Review of Rejection Proof

Jia Jiang, at 30 years old, took a large risk with his career and life. As it built up to an important question where he needed help, he asked – and was rejected. This shook him to his very core enough to give up. Fortunately, instead he tries to Google how to handle rejection, and from there, he decided to steel himself to rejection by seeking rejection 100 times. This book, Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection, is the autobiography of the journey through those 100 rejections. As it turns out, it’s about more than just asking for things and hearing nos.

With his easy going, simple writing style, Jia walks through each ask and rejection, recording it on his (camouflaged) smartphone for his video blog. Watching the videos himself, Jia begins to think more carefully about rejection not just being about getting used the feeling of rejection, but also pro-actively managing the fear, managing the requests in a way that can turn initial rejections to yes, and understanding why rejection hurts and has effects on our self-confidence and our actions so much.

It is not a project about developing a callous towards rejection through repetition, instead it grows into a project about overcoming fear and understanding yourself and others.

Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection, by Jia Jiang

The chapters are fast reads, as Jia is very open with explaining his motivations. He is honest and straightforward, and does not hold back on sharing the emotional roller coaster that happens before, during, and after each attempt. This makes him a very like-able, approachable every day guy voice as we read the book.

More importantly, Jia is very insightful as he thinks carefully about each time he asks whether he gets a no or a yes. He strives to understand the why of the answer he received and why the experience turned out a certain way on both sides of the ask. That is what makes this book engaging, rather than just a diary of stories of asking for things that get more far-fetched as he goes.

As a self-help book, Rejection Proof works because he has already done the legwork for you through repeating opportunities for rejection, striving to learn from each one and then sharing those lessons with us as the readers so we can go along for the ride of asking without the risk ourselves. His advice is practical and specific, and he purposely notes that the general advice of “pick yourself up and get over it” is completely not sufficient and trivializes how heartbreaking and gut-wrenching rejection feels, and why it hurts more and how it is different then failure.

Becoming rejection proof, it turns out, can be helped by becoming de-sensitized to it, but there are many other factors to think about. He treats rejection as an equation that includes the before a request, tips on making the initial request, approaches on the conversation after the request, and dealing with the fear before and the hurt after. He includes both sides – the person asking and the person being asked – to also help us understand the factors that can influence the results, and what parts are outside our control – and what parts we can control.

Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection, by Jia Jiang

Some of the information he goes through are simple – explaining the request can help the rejection process. It may turn the answer to a yes, but even when it doesn’t, it could provide explanations that soften the rejection, or can lead to a referral that turns into a yes. Other information he shares are pivots that we may not think or realize in thinking about asking for something – and they are mind-sets that can help turn what we think are nos into yes!

For instance Jia explains that arguing turns the conversation into one of contention, and ends up with both parties feeling upset. Instead, Jia talks about being open-minded enough to collaborate to still reach your end goal, but perhaps not in the way you initially thought. He also talks about thinking about not just your own needs, but the other person’s needs. He explains the difference between retreating versus running. He gives examples and stories for every point.

This is an easy read that anyone can learn some lessons from to improve their life. We all go through rejection in our every day interactions. They may be big ones like asking for a raise but being afraid to ask, or stressing over asking for a certain favor from a friend. They may be little ones you may not even think of as rejections, like noticing you aren’t getting an advertised sale price or good or service to your satisfaction. They may be actual conversations where you ask – or worse, conversations that you don’t have because the fear of rejection subconsciously stops you from even asking.

All these interactions are about understanding what is it that you need from someone else and actively reaching out to communicate to see whether you can get what you want. With this book, you can get some thoughts on things you can do that can turn what you think is a no, or might initially be a no, into a yes. And, even if the answer turns out to be a no, reading this book can make every rejection less painful through understanding and seeing it in the larger perspective that Jia shares.

Disclosure: This book was provided to me as part of the Blogging for Books program, but I will always provide my honest opinion and assessment of all products and experiences I may be given. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are entirely my own.

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Review of Twenty Dinners

Twenty Dinners, written by Ithai Schori and Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtman, is divided by the 4 seasons. It offers 5 complete suggested dinner menus that take into account ingredients of that season. Each dinner menu includes a protein main, two sides, dessert, and suggested drink to accompany that dinner (always wine, sometimes a cocktail recipe is included in the chapter). In particular, the authors are promoting the concept of cooking with friends, not just cooking for friends.
Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.

