Fraternity Kitchen

Not Hard to Be Good

Friday, September 3rd, 2010 | daily | No Comments

Okay, so I think we can all agree there’s a lot of wisdom in this poster at the preschool where today I ended my three week stint as fill-in cook.  But the one that really gets to me is the admonition to be kind even when I’m feeling icky.  And I know all the frat cooks out there can just totally relate to that one.  When I left today, those little beings presented me with a card and a Pike Place Market apron and hugs and “we love you a WHOLE LOT!”    What really struck me was that the biggest praise came the day I served up pasta with marinara sauce–the same simple sauce that’s on the recipe page of this blog and that anyone can make in almost the same time it takes to heat up a wretched orangey-sort of tomatoey- High Fructocse Corn Syrup-laden canned product.  It’s just not that hard to be good.  ”Ten cases of garbage bags,” Little Dick emailed me today in a list of supplies he needs me to order for next week, with the  notation, “yeah, there’s a lot of shit that needs to be thrown out around here.”  He had a great many requests, all with similar clarifying notes, and so I called him to make sure 10 million cases of paper towels were actually required and it was nice to talk to someone for whom being kind is no harder than breathing.

That Certain Type

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 | daily | No Comments

The teachers at the preschool where I’m subbing for a few weeks had been complaining of leaky cups and so I suggested they have their sales guy issue a credit and bring a different product.  It’s fortunate for him that I wasn’t there when he dropped off a box of “completely different” cups, because I’d have opened that box in his presence to reveal “old” cups on the left and “new” on the right.  John knows better than to try that with me.  He knows that not only would I have made him wait for me to reveal the contents, but, not content with pointing out the obvious, I’d be pulling out an old invoice to compare product numbers while singing “One of these things is just like the other.”  And truly, John has been a saint lately, like today when he called me to ask if I was certain the ceiling height in the desired location for the walk-in was at least nine feet.  Perhaps sensing from my silence that this was an “oh crap” moment for me, he offered to swing by the House to measure and so I gave him the phone number of one of the guys.  After confirming that I would not after all have to ask the Board for a few thousand extra dollars to knock out the ceiling, he texted that the sophmore who’d let him in wanted to know how I got his number.  And for a moment it occured to me that some of these guys might have the mistaken impression that I’m that certain type of 40-something woman.  “Tell him not to get too excited,” I texted back, “it wasn’t hard.”

Lessons Learned

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Every morning, I read the stats on my blog traffic and I learn from that what search terms people use to find Fraternity Kitchen.  “Cleaning a frat” was of interest to someone yesterday and they spent exactly zero point zero zero minutes on this site.  It doesn’t surprise me because all I have to say about cleaning a frat is “let’s try that sometime.”  In fact, at our meeting on Friday, I suggested we ditch table linen service and hire an overnight janitor with the money we save, which would have the huge payoff of making me less of a crazy person every morning.  I know that some people found it amusing when I took a temporary job at a preschool, what with my pathological need to have everything just exactly so and my viper tongue, but I’ve been serene and angelic in this role and I put it down to two things:  spotless surroundings and customers too new in the world to know their own minds or be influenced by anyone else’s.  “I thought that maybe I would learn something,” I responded when one of the guys at Frank’s Produce asked me why I gave up 3 weeks of my summer vacation.   And when another asked if I did in fact learn anything, I thought for a moment.  “Well, actually, yes,” I said, ”If my guys could just act like two-year-olds, I’d be fine.”

Fall Planning

Sunday, August 29th, 2010 | daily | 7 Comments

I had lunch on Friday with Corey, the treasurer and Bob, the guys’ advisor.  I’d invited all of the leadership team to thank them for their work on getting the walk-in and to talk about the year ahead, but Nick, Johnny and Little Dick had other obligations, and so I told Corey he could eat for all of them.  While we waited for him to arrive, I pulled out an article from the morning paper and told Bob that “the next guy who asks me for processed crap is going to have me reading this aloud,” and quoted the passages about plans by the food industry to use all those salmonella eggs in prepared foods, and assurances that it’s perfectly safe and that E.coli-tainted beef is frequently used to make frozen meatballs.  So who has a problem with that?  “It’s nuts,” I said, and Bob, who is so polar opposite me on many issues that we went an entire year without speaking, nodded in solidarity.  ”I nominate Blair,” Corey told me when we discussed my need for help Fall quarter, “because, A. he needs the money, and B., he gets along with you.”   I love Blair and if he’s going to continue hanging out in the kitchen talking shit, he might as well be put to work.  And his recent comment on the post Loyal Customers shows me I haven’t entirely been talking to myself, but all I could think about as Corey continued with other subjects was the phrase, “he gets along with you.”  And I just want to know who exactly doesn’t?

Real Job

Thursday, August 26th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

“That smells yummy, Darlene!” one of the 4 year olds commented as she arrived for the day and I’m not sure if it was the White Bean Chicken Chili or the Blueberry Banana Pancakes, both of which were on the go.  This is the same little girl who, no matter what I tell her is on the menu, will cock her head and look at me as if I’ve read her mind about exactly what she wants to eat that day and exclaim, “I LOVE that!”  Just for fun one day, I’m going to try out “We’re having brussels sprout soup!”  I love messing with the guys at the fraternity, but here I have to be a little nicer, so I’ll do things like give them one egg for their cake-baking project when they ask me for three and watch for the confusion, but stop the game before the tears come.   ”Are you surviving?” one of the parents asked me today, my 9th of 15, and I told her that it’s nothing like the chaos of my “real” job and then proceeded to tell her what that is.  After four years of cooking for a fraternity, I still feel a little awkward when I share that information with people, the way someone must feel when they say, “I’m a porn actor.”  Okay, well maybe not, but just the same, there’s this look that comes over their face that indicates they don’t know quite what to say.  I think my favorite response, and the one I find myself asking frequently is the simplest and yet most profound:  “That’s a job?”

Loyal Customers

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

I’ve lived in Seattle for a little over four years now and it wasn’t until yesterday afternoon as I left my temporary job at Pike Place that I noticed this sign, which has been there forever and which sums up so well what I’ve been trying to get at.  That’s really it.  What am I eating and who grew, made, or raised it?  Maybe it takes the thought of eating rat shit eggs to move people, but when my mother who lives in a conservative state sends me an article from a conservative newspaper that asks the right question about the egg scare–why are we raising animals in massive numbers in confined spaces in centralized locations anyway?–well, we have reached a tipping point.  When you have a job that doesn’t require a lot of brain power, you have so much time to use that brain to obsess about all kinds of things and I’ve been doing that lately wondering what kind of customer I am, what kind of service provider, what kind of producer?  I learned a couple of days ago that the walk-in was finally approved and I know a few of my loyal customers worked very hard to make that happen. They did this for some reason,  and I’d like to think that they can see a direct benefit to themselves and to the House, and that they’re as excited about a 6×7x7′7″ refrigerator as I am.  But I’m pretty sure they had some kind of emergency meeting and realized what they were facing come September and concluded that, “she is never going to shut the fuck up until she gets it.”

