In search of Chanel and the creative spirit

Have you waded into the book "Inspiration Sandwich" by Sark? Find it.

The best boss I ever had, whose secret name is Princess Papuli, sent it to me in the mail, along with a card and a warm scarf. She is wise beyond her years; she reads the wind and knows when a gal needs a wink and a smile, or a morning of hats and gloves, tea and two lumps of sugar. After reading just a few pages of this inspiring work, I jumped from the bed, threw on the Pop-Eye apron that says "I yam what I yam" and fried a batch of leeks, as outlined in Alton Brown's "Good Eats, The Middle Years." Then I felt better.

There's something gentle and engaging in this book, stuffed with reminders of how to find great pleasure in simple joys. No typed words, either, it's all spelled out in handwriting. If you haven't visited some of your early memories as a child, pack a sandwich, make a tent over a few chairs and get under it with this book.

The trouble with culinary school, as I have experienced it, is that you go into it with this eager, enormous hope that it will be a journey of sensations and discovery. You're living the passion! You'll shout "voila" and mean it. You'll discover the inner you, who has real talent, and you'll amaze even yourself.

Good reader, that's not how it goes. Even the sculpted cake pictured above in the style of a Chanel purse, from the cakes class, should have been a crowning moment of personal magic - something I made with my hands and then admired. And then came the chef's opinion of its worth, dashing the creative spirit like the snap of fingers. I lived the entire cakes class in fear of the critical reply - and that's what I got. If this is living the passion, I'm the creator of Ratatouille. Does that mean I should give up on passion? Hell to the no, as classmates say.

I need books like "Inspiration Sandwich" to remind me how to rekindle happy thoughts and moments. I need Princess Papuli and her legion of resources to point me in the right directions.

My favorite passage in the book so far is this:

"I like to think of my fears being driven away in a Rolls Royce (for it's true that once you face a fear, it loses all of its stuffing, and will sit quietly in the back seat and do as it's told.")

What color is your Rolls? Mine is white and black, ever so Chanel.