This means that the recipes are more like guidelines, generally the methods use basic techniques, with the most technical portion often being the cutting of the protein. I wish there had been a photo guideline on these cutting techniques, or at least some small photos with the recipe on what the right cut is. This seems like a detail that was missed since there are suggestion chapters written by other friends varying from “mastering” wine to how to create a home bar or coffee, and there are also special sections in the back that define cooking terms in normal layman speak (you will need it now and then- several recipes for instance call for bouquet garni), essential tools that you need in a kitchen, and how to shop and store for ingredients. If the authors are going to assume we need help with that information, why wouldn’t cutting the meat be included?

The photographs and feel of the book showcases the food generally plated family style, and is beautiful but relaxed. The feel is almost like something you’d see in a lifestyle magazine if you were in your late 20s/early 30s and regularly threw outdoor dinner parties in your expansive backyard and your rustic house full of bookshelves and records and big wooden tables on your dining and living rooms and fireplace for your all childfree friends.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.

The meals vary from the more impressive like 5 courses (Sliced Fluke, Plum and Cilantro; Seared Kale Salad with Brown Butter Toasted Pine Nuts and Smoked Bacon; Roast Chicken; Morel and Shiitake Mushoroom Risotto; Maple Panna Cotta with Candied Almonds and Buttered Bread Crumbs) to simple hearty ones that have a suggested ingredient or technique thrown in to raise it up a level from regular home cooking recipes (Meatballs and Spaghetti; Caesar Salad with Egg in a Frame, Affogato with Biscotti).

I’m not sure whether to count one chapter’s dinner that is just general guidelines for assembling a cheese plate along with a gruyere pastry and fig earl grey jam. On the other hand, there is also a dinner that includes a whole spit roasted pig, and a couple pages devoted to the ingredient of ramps, and another couple pages with ideas for using tomatoes during tomato season.  I love in general how they are very conscious about using the best ingredients and that is always based on the season.

There are a few pages are dedicated to delectable sounding four seasons of burrata toasts, where based on the season, your burrata toast may be Poached Pears and Bacon Maple Burrata Toast (Fall), Fennel and Grapefruit Burrata Toast (Winter), Whiskey’d Burrata Toast (Spring), or Tomato Confit Burrata Toast (Summer). Yes, you bet I’m making that Spring one ASAP if I can find some burrata. In general, they sound like great dinner menus for a casual dinner party – even if I don’t believe all the cooking is as casual as they write.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.

The recipes are written similar to a grandma/mom instructing you on the steps, in paragraph form, possibility with a little note at the beginning.  For instance, in salting the meat for their Rib Eye Steaks Seared, Roasted and Basted in Butter, they advise “season generously with the kosher salt all over; it should look as though you’re salting a sidewalk before a snowstorm” and to keep an eye on the meat because “often when it will contract when it hits the heat and create a concave surface over the skillet. Using a spoon or spatula, hold the center of the meat down so it sears evenly.”

In preparing your dinner party, although the recipes mostly seem approachable, you definitely will have to divide and conquer responsibilities for each part of the suggested dinner or it will be hours before you get to eat, and seems like with their love of roasting there will be some oven conflicts if you attempted to multi-task the courses at once (it seems the authors ran into the same logistical dilemma).

Also definitely make sure you read through the details of the recipe as some will require a lot of prep work or time to sit to absorb flavors – for instance a Carrot, Parsley, and Pomegranate Salad with Confit Shallot Vinaigrette sounds good, but the vinaigrette requires roasting the shallots for 1-1.5 hours first.

Honestly I feel mixed about the recipes: some are wonderfully inspiring, like a Lavender Infused Olive Oil Poached Cod. But others are really just variations on using the grill (not surprising that these men love the grill), such as Charred Spring Onions they had as the side to that poached cod. The key with their (or anyone’s) slow roasted duck fat potatoes is access to duck fat, as is the bottarga with a Radish Salad with Bottarga. They do suggest some substitutions, though I wonder if it really is as good with the substitute ingredient.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.

One thing I appreciated is that sometimes they authors suggest additional recipes in order to recycle the leftovers into new dishes- such as stuffing poblanos with some leftover Wild Rice with Celery and Pecans. I also really liked all the cocktail ideas that were listed as part of the dinner here or there, as it’s a fun take that although they suggest a wine, having a cocktail pairing with the dinner just gives the meal an extra touch of sophistication. Cocktails they include recipes for range from Peach Porch Punch, or Smoked Earl Grey Hot Toddy, or basics like pairing Bloody Mary with oyster and burgers parties.

I’ll share a post in the future where my friends and I tried to use one of the Spring Dinner recipes, since I don’t think doing a recipe on my own is the intention of the book (some of them are so enticing they beg to be lifted off for a nice dinner at home even if it’s just the two of us).

Disclosure: This book was provided to me as part of the Blogging for Books program, but I will always provide my honest opinion and assessment of all products and experiences I may be given. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are entirely my own.

