up and learn new things every day. I get paid (albeit not very much, but it’s something!) to explore the things I find most fascinating and tell others about them in my own voice. And that’s pretty remarkable in and of itself.
And you should know that many of us follow your site because we love your voice and your passion for wild foods. We love hearing about your adventures, which to many of us seem so exotic and exciting! We love that you are able to write so eloquently about what you do (which, frankly, a lot of chefs and very talented cooks have no end of trouble doing).
We’re with you, Hank!
What you do is encourage people to actively pursue culinary adventure via the outdoors and live a three dimensional life (as opposed to mindlessly staring into a “smartphone” and imbibing in banal “social” networks). And you do it as well, if not better than anyone. Stay thirsty…
Gee Hank, ease up on yourself a little. I am 54 and have hunted and fished for about 49 of those years. Because of you I now hang and then pluck all of my ducks. I keep parts of my deer that the coyotes used to get. I poach my wild turkeys and will be eating deep fried fish skin this spring. I am not the best lawyer, hunter, fisherman or cook, but when averaged together I would rank right up there. You are light years ahead of me. So, if you must compare youself to others, compare apples to apples and not , say… handcuffs. I appreciate your recipes, especially the unadorned ones, that are practical for most of us. Keep it up, but stay in this for the long haul.
Another quote that applies:
“When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.”
– Thomas Keller, The French Laundry Cookbook
We are all in this journey together. The arrogance of much of society today is disgusting to me. It makes it more enjoyable for me and my ride to know there are others that have humility and realize our humanity has limitations. It makes it real, to me, the reader, when I read about confit and fois gras and know that is beyond my limit. It still makes the journey interesting to know the boundaries we plant for ourselves are stretched. Which is the precise reason we attended one of your dinners-stretching boundaries and we are better for it. Our lives were enriched by it and maybe made a friend along the way.
When we reach the end it’s those relationships that are missed. Not the plate of food over which the bond was created.
Hank,
Your site is one of my absolute favorites. Someday we have to forage together, and have a meal, amico mio.
Keep up the fantastic work.
-Lou
Nice post Hank.
I grew up (from age 3) in my grandfather’s butcher shop. Began hunting in my late 20’s merely because I loved to cook wild game. I have 20 years in the restaurant business at every level. Food, hunting, butchery have become a large part of who I am. For the past several years I’ve been working for a wine importer that works in 13 countries. Traveling and having wine growers, farmers really, prepare their favorite local dishes is always eye opening and an amazing experience.
There is no one right answer to many things in life. What works for me is getting excited about new experiences and new, formerly undiscovered, combinations of flavors. I’ve attended/presented at easily 200 wine dinners over the past 20 years and more often than not, there’s an enthusiastic young chef that blows me away with their creativity and gets me excited about what I do.
Perhaps it is a function of growing older. Perhaps gaining more and more experiences as we grow older. “The more we know, the more we know we don’t know.”
One of my most memorable experiences in recent years is this past summer when I noticed a book signing at my local butcher shop. I put the date on my calendar and stopped in on my way home from the farmer’s market. That’s were I met you and bought a copy of Duck, Duck, Goose. The time you took to talk to me that day and discuss hunting/wild game etc. I won’t forget. Then I read the book. Then I started to follow HAGC. Jaw dropping. You’ve been a major inspiration for me rejuvenated my creative juices. Many of my foodie friends now follow you as well. It’s not about us being the best, it’s about celebrating the best and constantly striving to learn more.
You’ll continue to inspire, (whether you want to or not). …and have a blast doing it!
🙂
Long time reader, first time poster…
This is why I come back to your site, over and over. You are more than just a hunter, angler, gardener, cook, or author, and I really appreciate that about you. You give me a part of you in everything you write, and I happen to like Hank Shaw. You do Hank Shaw expertly, in my opinion.
Thanks for that.
But think of all the dishes that you have paid for @ a cafe or restaurant that are disappointing, which left you saying – I can do better! And it’s true. I’ve been disappointed in many plates @ respected restaurants in Denver. SO, I’m not buying this self-denigration. But a re-evaluation is always healthy, as long as you don’t get discouraged.
I was feeling a bit reticent about my own calling in life as of late and a good friend offered me a piece of advice that perhaps will help others. “The skill and the craft of what we do in life is but mere tools to help us develop who we are. Our ability to share our talent and grow from it is the blade to which we sharpen our art form.”
I think we all experience melancholy at some point in our calling. We do not have to be the best at everything; we just have to be open to embracing the familiar in a new way. I really believe that deep down inside we all yearn for the familiar, the vintage nostalgia that pulls us back to a happier moment in life and the simplicity of it all is at the core of what makes us happy. The book tour you just came back from should be your platform for reflecting on your skills and passions and propel you into your next culinary journey. Just don’t be too hard on yourself.
I have often admired this famous saying that I have tacked upon my truck’s dashboard and to which I lament every time I sit in the drivers seat…
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” – Edith Wharton
Which are you? Blessings to you for sharing your culinary delights with us!
To pursuer being “the best” at something is narcissistic and transient. There will always be someone better, if not today, then tomorrow. Note the careers of any number of Olympic athletes (remember Mark Spitz or Jean-Claude Killy?). Not that there is anything wrong with striving to be one’s best. Striving to excel is a noble goal if the intent is to improve the world around you. You have worked hard to develop a skill set and share it with others. I have derived great benefit from your efforts and it has led me to increased enjoyment of my own hunting, fishing, and cooking. You have improved me and my children (my primary food critics) would agree. Your melancholy comes from a misguided goal. Are you good at what you do? Do you continue to strive to learn and improve? Is your impact on others positive? Do you give more than you take? Find peace and pride in that and move forward. And keep writing, I need the inspiration and guidance.
Of course there are people that will always be better than we are at any given thing. But why compare?
You have many gifts, and you share them freely. Your food makes people happy. Your thoughts on hunting make people think. That can’t be faked. Thanks for your genuine enthusiasm, curiosity, and clear voice.
Dear Hank,
When I discovered that every perfect wild thing recipe/technique was found at YOUR website I was so pleased. When I discovered that many of these posts were accompanied by entertaining and thought provoking words, I was hooked. When I realized that you knew LOTS more about lots of things, I thought “How does he know so MUCH?). It was a bit intimidating, and I was a bit deflated, I admit.
To hear you express these same feelings just makes you a little more human to your dear readers. I’m willing to bet that you have found yourself on a plateau instead of hanging off the side of a mountain, and just need to find something new to entertain your brain. It will come.
xxoo, Nicky