Lummy Yunch

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

“I’m looking for the bad stuff,” one of the teachers informed me as she gathered ingredients for a cake she planned to make with the kids.  By “bad stuff,” she meant the white flour tucked in a cupboard like contraband.  “It’s all good,” I said, “if it’s homemade.”  And I was thinking of one of my chef readers in Iowa who told me he makes “scratch junk food” for his fraternity.  When I pulled that simple white cake out of the oven and took it to the classroom, the kids gathered round to see the puffed confection with its warm buttery vanilla scent.  It was the smell that awed them and it hadn’t occured to me until then that you miss that most of all when you buy a premade cake.  I didn’t expect to find anything actually delicious when I agreed to fill in for the cook at this preschool.  Okay, I didn’t expect to find anything actually edible.  But what’s going on here is inspirational and the avocado ranch dip from yesterday’s veggie tray is going to make an appearance on the Alpha Sig menu in the fall.  “Thanks for the lummy yunch!!!” one of the two-year-olds blurted out with such obvious joy.  And it doesn’t get better than that.

Bred to Taste Good

Monday, August 23rd, 2010 | daily | No Comments

“Can you do something with some cheap Romas?” Mark asked me as I shopped for today’s meals at Pike Place Preschool.  “Why cheap?” I inquired as I ran my hands through apparently good product.  “Just need to move them.  They’re local, so they’re not bred for shipping or holding very long.”  And before the words were out of my mouth, they were out of his, “they’re bred to taste good.”  I laughed as I thought about the perfectly round, evenly colored, utterly tasteless orbs that we get most of the school year, the ones that fit 4 by 5 in a box, always exactly 20 to a layer.  You have to wonder about that.  There are some things I don’t fight and out-of-season tomatoes on sandwich bar is one of those, but with the high price and low quality, it might be time to add that to my “let’s just not” list and see if anyone actually notices.  Late in the afternoon, I heard a report on the radio about the source of the salmonella poisining of all those eggs:  chickens eating the infected feces of rats on the factory floor.  I could have spent all summer trying to come up with an explanation for why I’m on the path I’m on and I could not have come close to matching that for graphic horror.  “Three weeks,” I reminded my husband when he asked me how long I’m doing this temporary work for the preschool before I return to the House.  “Not long enough to hate my job.”  Or get my ass fired.

Dirty

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

“Selling a lot of eggs lately?” my huband joked with Janelle from Stokesberry Farms this morning as we bought a dozen.  But the truth is they sell out every market day and so she wasn’t able to tell if the recent egg recall from the salmonella scare over factory-produced eggs had had an impact.  When Mike Seely from the Seattle Weekly wrote in his article about Fraternity Kitchen that I am “shunning industrial producers,” I think a lot of people probably wondered what in the hell that was all about.  But when you look at the massive concrete buildings that are the source of the recall, well, that’s what it’s all about.  The major food companies tell us their stuff is super sanitized and safe (yeah, obviously), and the government is right in bed with them telling us all to just cook those tainted babies until they’re VERY, VERY HARD.  “The stuff is dirty,” Rod once told me when I was badgering him to carry more local produce.  And he was talking about actual dirt, as if customers would be repulsed by the evidence that their potatoes grow in the earth.  And maybe they would be.  That’s what scares me.  “I’m sourcing our eggs from Steibr Farms this year,” I told the guys’ advisor and his reaction was encouraging to me, because he is someone not exactly known for radical activism.  “You have a lot of allies,” he assured me, putting himself squarely in that camp.

So Excited

Thursday, August 19th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

This is Scott eating a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich during Lent.  He didn’t mean to do it, he just smelled the goodness in the kitchen and before he knew it, he was going to Hell.  I decided not to post the picture during Lent, but now that it’s summer, somehow it doesn’t seem so bad.  With summer here, I’ve had to dig up old photos and it’s reminded me of what fun the job can be.  John’s been working hard to get all the specs on the walk-in made available to our very (legitimately) demanding Corporate Board and so today I sent him a thank-you.  “I hope to be less demanding going forward,” I wrote.  And as if to prove it’s possible,  “I’ve had a whole week at the preschool being sweet and not swearing.  Even when Sysco was 2 hours late.”  “I’m learning so many good things,” I told my husband.  Lets use our words to solve our problems…If you’re not going to be safe, you’re not going on the outing…”  And then, there’s nap time, which I just think would be so excellent at the House.  Let’s all just take a time out and stop being so cranky and wake up and have snack.  “How excited are you to come back?” the members of the Corporate Board asked me last night as they welcomed me into their meeting via cell phone.  “I’m SO excited.” I told them.  And I really am.

Know It All

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

“You need to do something with basil,” one of the guys at Frank’s Produce in Pike Place Market instructed today as I was picking up fruit for my little customers.  He handed me a bunch and it was perfect, full and green and fragrant.  “Local?” I asked, smirking.  “Picked this very morning by that guy right there,” he smiled, and I turned around to see an actual farmer leaning up against the wall looking every bit the part.  Okay.  I’m not always right.  I took this 3 week job at the preschool for reasons I couldn’t explain; it’s my summer vacation and it’s hard work for the pay.  But I’m starting to see a theme:  Every day I feel a little less 100% sure that I know it all.  “Christopher left today,” a tiny tot told me, all big eyes and quivering lip. And I don’t know who Christopher is and I didn’t ask for this information, it just spilled out as she was walking by the kitchen.   ”He was my best friend,” she responded when I asked her if that made her sad.  I have a reputation as a hard-ass, but these little critters are getting to me.  And reminding me of the healing power of homemade pancakes.

A Taste Good Thing

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

The payoff of getting to work at my temporary job by 7AM is this view, somehow more beautiful at that hour without the crush of tourists.  Arriving in the early hours, I also get to see the FSA, Sysco and USF trucks delivering their produce to the stalls.  And it both amuses and annoys me.  What most Seattleites and visitors alike don’t know is that there is nothing farm fresh about Pike Place Market, except on the couple of days a week in the summer when the real farmers set up their street stands; the rest of the time, it’s a regular grocery store, pretending.  For the real deal, you have to go to the fabulous neighborhood markets, Ballard and the U-District being my favorites. I learned today that I can get local organic eggs wholesale for a competitive price to the factory eggs we’ve been getting at the Alpha Sig House.  I hear a lot of “it can’t be done,” but I don’t like to be told no.  And it’s not just a “feel good” thing as a skeptic I know likes to call it.  Eat a really fresh poached egg sometime.  It’s a taste good thing.