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Review of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking

I can’t believe I’ve been reading and trying to write my review of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing by Anya Von Bremzen since November.

The rationing, the famines, food verging on rotting, minus forty degree weather, the long lines, and the many many deaths, the reality of people dying in the millions as I turned the pages of chapters… It wasn’t really Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday reading, and after a sad January and February I still couldn’t pick up the book. I wasn’t ready to resume reading about the details of normalized struggling that is Soviet life. It wasn’t until the past few weeks as spring brought cherry blossoms and irises and tulips and some 70 degree days of sunshine that my mood became lighter, and I picked the book up again to read a bit at a time.

I even tried to hold a carrot out for myself- when I finished the book, I would celebrate and reward myself by going finally to dine at the Russian pop-up Da Net and I would get to go on a dinner date to Kachka. Throwing in a stick as well, I told myself I would not dine at these two places until I finished the book.

I told myself by reading the memoir, I would have a richer experience because of references in the book to her family’s story and to Soviet history to the foods I might have.
DaNet PDX Kachka PDX
What I told myself, by the way, is totally true. Now that I finally finished the book, even just looking at the menus of these two places brings up newly acquired memories from Anya’s book.

Thinking about vodka flights, I know from her book how I need a quorom of three co-bottlers and that drinking without zazuska (a food chaser) is taboo. I know that “The Deep Truth fond in a glass demanded to be shared with co-bottlers.” and that toasting every time is mandatory.
Kachka PDX Vodka Flights: 30 grams x 3 of curated vodka. This one is the Mother Russia flight with from right to left, green mark, hammer + sickle, and imperia

I think of her grandma Alla who drank beautifully with smak (savor), iskra (spark) and could pour in exact vodka portions with her Glaz-almaz (eye sharp as a diamond).

I think also of how alcohol is so ingrained in their culture that Russians pretty much drank anything from ethyl alcohol to wood varnish from Lenin’s Mausoleum Lab, eau de cologne to brake fluid to surgical glue and pilot fuel (MIG-25 airplanes were also nicknamed letayushchy gastronom, flying food store).

When I look at Kachka’s offering of a zazuski of brindza pashtet (sheep cheese and paprika spread and scallion on lavash), I think of Anya’s poor father, trying to impress with her mother’s favorite canapas, a gratineed cheese toast with Friendship Cheese, cilantro, and adzhika that he made himself. That makes me think about her mother and what she went through in terms of the melancholy and fear in her childhood, the love then disappointment with Anya’s father, and all the hopes and dreams she put on Anya and emigration to the US.
Kachka PDX cold zakuski of brindza pashtet, a sheep cheese and paprika spread with scallion served with lavash

When I tasted Kachka’s take of salat Olivier, which is a duck Olivier, I think of Anya’s story of the communal salat Olivier that the whole building put together in celebrating how in darkness overnight, the tenants had knocked over an empty dwelling space to expand the communal kitchen in a mini revolution.

I think of how Anya explained that with salat Olivier, identity issues boiled down to choice of protein… and how everyone re-used mayo jars for everything and anything, including carrying bio samples for medical tests.
Kachka PDX cold zakuski of duck Olivier, a cold salad that includes diced boiled potatoes, carrots, brined dill pickles, green peas, eggs, celeriac, onions, diced boiled meat - in this case duck, and all mixed with mayonnaise. Kachka's version uses duck meat and crispy duck skin, and duck fat mayo

In other words, her book covers the whole gamut of cultural tradition by way of both notes of history and familial anecdotes interwoven with some of the good and a lot of the bad that frankly, seems to the essence of Soviet culture.

Each chapter covers a decade, starting with 1910. The first chapter centers around kulebiaka (a fish in puff pastry dish) as an anchor. That dish is used to connect Anya’s memoir with

1. the present (her mother and herself in Queens, New York, creating a czarist-era dinner)

2. a lesson on Russian culture (Russian writers using food as a great theme of “comedy and tragedy, ecstasy and doom” in a way similar to how English writers use landscape or class)

3. of the past of her family as it references the time when Anya lived with her mother in Moscow in a communal apartment before the US, and

4. the dark Iron hand of a history lesson  as rationing and communism and the struggle for just staple foods to survive.
Kachka PDX, a traditional dish called kulebyaka of multi-layered pie filled with black cod, red chard and crepes, served with creme „eurette

And that’s where it starts – the way she intertwines the timelines and facts and stories of that first chapter continues through the rest of the book, from the rise to the fall of the Soviet Union.

