Posted: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 12:00 am
Bland life summary inspired author to try something new
BY TOM HENDERSON
GAZETTE-TIMES REPORTER
"Gladys" was 84 when she died. Her obituary consisted of her name and a pair of dates. Yet she inspired Kathleen Flinn to study French cooking.
Flinn talked about the odd connection between the elderly woman who anonymously passed away in Florida and le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris during a visit to the Enoteca Wine Bar in Corvallis last Saturday. The writer/gourmet was there to promote her book, "The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Learning and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School."
Her story began where Gladys' ended: Flinn was typing obituaries for a newspaper in Sarasota, Fla., and she typed up the short one for Gladys. It haunted her.
"There were no donations. Nothing. That was all she had for 84 years of living," Flinn said. She worried that she, too, might end up just a name and two dates on an obituary page.
At the same time, she noticed a magazine ad for le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Graduating from the most prestigious cooking school in the world - now that would spice up an obituary, she thought. "I made a promise that my obit would say she graduated from le Cordon Bleu in Paris," Flinn said.
Flinn kept both the obituary and the magazine ad. They followed her from writing gig to writing gig; bulletin board to bulletin board.
She was working as an editor for MSN in London when she returned from vacation and found her job had been eliminated while she was gone. She didn't really mind. She never cared much for the job anyway. Her mother, she remembered, panicked.
"Like I would become a crack dealer if I went two weeks without a job," she said.
Getting into le Cordon Bleu turned out to be the easy part. Surviving it was tough. Flinn said half the students drop out before they finish boot camp, or "basic cuisine," as it is known.
"I got there and realized I didn't even know how to hold a knife," Flinn said.
Yet mastering basic cuisine meant she had to perfect the preparation of at least 60 different sauces.
Her book about her journey - full of both humor and recipes - has been a roaring success, she said. In fact, it's being made into a TV movie for the Lifetime channel. So who will be playing Flinn?
"I'm pushing for Ashley Judd," she said. "She's so beautiful. People will think I look like her."