Driven

Saturday, August 14th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

A couple of days ago, Little Dick let me know he was putting together a schedule for Work Week and asked if there was anything  that I would like. “Yes, I know, the walk-in,” he added, a little wearily I thought. ”Well, I talked to Ross about putting in some shelves in the area the walk-in will go.  And he’ll need help assembling the walk-in.  And I’ll need help assembling the shelving that will go in the walk-in.”  What’s funny about this to me is that at the time I wrote it, I didn’t see it as obsessive.  And it’s not just that no such equipment is on it’s way to us, but the funding has not even been approved by the Board.  I just want it and I will get it and that’s that.  I’ve been thinking for a while that I need to get help for my driven, single-minded focus, but I really know it after today when, as I was working on menus, I got a text from my husband that he was at the Canadian border on his way to an airshow.  “Did you bring the soy sauce?” I replied.  There was a pause before he inquired as to what that might be for, and this being the first actually hot day we’ve had all summer, I had intended to make sure he was protected with sunscreen.  “Be careful if you’re doing any cooking today,” he texted back, “and yes, I have my soy sauce.”  I know that I need to learn how to be passionate about food without becoming a monster, so I’ve decided that perhaps the key is to focus all that energy on positive creativity instead of finding ever more inventive ways to verbally assault my sales guy and the hapless delivery driver.  And so today I decided I’ll paint one of the kitchen doors with magnetic chalkboard paint and I ordered Magnetic Poetry to go along with the chalk.  I was thinking that it might be risky to make spontaneous word art available to a bunch of fraternity brothers, but then at least I thought with these kits, they’d be restricted in their vocabulary.  Until I saw that “F-Word,”  ”Sexually Suggestive,” and “Erotic”word sets are now available.  I know it does nothing to redirect my focus, but I hit the “Food” word button.  Marginally safer material.

Respect

Friday, August 13th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Just before leaving me to take over her job for a few weeks, Catrina asked if I was sure I was okay.  “What could go that badly wrong?” I asked her, which you can say about cooking for preschoolers, but if a substitute asked me that at Alpha Sig House, well, that would be one of those “how about those Mariners!?” moments.  Catrina is ridiculously over-qualified and I think that’s probably a common thread amongst institutional cooks who are putting out really good meals.  “I could do R&D for a food company–even an ethically sound food company, of which there are about three” she explained, ”but none of them just research good food.  I could be developing marshmallow fluff.  I don’t WANT to work on marshmallow fluff!”  It is a sad fact that the people in the labs coming up with the next fat-free, artificially bacon-flavored potato puff are the ones that get all the respect, while we who put actual blueberries in the actual pancakes couldn’t live on the salaries we make.  Still, there was this moment today when I stopped to notice those tiny children sitting in their miniature chairs at their miniature table, silently–with such serious expressions–putting fresh food into their tiny mouths, and I felt really good about it all.

Complicated

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

I was in New Orleans enjoying cafe au lait and beignets with my family when I received a text from Badley.  “Can you send me a recipe for super tasty and fancy cookie that I could make for my intern potluck?  Key phrase is ‘that I could make.’”  I told him I was in the French Quarter on VACATION, but that didn’t seem to register.  “Okay, well, just let me know, there’s a girl here I’m trying to impress.”  And it didn’t stop there.  “She’s a vegetarian, so no bacon cookies.”  I told him to make World Peace Cookies, a deep and delicious and ever so wonderfully salty chocolate confection that would be just familiar enough to be comfortable and just exotic enough (that sea salt!) to be intriguing.  The picture is from some time ago when my husband and I were walking home from dinner in Lower Queen Anne and stopped into Uptown Espresso and found Nick at the helm.  Nick who is now President of the house, but was then just one of my guys.  The texts while I’m sleeping or on vacation, or otherwise having a life, the lattes served by Alpha Sigs, it’s all a reminder to me that what I do is bigger than lunch and dinner 5 days a week.  I’ve taken on a temporary job at Pike Place Preeschool filling in for their regular cook while she ventures off to Burning Man and on my first day I could see that those little kids get more from her than food.  “My guys come tell me stories, too,” I told her today while I trained with her.  “But their stories are a little more, uh, complicated.”

Righteous

Thursday, August 5th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

I guess it was a premature victory dance in my last post, because this morning I received a sales flyer from John for Tyson chicken wings in “sauce.”  I look forward to those flyers as much as the Viagra emails I receive addressed to Mr. Darlene promising me amazing erections.  And they’re about as relevant to my needs.  Regular readers and members of Alpha Sigma Phi Mu Chapter know that I have a particular loathing for this company that brings you “value-added ” products (would the value be the antibiotics or the excessive sodium?) and has Robin Miller on it’s home page, the cook on Food Network most likely to have me changing the channel.  (Okay, that’s a tough call.)  And knowing Tyson spends a fortune on marketing, I told John to remove me from the distribution list.  Whenever I start to feel like The Worst Customer Ever, I think about my own customers and I feel totally okay with being the person for whom my sales guy has a special soothing ring tone called “Green Tea.”  “I’m here in New Orleans with Johnny and Little Dick and Blodgett and Corey,” Nick’s voice yelled on voicemail, “and we were thinking of you and wanted to know where to eat.”  Nothing about the walk-in cooler they promised me or the fact that my contract is still unsigned, but we are hungry and we look to you!  I thought for half a second about sending a bunch of frat guys to my new favorite place, but when I considered that these are five of the guys I don’t regularly want to kill, I texted back, “Cochon.”  You get called a lot of names when you doggedly demand the best food, but your customers call you Righteous.

Concession

Monday, August 2nd, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

I belong to a food book group, which would seem to be a narrow-minded recreation for someone who works long hours in a kitchen, but the other members of this group have interesting jobs like Epidemioligist and Attorney.  So I get to hear what someone who works in Thailand on child health issues thinks of grass-fed beef and Hemingway’s adventures in Paris.  August’s book is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a work I first read a few years ago and which, as the book cover promises, changed my life.  While most of the fraternity and sorority cooks in the country are close to returning to work, we at the UW have well over a month until the first Chapter Dinner.  (And I should point out, we’re still in the kitchen weeks after others have hung up their aprons.)  But I can feel the pressure already and logged into my purveyor’s catalogue today to see if they carry quinoa, a grain I’ve decided needs to be on my menu this year.  But before I could begin that search, a message blazed on the screen announcing to customers that US Foodservice proudly supports local suppliers, and that I should look for icons identifying select products.  Three years ago, when I first began asking for stuff from less than 500 miles from Seattle, the climate was decidedly, well, let me see…I think Kirk’s exact words were “that will never happen” and, today, there it was:  a concession.  “I could say that your company is just pandering,” I wrote in an email to my sales guys.  But, you know, whatever…:)

Make it Happen

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Almost as entertaining as the genuine comments on this blog are the spam ones that I read before deleting.  My favorite is one that I re-visit when I’m feeling a little too sure of myself: 

You are not right.  I am assured.  I suggest it to discuss.  I congratulate, your opinion is useful.  What words, super, maginificent idea.  I believe that you are not right.  I consider that you are mistaken.