However, the center being such exquisite food stops there, because then we enter the 1920s with Lenin. That’s when Russia becomes a transformed society that was ready to sacrifice all to the socialist cause. This included private lifestyle and was a shift as food to only being utilitarian, simple, and not meant to be pleasure or luxury. Food was only meant as fuel for survival, with only few moments of food enjoyment here or there from crumbs of the privileged.

Because food is scarce, although it shows up in the chapters,  it is no longer the center – at least not until the 1960s, when Anya is born and her more food-centric viewpoint (and the better availability of food) becomes the main narrative.

There is always a food mentioned though. And, in the back of the book at least, for every chapter/decade a recipe for one of the foods mentioned is shared along with personal notes.  Not sure why they couldn’t have integrated that into the book itself, such as at the end of every chapter instead of hidden until I finished the book.

I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know about Soviet history until I read this book. Now I know a lot more about how truly terrible it really was. As I followed three generations of Anya’s family through history, every page told me the details of everyday hardship. Anya’s writing is easy to read. The storytelling of the memoir balances teaching everyone history (assuming correctly that we know nothing) with stories of her family and how they lived in those times to keep you interested and give you context to the historical facts she has to initially set up.

It may sound sort of dry, but I think it’s about needing to understand the circumstances around the anecdotes. The 1940s chapter is full of death every day and paranoia and delusion. But those facts are helpful so that you understand the parallel small joys of survival, and the food and longing that are the theme throughout the book and lives of the Soviet consciousness.

At one point she writes of bublik (a flimsy chewy poppy seed bagel-like bread roll) and podushechka (a pebble sized sugar candy). She explains the process for eating this was you suck on the candy under your tongue to make it last while smelling the bublik, and then spat out the candy for a bite of bulik so it would taste “like the greatest of pastries in your candy-sweet mouth. A bite of bublik, a lick of podushcechka. The pleasure had to last the entire fifteen minutes of recess… Some stoic classmates managed to spit out the half-eaten candy for younger siblings.”

Out of all the bleakness of the tales of each chapter are always these brief glimpses of small happiness, and of situations so ridiculous you can’t help but as a reader be amused and shake your head or roll your eyes even as you read the words.

The ubiquitous queues where you stood for three hours and still got damaged ones or wrong size, but also were a public square of gossip, and as we learn, where Anya’s parents met. At Anya’s Soviet kindergarten, some of her fellow kindergarten inmates got ill from the spoiled meat in the borscht, and one teacher instructed a colleague to reduce class sizes to open the windows to the gusty minus thirty degree weather!

After being enrolled in a kindergarten for the offspring of the Central Committee of the USSR instead of the Soviet kindergarten, Anya is now force fed a spoonful of sevruga eggs/caviar. Her kindergarten mealtimes included veal escalopes with porcini mushrooms, or farm fresh cottage cheese putting with lingonberry kissel – all which she then dumped behind a radiator because though she wanted to eat it knew it would horrify Mother.

French Laundry- Cauliflower Panna Cotta Beau Soleil oyster glaze and Russian Sevruga Caviar

I enjoyed reading the book – and I promise you that it will make any Russian influenced meal you have afterwards have a lot more meaning.

Despite the title of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, this is definitely not about mastering any cooking at all, it is firmly in the category of memoir and history book. If you are looking for recipes, I now have on my wishlist Anya’s other book to which she contributed and which is actually a cookbook, Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook. As Anya herself describes in her 1990s chapter of the book (which is when she wrote Please to the Table), the cookbook has a whopping “400 recipes on 640 pages, it was heavy enough to whack someone unconscious”. And, it also won a James Beard award.

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is the sort of book I wish I had been forced to read when learning world history because it makes facts become alive with the story of real people who had to live through those times and those facts and gives the context of culture.

The stories Anya shared are now part of my memory of Russia too, and so by accident, I have now learned several decades worth of Soviet history in detail that textbooks don’t offer.

I will be writing more on my meals at DaNet and Kachka later in future posts: the images you see for this post of food are from my visit to Kachka except the caviar, which is from French Laundry (Cauliflower “Panna Cotta” Beau Soleil oyster glaze and Russian Sevruga Caviar).

Have you read this book, or are you interested in Russian or Soviet cuisine? Have you been to DaNet or Kachka?

On a related but separate note, I used to be part of this wondrous book club in Chicago where we would read a book like this that was about another country and had some small hints of food, and then the book club would go meet at a restaurant with the ethnic cuisine of the book. Can you think of other books that would be a good excuse/pre-reading for a restaurant visit of that book’s highlighted food?

Disclosure: This book was provided to me as part of the Blogging for Books program, but I will always provide my honest opinion and assessment of all products and experiences I may be given. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are entirely my own.

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