Kitchen Nightmares

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I had these type of nightmares from the time I was 10 until I was about 32. I would also sleep walk. Once when I was 10, I woke up in a house down the street. It was kind of freaky because I couldn't get out of their house because all of the doors were locked. They were on vacation and no one was there to let me in. I just woke up on their couch. Most of the time, I would dream that I was in my room and a light was trying to pull me in. I would not be able to move and I could see everything in my room. I would have this dream almost every night. I would be terrified of going into the light. I never saw anything other than the light though. My parents would find me sleeping in front of their bedroom door in the mornings. I don't know if this had any thing to do with it, but these dreams started after my stepmom and I were playing with a Ouija board (I was 10). I didn't really understand what a bad thing it was at the time. The funny thing is, I have had pictures taken of me that and you could see a light over me. The dreams finally stopped after I had my first child at age 32. I didn't realize there was a name for these types of dreams. I am so glad they are gone!

Has anyone ever re-did old veneer kitchen cabinets? If so, what did you use to "spruce" them up? My cabinets themselves are in decent shape, but some of the veneer is starting to peel off. My husband and I are putting our house up for sale and I want something inexpensive that looks good. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

It is just as easy to care for as linoleum and it will look wonderful carried through continuously. It will make your house look more spacious.

Kitchen Confidential (2000) is Chef Anthony Bourdain's personal and professional memoir of 25 years in the kitchens of New York. The book's full title is Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, but Bourdain, who studied at Vassar College before graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, with knife-sharp prose cuts through the underbelly and straight into the entrails of New York's culinary world.

Beginning with a boyhood introduction to his first raw oyster, a "glistening, vaguely sexual-looking object, still dripping and nearly alive,' and navigating through soaring heights and devastating lows of a career simultaneously fueled and marred by drugs and alcohol, Bourdain's constant companions, this memoir not only tracks the coming of age of a now-celebrity chef with his own Food Channel series, but it maps the restaurants and kitchens that came and went during Bourdain's formative cooking years.

Though he is currently a highly-regarded executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, Bourdain's early years were spent ricocheting from one failure to another, particularly during the period he refers to as "the wilderness years."

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It is one of the central ironies of my career that as soon as I got off heroin things started getting really bad. High on dope I was, prior to Gino's, at least a chef - well paid, much liked by crew and floor and owners alike. Stabilized on methadone, I became nearly unemployable by polite society - a shiftless, untrustworthy, coke-sniffer, sneak-thief, and corner-cutting hack, toiling in obscurity in the culinary backwaters. I worked mostly as a cook, moving from place to place, often working under an alias.

Despite a total immersion approach to drugs and debauchery, Bourdain maintains his love of food and a passion for his work throughout. He is a purist with an ironclad work ethic, an ironically common badge of the addict. Bourdain's prose is peppered with profanity and he frequently refers to his customers as "rubes" and those who exist outside the restaurant industry, "civilians." His approach to writing is the same as his approach to food: clear, concise, and lacking in ephemeral B.S. He is, in short, a pleasure to read - or to listen to, as in this case.

As an audio book, Kitchen Confidential soars, because who better to deliver Anthony Bourdain's biting assessment of the restaurant industry than Bourdain himself? The sardonic tone emanates perfectly from the author's own voice. With oaudio books often not the case, but Bourdain proves equally capable behind the microphone as he is behind the laptop,lap tope chef's counter.

Pick up a copy of this book. If you spend any amount of time in New York City restaurants, Kitchen Confidential is a must-read. If you've spent any time working in the culinary arts, Kitchen Confidential is a must-read. For anyone else, Kitchen Confidential will be one of the fastest and sharpest works of memoir that you'll ever have the pleasure of digesting.

This book was rented from www.simplyaudiobooks.com.