It’s pure poetry and I wish I could babble something as brilliant as that when confronted with someone I think is full of shit.  Occasionally I get a comment from an actual reader expressing a similar hostility to my message and I think I understand it now.  I came back from my trip to Louisiana having learned two things that will change the way I approach my job and this blog.  One is that we in Seattle are blessed with an abundance of locally-sourced food.  The other is that large parts of the country are not.  In Louisiana, where even the vegetable dishes are rich in pork, there is not a single pig farmer.  “A what?” one butcher replied when I asked, as if I was looking for some local unicorn.  There were a few small farmers’ markets, but you got the feeling these were a sort of wacky thing, like oxygen bars.  But it should not be out of the mainstream to want a Creole tomato for your Shrimp Creole.  “They’ll get there,” Bill the Butcher told me cheerfully when I visited his store a few blocks from UW.  “Seattle wasn’t always like this.  We made it happen.”

www.billthebutcher.us

Regional Goodness

Monday, July 19th, 2010 | daily | 3 Comments

Back home in Louisiana where I am for a couple of weeks, I dragged my mother to the farmers’ market where we found, amongst other beauties, an abundance of eggplant of various colors.  “I went to Carrabba’s and they told me eggplant parmesan was off the menu because they couldn’t get it,” my mother told me.  (And yes, she did feel the need to explain to her locavore daughter why she was even in a  Carrabba’s when she lives in one of the most unique food-centric parts of the country.)  This is why no one should eat at a chain restaurant.  Ever.  Because the fact that gorgeous fat eggplants are gushing out of the ground a few feet away is completely irrelevant to a corporation wedded to a cheap national distribution model.   I get deeply discouraged at times, until I read articles like this one from the New Orleans Times Picayune about one great effort to revolutionize one small school’s food:  http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2010/07/local_school_will_get_fresh_lo.html  Or when one of my guys shows me some part of my passionate advocacy had an impact.  The last time I heard from Badley it was through a text he sent me:  “I’m at a fish market on the Potomac River buying a bushel of Maryland blue crab and a couple of pounds of shrimp from the Gulf.  It’s so wild here.  Happy 4th.”  Happy indeed.

Badley Goes to Washington

Monday, June 28th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Badley made it to Washington to begin his internship in the bowels of bureaucratic hell.  I know this because I received a text from him today with a link to the blog he’s started in which he excoriates me for my lack of recent postings, ignoring the fact that I don’t work for him anymore.  But he was on my mind recently when I read a well-researched book on the wretched state of the federal school lunch program.  I’m no tea party nutter, but my takeaway from that is that the government needs to get the hell out of food matters.  My second takeaway was that I am so lucky to have a job that allows me to serve a delicious Vietnamese salad without a USDA official poking at it to see if it has exactly the right number of nutrients.  It’s hard to pick out a single “holy shit are you kidding me?” nugget from this study, but the line that some school food directors feel they have to serve processed, paper-wrapped finger food because second graders don’t know how to use a fork is right up at the top.  When I read that, I thought about how I’d react if one of my guys told me he’s fork-impaired.  It all left me grateful for the freedom I have to just cook good, real food, sourced not from USDA commodities and mega factories, but from Steven the rancher and Bob the local farmer.  And left me, too, a little concerned for the soul of Badley.

 http://web.me.com/alexanderbadley/www.fromdcwithlove.com/From_DC_with_Love/Entries/2010/6/28_My_Arrival.html

Free For All, Fixing School Food in America, by Janet Poppendieck

Logical Consequences

Thursday, June 10th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

The only thing that would have been more deliciously satisfying than watching this car on the left be towed from blocking access to my parking spot for two weeks would have been watching the owner’s frantic, freaked out reaction.  I know what he’d be like because I’d already witnessed his misplaced profanity-laced rage a few days ago after discovering ticket number two.  I mean, what sort of moron keeps parking in an illegal spot after two warnings?  So when I saw the Seattle PD parking enforcer giving someone a ticket for a stupid reason today, I asked her if she’d give that jerk over there a kick in the ass.  She smiled and told me she’d take care of it.  Trust a woman to get things done.  I felt about that car the way I felt about the person who was supposed to do dinner dishes last night.  I came into work, ready to put everything into storage for summer and found a mountain of food-encrusted pots.  So I put a note up for everyone:  “I’m washing dinner dishes instead of making lunch.”  After a whole year of not enforcing rules, I just sort of had enough today.  Every year ends this way in a sort of mix of sadness, joy, exhaustion and anti-climax.  It’s over.  I’m going home to spend the summer working on a cookbook and guide.  To teach others how to do what is, despite all the drama, the very best food job around.

Change

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 | daily | 3 Comments

Late yesterday, Carlos decided to wind me up.  “I saw the delivery guy walking into another house with tater tots.  Can we get those?”  It says something about how far we’ve come that this was widely understood to be a joke amongst the guys in hearing range, whereas when I started this job, the question would have ignited a real debate.  It’s not that there aren’t a few guys who would just as soon dig into a Stouffers lasagna as the Red Wine-Braised Oregon Brisket accompanied by Gruyere Potato Gratin with Sauteed Zucchini that served as tonight’s dinner.  It’s just that more often I hear exclamations of approval over the Thyme and Red Pepper-Marinated Goat Cheese, followed by a request for Triscuits, a cracker with this Zen-like ingredient list:  Wheat.  Oil. Salt. In the past few weeks, I’ve heard from a number of sorority and fraternity members complaining of “bad tasting and bruised fruits and vegetables,” and “chicken with the consistency of a rice cake.”  And what makes me more angry than accounts like that are the cooks I hear who say it’s not possible to do any better than serve up meat that is “poor quality, tough, bland and unhealthy.”  “Some cooks just don’t want to change,” John told me when I suggested some of his customers are not hearing their customers.  “Well maybe they need to be helped along,” I responded, “because change is a-coming!”

Perfect Pitch

Saturday, May 29th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

I’ve tried hard to convince institutional cooks that Tyson is not our friend, but I really don’t need to mock the company because it does a great job of that without my help.  “Do they know they’re funny?” I asked my husband as I read priceless nuggets from their website like the statement that their processed taco meat allows for a ”minimum culinary skill set.”  Or their pitch to school lunch directors to “select beef for your commodity allocation,” and divert it to Tyson who will “turn it into products that excite kids.”  I don’t know about you, but when I read that last line, I had a hard time picturing a healthy meal.  Okay, a meal, period.  Stephen Neel of Oregon Natural Meats made his own pitch to us yesterday with steaks and burgers from cattle he’s personally connected to.  As someone who’s spent the past four years deriding Big Food and entertaining the guys with my side of phone conversations that leave no doubt I feel strongly about the source of my stuff, this perfect day just threw me off.  It would have been enough for most people to taste the clearly superior meat, but learning that Neel used to work for ADM–and that with this former insider knowlege he found the movie Food, Inc. to be “technically accurate”–added a certain spice to that steak.  Still, as long as there are food companies promoting a “minimum culinary skill set,” there will be blog material and anyway, while I’ve turned a corner on chicken and beef, there’s work to be done.  “So now,” I said to my long-suffering USF reps, “lets talk about pigs.”

