Ratatouille Podcast

The speaker talks about their passion for cooking during the COVID-19 pandemic. They describe their struggles with baking bread and how they were inspired by the movie Ratatouille to keep trying. They discuss the movie's message that anyone can cook and the importance of perseverance. The speaker also mentions their love for a creperie restaurant and how it provided comfort during the pandemic. They conclude by giving Ratatouille a five-star rating. Good afternoon, I'm Luca Angelini, and welcome to my podcast. All right, so today we will be reviewing a fan-favorite movie, Ratatouille, but first let me take you back to the year of 2020. You see, during the fall of 2020, I began my cooking career. The coronavirus pandemic hadn't left me with much to do. Classes ended at 3.30, homework was sparse, and contact with my friends was even less common. In my mind, I had no other choice than to pick up a hobby. So like many others, I found interest in cooking. Online recipes mixed with Uber Eats orders of flour and yeast filled my culinary obsession. My focus was bread, and the way I thought about it, bread was the best. It was simple, easy, and the outcome generally yielded positive results, or so I thought based on YouTube videos. But my bread, in fact, did not look like the ones in the YouTube videos. It was deformed, burnt, doughy, sticky, and generally tasted like a mask that I was wearing. But that didn't stop me. In fact, each time I decided to cook bread, I varied my approach. Case number one, watch the video and then cook the bread. Case number two, cook the dough as I watch the video. Case number three, watch a different video. Case number four, get my mom to supervise me as I watch the video and prepare the bread. But it wasn't until I failed for the fourth time that I truly saw the struggles of cooks. Until I realized that cooking is about trial and error, practice and perfection. It was Gusteau's famous quote from Ratatouille that inspired me to try again, and to take risks, to keep cooking. And so I did. I was 15 years old when I watched Ratatouille for the first time, and as far as I'm concerned, it is the best animated film ever. It was in the middle of an online school day during COVID. Movies were the only thing that could subdue my boredom for hours on end. And I guess I could have slept or worked out or gone outside, but I watched movies. Most of the movies that I watched contained my attention for two hours, but that was it. Except for Disney's 2007 Ratatouille, which did the opposite. It not only subdued my laziness, but led me to a year-long passion of mine in cooking. You see, the header of the movie defines it as a thrilling and new experience of a determined young rat who dreams of becoming a French chef. Remy is a rat who's also a gifted cook. His love for food often gets him into situations that involve human interaction, stuff not typically seen with mice and rats. Most of the time, Remy has no idea what he's getting into. Nevertheless, the odds don't faze him. His bravery is a note that anyone can achieve what they put their mind to. So the movie begins with a message from the world-renounced cook, Gusteau. Anyone can cook, he says in a French accent. The background of the scene is uplifting and inspiring, but even here, a critic named Ego tells us that I, on the other hand, take cooking seriously, and no, I don't think anyone can do it. So every time I watch Ratatouille, I think about how anyone can cook, but a good cook will not back down when problems approach. Like Remy, I faced problems when I tried to cook the bread. Maybe the recipe wasn't right or I prepared it wrong or I set the oven to a heat too high, but at the end of the day, I continued to try and continued to learn. I'm like Remy because when he's attacked by humans or almost thrown into a river or kicked out of the kitchen because he's a rat, he always comes back. In that respect, I believe the ability to cook lies far beyond ingredients. It is what is inside of you, what propels you to keep on moving, to learn, and to keep trying. I also find myself thinking about crepes, more specifically, a creperie located in New Haven named Choupette Creperie. Along with in-room dining and takeout, the creperie delivers to destinations within a 40-mile radius. During online school, I found sanctuary in this restaurant. Two times a week, I ordered a crepe au traditionnel to be delivered to my address. It was like clockwork. Every Tuesday and Friday morning, while I was in my Italian class, the doorbell would ring and I would go, quote-unquote, use the bathroom, and magically appear five minutes later with a crepe filled with lemon and sugar. Now you may ask, if my hobby was cooking, why was I so keen on ordering crepes instead of making them myself? The answer is quite simple. I may like cooking, but it was food that I enjoyed the most. COVID was the thing that limited my experience to foods that I liked. If I couldn't go out to dinner with my family or drive to a fast food place with my friends, I thought, why not enjoy food in the comfort of my own home? But this didn't leave me with many options, you see. At the time, the creperie was the only place that delivered all the way to the small town of Essex, Connecticut, where I lived. A mass population of 3,000 people and not a single restaurant apart from a sandwich shop with a temporary closed sign. It is times like these that I enjoy reflecting on my experience with food during COVID. I'd like to think that it was the thing that gave me something to look forward to and enjoy. But really, food and cooking reminded me of a better time before COVID and even taught me to keep trying, especially when I was repeatedly failing. So as I wrap up this podcast, I want to acknowledge the movie Ratatouille for reminding me of a time prior to COVID where I truly enjoyed myself. With that being said, I give Ratatouille a five-star rating. As always, I pledge my honor, Luca Angelini.