Tough Crowd

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

When the juice machine guy arrived to remove our defunct equipment, he asked me why we were sending it away.  I thought about telling him that the company he works for is part of the evil giant industrial food complex I seek to destroy.  But he looked like he was already having a “I Hate My Job” day at 9 o’clock in the morning, so instead I just told him the boring truth.  It’s amusing to toy with some people and then others are too hopelessly sad to make it any fun.  I tried to explain this to one of the guys who’s been on the receiving end of some relentless teasing lately:  they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t love you I assured him.  But he was struggling and so I finally had to play mom and advise him to just say the magic phrase, “I know you are, but what am I!”  He was skeptical about using this 4th grade rejoinder, but it’s amazingly effective coming out of the mouth of a 20-something.  There’s been a feverish amount of teasing around here lately and I am not innocent as Blair discovered today when I interuppted his story about eating at Olive Garden to read a Seattle Weekly critic’s quote that “Olive Garden is widely considered the lamest restaurant in the world.”  That Blair of all people–the person for whom I make Chipotle Mayonnaise for sandwich bar, the person who asks 10,000 questions while he watches me butcher a chicken–would let slip that he eats at that palace of fakery.  Well, he was just asking for it.

Things Fall Apart

Monday, May 24th, 2010 | daily | 9 Comments

Every year in the last few weeks of school, it all just falls apart.  When I told John our juice machine door was broken, he asked me if it was still functional.  So I sent him a picture and the message, “what I meant was that the door fell on me this morning and I’m considering my legal options.”  But truly I wasn’t mad about this.  “It’s a sign,” Corey said gravely when he witnessed the damage.  Corey shares my hatred of the juice machine, which should more properly be called the sugar machine.  “Sugar, high fructose corn syrup…oh, and then in case you didn’t get enough highly-processed sweetness, regular ol’ corn syrup,” I read from the label when one of the guys expressed curiosity about the contents of the glass in his hand.  I’m not the food police and consider the Center for Science in the Public Interest to be the Center for Joyless Food Phobics Who Need to Lighten Up.  I think everyone should have a choice and if I want to spread straight lard on my toast, the CSPI can just zip it, but it should be an informed choice.  I mean, how nutty is it to think that something called lemonade should contain–I’m just throwing this out there–lemon juice?  Still, contrary to rumor and suspicion, I did not kill the machine.  “Bashing the crap out of something is not my M.O.,” I told Blair.  “I’m way more subtle than that.”

Red and Wild

Thursday, May 20th, 2010 | daily | 3 Comments

“I was bored in class, so I read all the comments on the blog,” Carlos told me.  He’d read all the posts, so he was making good use of his tuition spending by ensuring a really thorough study of Fraternity Kitchen.  Knowing that a number of parents read this blog, I hesitate to share this, but I do try to check my grammar and I think the guys learn some vital life lessons here.  Like working hard to ensure they don’t end up as a fraternity cook.  I’d say “get a degree so you don’t grow up to be a fraternity cook,” except that I have one of those, a BA in English, which makes me super qualified to work long hours in a hot kitchen AND write a kick-ass blog that earns me zero income.  “You have all these chefs in Iowa reading you,” Carlos marvelled, as if this was news to me.  Or maybe he was just expressing astonishment that it’s not just bored college students wasting their time on this trash.  I have fantasies about living the life of those salt of the Earth, farm-centric Iowans.  Until I open my boxes of first of the season Copper River Sockeye, red and wild and packed on ice just yesterday.

Friends in High Places

Monday, May 17th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

Badley had great news today, but I didn’t hear it from him.  I heard from Patrick first and then Blair.  And then learned that everybody but me knew Badley was offered a job in Senator Murray’s office in D.C. after graduation.  Regardless of your politics (and I want to declare to all my readers that I have come to completely detest politics–particularly that of the ideological, partisan, you’re for me or against me kind, so I really take no side), this is BIG news.  A 2010 college graduate with a JOB!.  But as I said, I didn’t hear it from him, a person who routinely texts me at all hours to ask me and tell me all kinds of urgent things like “can you make me a batch of salsa for winter break?”  I thought about how to retaliate against this, but I really don’t need to.  It’s awesome that Badley will be in Washington.  And I will be texting him relentlessly with requests to make major changes to the school lunch program and the Farm Bill, to subsidize vegetable farming instead of corn, soy and wheat farming, and to work on declaring High Fructose Corn Syrup a controlled substance.

Reminiscing

Sunday, May 16th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

This picture was taken at last night’s alumni event just after Alex had finished a monologue about the likelihood of my leaving.  “Where else is she going to go?” he recalled telling current members of the house.  “Where  else can she have it her way and talk shit about her customers on the Internet?”  I’m the first to admit that the job has it’s upside, but then again, the very fact that there is a never ending stream of shit to talk about on the internet is why most fraternity cooks seem more like they’re on court-ordered community service than there by choice.  When guys ask me who hired me, I’m never sure if they’re asking  WHO hired YOU??? or if they’re just interested in the history, but regardless I tell them it was Alex, who had suffered three years of food described to me variously as “cat meat” and “rat meat.”  None of the current residents of the House have any memory of this and so sometimes I fantasize about having that former cook come back to substitute while I take a nice little holiday in Spain.

What Matters

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Festivities were  in progress when I arrived for work at 7AM.  The pig should have been going, too, but the coals weren’t even out of the bag.  They’d forgotten to obtain the necessary permit to hold a party and so, when the Seattle PD pulled up in front of the house, there was that flashing lights in your rearview mirror moment.  The cops waited a while, saw that no one was hurting or being hurt, and then left without a word.  I smiled broadly when I got this news because, after a couple of weeks of  bureaucratic bullshit in both my work and personal life, it was reassuring to see people in power who hadn’t lost their ability to make a judgment call.  I was thinking that my job, too, calls for a certain amount of prioritizing what to care about, what’s a serious matter, what needs to be let go of.  Plugs left out of the sink:  annoying.  Pig left unrefrigerated overnight:  deadly.  Well, really, he’d been kept in an ice chest, like a murdered body on its way to a landfill, on top of ice, but not encased in it.  I temp’d it and it was still cold.  “How long has it been here?” I asked them and watched each face go through a “what’s the right answer?” contortion. Reason enough for me to get the walk-in cooler I’m getting a quote on this Friday.

Scary

Monday, May 10th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Just as I was rubbing down a 65lb pig with salt and spice, Johnny presented me with a gift of spot prawns his family had caught in the Hood Canal over the weekend.  I think it was a sort of apology for not making Friday’s lunch and while it would have been great to have him, well, come on…first of the season spot prawns.  “We use cat food for bait,” he told me, and I started imagining Johnny slitting Fifi’s throat in aid of this shrimping trip and I was thinking that I was really not okay with that.  “No…like Fancy Feast,” he explained. ”Not cat  as food.”  It was a huge relief I can tell you because I didn’t have plans for dinner and so tonight my husband and I enjoyed little else but these garlic-roasted crustaceons.  It was the first day of Greek Week, but it wasn’t the guys who provided the drama of the day.  It was a cook from another house who arrived drunk and raging and “looking like a homeless person,” as pledge Brian put it.  “I heard you quit!” she bellowed as I calmly assured her that you can’t believe all you hear.  She was on fire furious about a rumor that my guys were going to her house for dinner Thursday, and I was thinking a lot of thoughts about that prospect that I didn’t share.  “Holy Jesus,” I said to some of the freshmen later, “and you think I’m scary.”

Far From Done

Sunday, May 9th, 2010 | daily | 8 Comments

For most of the winter, local produce is limited to potatoes and turnips, so it’s a thrill to see the arrival of Washington asparagus, leeks and rhubarb.  “I never ate vegetables,” one of the guys told me on Friday, trying to explain the impact I’d had on the life of this House.  “I eat vegetables now.”  I was so struck by this simple declaration because, as I told my husband while we hiked the Lime Kiln Trail yesterday, “I’m trying to bring them along with me, not preach to them.”  “It’s in the very early stages,” the VP from US Foodservices told me on Thursday, referring to a partnership with Oregon and Washington ranchers to offer natural, local beef to select customers.  “I’d love to offer this to you,” he went on, before the caveat that it wouldn’t be ready for roll-out until the Fall.  It’s hard to overstate how major this is–the prospect of obtaining beef from a national food distributor that’s not shipped thousands of miles from massive feedlots, but instead from small, nearby farms; the kinds of places that, when you look up the company name on the web, you don’t get  a hundred articles about how really very nasty they are.  No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t see how it was ever going to happen for large groups on a budget.  So when a few of the leaders in the House took me to lunch on Friday to ask me to come back next year, I’d already had 24 hours of regret that I’d be leaving just as I’d been given the gift of having my years of relentless pleading pay off.  I’m so far from done.

Tastes Like Chicken

Thursday, May 6th, 2010 | daily | 1 Comment

There’s nothing like show and tell to get your point across. I purchased both chicken breasts from US Foodservice, but the one on the left is one they sourced  locally, from whole chickens that I break down myself (15 minutes for a case of twelve…I did time myself).  The one on the right comes pre-cut from “Massive Chicken Factory Anywhere USA.”  And you can’t really see it here, but the chicken that’s treated like one of God’s creatures is plumper and pinker than the one that looks like road kill.  And what you also can’t see is that Exhibit Left tastes like chicken.  ”Please  make sure the dining area is presentable,” I had requested of Little Dick, who diligently remembered the request and made sure it was so.  So that when I met with a VP of Sales from US Foodservice to tell him we need more of the left and less of the right (absolutely no political inuendo intended), he would take me seriously.  And he didn’t just get the message, he dropped a bombshell.  “US Foodservice sponsered that British guy’s American TV show…  Jamie…”  “Jamie Oliver?” I asked, incredulous.  The guy who revolutionized the entire British school food system and believes as fervently as I do that processed food is poison.  That Jamie.

Winners

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

Pledge Nick came into the kitchen today to tell me “Badley’s sick and he needs me to bring some chips up to his room.”  Not just any chips, mind you, he was specific in his flavor choice of  jalapeno.  I told Nick we were fresh out of His Majesty’s request and shortly after I called Badley to tell him not to bother me and the freshmen on a day when I’m cooking for a VIP, poor pledge Nick returned with a prescription bottle.  “He told me to show you this.”  The Mayor of Mercer Island was our guest tonight, and I’m not sure why, but I’m guessing Mayor McGinn wasn’t available and, as one of the guys pointed out, Mercer Island is one of the top places to live in the country.  They invite successful people to come speak to the guys with a promise of a dinner that’s not the dinner of their frat life memories.  “They should invite a few unsucessful people,” my husband suggested.  “For balance.”  I thought this was a great idea, but wondered how that invitation would go down; “we’ve reached our quota of winners, so we were just wondering how your schedule is looking?”  It’s been one of those weeks where you constantly feel that you will never get all of the food cooked, with this dinner in the middle and then tomorrow one of the VP’s of Sales from US Foodservice coming to hear my thoughts on improving the food system as we know it.  It was one of their people who arranged the date, not me, and it occured to me today to ask Rod, “whose idea was it to schedule a business meeting at a frat house the day after Cinqo de Mayo?”

Charm Offensive

Monday, May 3rd, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Late Friday I received the most charming  lunch invitaiton from the current President and “several members of the executive team.” (I admit that instead of just being totally delighted, I spent several seconds wondering which members of the executive team don’t want to take me to lunch).  So when I came into work this morning, I naturally wondered if the roses were more of the charm offensive.  But they were from the guys’ advisor, who appeared later for Chapter Dinner.  I showed him the sanitizer test strips I’d bought over the weekend to prove that my sanitizer water is safe (which it ALWAYS is).  And the internal refrigerator thermometer I’d bought to prove that the external thermometer is correct (which it is).  All for the health inspector, who is due to return next week.  “He’s coming back to re-inspect all the Houses,” I told the guys’ advisor.  Next week, as in Greek Week.  The one particular week when having a member of the King County government lurking around is probably not such a great thing.  “And I’m quite sure those are totally against code,” I remarked, glancing at the roses contaminating my work tables in all their unsanitary loveliness.

Tyranny

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

Daniel came to me today to ask what position he should apply for at a new restaurant.  I resisted my first inclination, which was to say, “None,” and instead reassured him that his lack of experience was irrelevant.  “Looking like that, they’ll hire you on the spot,” I correctly predicted.  “Most people in food service are unkempt, unreliable substance abusers.”  I was feeling sort of average about how my day was going until the health inspector, new on the job and full of By the Book enthusiasm, single-handedly turned me into one of those anti-government nutcases for the rest of the afternoon.  Of the 80,850 meals I’ve prepared in this house, not one has made anyone sick, so it’s not that I’m anti-food safety.  I’m just anti dumb.  So when he handed me a “How To Wash Your Hands” sign and insisted I post it by the sink, in what is essentially a private home, I didn’t say it, but I’m sure my face spelled out “Are you f***ing kidding?”  Anyone who has the slightest familiarity with college age men knows that a sign like that has a life expectancy of about 5 minutes.  He had a great many other rules and regulations for me, all duly noted.  And I did put up his little hand washing diagram.  With my own notation under it that read, “Do not remove or deface this stupid sign.”

The Good with the Bad

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

“You’ll miss that,” my sales guy John told me as he listened to me banter with one of the guys the other day.  I know that leaving this job will deprive me of that fun, but I haven’t figured out how to get paid to just stand around all day entertaining myself talking shit and creating interesting frat menus that I don’t actually have to cook.  Like every job, this one has it’s soul-killing moments like finding a gallon of  homemade soup left out of refrigeration overnight to fully develop that extreme diarrhea-inducing bacteria.  And then by contrast there are the Little Dicks.  I’m referring to the smallest of the Richards in the house who is so utterly adorable that it took me a long time to accept that he was a real person.  He brought me a present last week, a bottle of salad dressing made by a friend of his mother and the first thing I did (I couldn’t help myself) was to examine the label.  “No weird crap!” I exclaimed, my way of thanking him.  I promised to put him on the blog as a better thank you, but I’m only now getting to it.  I’d grown tired of the whole thing until this morning when Zach made it sound like I was selfishly depriving my audience.  But really it was just that I hadn’t updated the menu and for that reason he missed last night’s well-received Rhubarb Crisp with Vanilla Ice Cream.

Retro Kitchen

Saturday, April 17th, 2010 | daily | 3 Comments

I came across this gem (and I say this without a bit of sarcasm) while going through a box of cookbooks and handwritten recipes from my grandmother, who turns 100 this year.  My mother, who no doubt had her own copy, would have been 22 at the 1961 publication date, when she might have contemplated, if not actually executed, such fare as Clam Dip and Eggs a la Goldenrod.  In my ghastly foodie phase, I mocked these old books, but recently I’ve been thinking about how wonderfully and richly I ate as a child in suburban New Orleans in the sixties, and in the rural homes of my grandparents, who were neither well-travelled nor wealthy.  And it occured to me that if I went back to recipes written before the TV Dinner era, the convenience and fast food revolution, I might find exactly the kind of simple, real food I’ve been promoting in this blog.  And while some of the recipes my grandmother wrote on little bits of paper sound so shockingly horrible that I can’t wait to try them (a package of lemon jello mixed with mustard and poured over chicken before baking–yes, lemon jello…I had to read it back 3 times), most are just basic instructions using real ingredients from a time before everything came in a box or a can.  And so I’ve decided that in my new blog I will prepare such things as Hallelujah White Cake with Amen Frosting and Spaghetti Pie and Creole Pork Roast–the kinds of things you will never see on Top Chef or in Food and Wine Magazine, but that I suspect most of us would choose to eat–and could afford to eat–over Sous Vide Veal Breast with Pommegranate Gastrique and Truffle Foam.

Artisanal

Monday, April 12th, 2010 | daily | 6 Comments

Zach has no part in today’s story.  This is just some gratuitous exposure of the worst case of bed head I’d ever seen.  I have to have a picture, so Zach gets to be IT.  Last week was so horrendous in such a boring way that I fell asleep describing it to my sweet husband as he tried to neck-massage the horribleness away.  So I was determined to approach this Monday with a hopeful and positive demeanor when, first thing in the morning, my driver Alex quipped, “hope you weren’t planning on chicken for dinner.”  He was the first to know that I’d been shorted on my fresh local chickens,which were indeed destined for the ovens tonight.  So I wasn’t in the greatest frame of mind when I received an email from Rod with a list of items and the subject heading, “Stuff you should buy this month!”  “Stuff you’re trying to unload but want me to think is really amazing,” was my response.  “No,” he volleyed right back, “I have a different list of that–this is stuff we need to sell to win a trip to Monterey.”  Because I like to laugh even more than I love to bitch, this softened me and made up for the fact that John brought me the chickens personally, but too late for Chapter Dinner.  “YOU BETTER CALL HER!” John had warned his boss, and so when he did, he asked me what I had done about dinner.  “Well, I looked at what I had available to me:  ground beef, noodles, sour cream, green onions, cheddar cheese, and the meal revealed itself like a vision:  Artisanal Hamburger Helper.”

Girl Talk

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

Sal came to me this afternoon for nutrition advice, but it turned into girl advice. He was wondering if he could be hot and buff without resorting to the sort of obsessive weight lifting (which the guys ridiculously call “working out”) that leads to spending time in the gym instead of enjoying my home cooking.  “I CAN’T be here for dinner,” they’ll tell me, “I HAVE to work out.”  As someone who hauls her ass out of bed at 5AM every morning to hit the gym, I appreciate the benefits of exercise.  But I also know that sitting down to a civilized plate of real, fresh food and conversation is going to do a hell of a lot more for your health than “energy drinks” and powdered protein and copious quantities of dreary boneless, skinless chicken breast and undressed tuna.  But none of that was getting through.  What got through was when I stopped tossing tonight’s Caesar Salad and offered the observation that, “y’know, I have never heard a woman say ‘wow, look at those muscles!’”  “What a women wants,” I went on, “is a guy who can carry on a decent conversation.  And who’s majoring in something other than getting high and playing video games.”

Fish Love

Monday, April 5th, 2010 | daily | 5 Comments

I rarely post food pictures and there’s a reason for that.  At the risk of offending the millions of food bloggers who aren’t my readers anyway, I hate most of the food blogs I’ve come across which I consider porn in the truest sense of the word…lust without love, raw pleasure without human connection.  But tonight’s halibut received the kind of ecstatic reception that you just don’t anticipate from a bunch of young guys over…fish.  And so I want everyone on the west coast to go out and buy fresh halibut while you can and do this:  take an 8oz. fillet, salt it lightly, top with a mixture of grated coconut, chopped thai chilies, cilantro and fresh lime juice, wrap in a square of foil–seal it firmly around the fish, you want it to steam in it’s own juices–and bake at 400′F for 15-20 minutes.  Do not overcook!  I think you could do this with catfish or cod, too, and that would be nice because this halibut, beautiful as it was, is going to require some creative budget menu planning for the next eight weeks.

Only The Best Will Do

Friday, April 2nd, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

We have 5 spring pledges and they have only experienced the post-spring break Darlene, the one who made granola this morning as an afterthought, because it would make the Good Friday brunch buffet that much more lavish.  “I think the Buddhism rubbed off a little,” I told my sales guy John yesterday, referring to my week in Vietnam.  “have you noticed?”  At which point he began to list all the ways that I am not and have never been a Difficult Customer.  “When I drive up to the house, I don’t get out of my car dreading the visit”… “when I get a text from you, I don’t groan.”…”When I get a call and I see it’s from you,’ I don’t think, ‘oh shit, what now?’”  He went on like this for some time while I stared at him wondering if this is what they teach in customer relations seminars.  When someone finds 20 ways to illustrate that you’re not a Difficult Customer, you stop believing them after about #5.  And then he put a cherry on top with number 21, “when I talk to Rod about your account, I don’t ever call you a bitch.”  I was doing really well with this new post-vacation serenity all the way until today, Friday, when I called him to ask why the order form lists wild halibut (newly in season in the Pacific Northwest) as “imported and USA.”    “Which is it, John?,” and I could clearly hear Rod in the background advising,  “it’s imported from Alaska.”   “Tell your boss he’s full of shit,” I responded, and very soon thereafter received confirmation from the buyer that our budget-busting Monday night dinner will be the prisitne, fresh, quality product to please even a Difficult Customer.

Riches

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 | daily | 1 Comment

People who know me cannot fail to be aware that I rather like wine.  So it was a jaw-dropping moment today when Patrick casually let on that his family owns Kestrel Vintners.  How a person could have been in my presence for years without me knowing this critical information is beyond my understanding.  But I guess it says something about this fraternity that, while I’m aware there’s a huge range of income levels amongst the guys’ families, a stranger visiting us would not be able to distinguish the financially struggling from the very well-off.  There are certain fraternity houses that claim superiority and there are sororities who will not associate with a house like ours where there are, y’know, other kinds of people.  So it was wickedly gratifying to me when Alpha Alpha–the house of girls least likely to bring one of our guys home to daddy–contacted me for advice on improving food service.  Because if there’s one thing all our guys are getting plenty of it’s food that isn’t crap.

Break

Sunday, March 28th, 2010 | daily | 5 Comments

“Please notice:  Our restaurant has no other locations,” proclaimed the hand-wipe wrappers at this alleyway lunch spot.  And so I loved the place instantly.  The cab driver was insistent that we could not want to be dropped off at this street, that we must surely have meant the nearby cathedral.  But we were equally insistent that we were travellers not tourists.  Of all the delicious food we enjoyed in Saigon, nothing was better than the piping hot banh xeo–Vietnamese rice pancakes–served up here for about three dollars.  I thought people from my Louisiana were food nutty, but there is nothing that compares to the sensory overload of this place.  Lots of fresh, fast food, but not a McDonalds or a Starbucks anywhere.  Eating local and using the whole animal (pig penis for couples trying to conceive, the brains for school children facing tough exams) is not a political statement or a trendy movement there.  It’s just economical.  We ate no penis or brains, but we did venture outside our comfort zone and so, while it was not a “turn your brain off” vacation as my husband put it, it was freeing in a whole different way.  And inspiring to someone who had stepped onto the plane unsure if she ever wanted to cook another meal for money.

Works in Progress

Monday, March 15th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

Sometimes this job seems like the worst one possible.  Except for every other food service job that doesn’t come with a tv show.  It’s not the physical work or the hours.  What makes it the worst–and paradoxically the best–is the constant human drama.  I’m at that point now, days away from Spring Break, where I look into the compost bin and contemplate throwing myself in there to be devoured by the fruit flies that mesmerize me as I watch them crawling all over the vegetable peelings.  A couple of weeks ago, I was so infuriated that I walked off the job right in the middle of baking eggs, a thing that, despite severe provocation, I had never done.  I came back minutes later because I thought about the bacon I’d left in the oven and it just is not in me to let good bacon burn.  But  when I think about leaving for good, about getting a “real” job with meetings and people my own age and pantyhose, I wonder who will take my place and answer questions like, “how can I iron my work clothes without an iron?”  I wonder what my life will be like without their stories and their comic relief.  The person who had set me off that day came to me this afternoon with a letter of apology he’d been instructed to write.  And the very fact that leadership had determined this particular punishment and that he did carry it out and that it was so earnest and sincere reminds me that these guys are works in progress.

Particular

Thursday, March 11th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

“I’m having a deja vu moment!” I said to Daniel as he described a strawberry-kiwi drink, the ingredients for which he was looking to me for procurement.  I was thinking this was a supernatural moment, a phenomenon of some spritual importance, unitl Daniel replied, “yeah, I asked you about it a year ago.”  When the guys hang out in the kitchen like this, dinner progress is impeded, but I hear great, unshareable stories and emptied containers of homemade fudge sauce are licked clean and I share my dismay that Food, Inc. lost the Oscar for best documentary to some dolphin movie.  I asked for Exam Week requests and when seafood came up, I was reminded of my shipment of shrimp this morning.  I had ordered wild American product but received a shipment of “Asia Gold!” which I sent back after lecturing my innocent and helpless driver that ”we have a domestic shrimping industry!”  John copied me on the email he sent the buyer, in which he remarked that “this customer is very particular about her shrimp.”  “Particular,” I read and wondered how many words he considered to describe me before settling on that one.

Labors of Love

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

Joey cheered me up yesterday with a visit and gave me a list of the graduates.  And then made his own request.  “That bacon-wrapped thing,” he said.  I was drawing a blank and then got nervous that maybe one time long ago in a weak moment I might have served some frozen hors d’oeuvre horror and some freshman would hear Joey’s longing and think I’m not food pure.  So I was relieved when he looked at one of those freshman and said, “remember that?  what was it?” and the freshman offered more clues.  Fruit.  With cheese stuffed inside.  “Bacon-Wrapped Cambazola-Stuffed Figs!” I shouted, like a game show shut-in.  Today for lunch I made an unexpected thing and all I can say is Just Don’t.  I don’t know what made me think that Pad Thai Rice Salad was a good idea for a lunch item and I don’t really care that everyone who tried it lapped it up because it wins the Pain in the Ass Item to Prep on the Morning Following 3 hours of Sleep Award hands down.  Chicken and chilies, green onions and peanuts and cilantro, scrambled eggs and rice and…god, it went on for hours.  And then, because I wasn’t sure it would work out, I made a dozen bacon-cheddar quiches as insurance, the sort of obsessive compulsive behavior that just makes things worse.  So I was happy that a visiting Kirk–my former tortured sales guy–who has more childhood food phobias than even our lettuce sandwich-eating guy, took one look at my Thai-inspired masterpiece and said, “Now that looks good.”

Special Requests

Monday, March 8th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

“That was a disturbing post,” Badley editorialized today about my weekend contribution.  “No it wasn’t,” I assured him, “it was perfectly appropriate for the final post.  It’s why I started the blog.  It’s over now.”  But he was having none of it.  “That can’t be the final post!  There’s nothing in it about me!”  And so I had to explain that he was all over it, that it was all about him and all the guys who were part of that story that’s ending now.  But it just wasn’t sinking in.  ”For my final act I’m going to do a great graduation reception for you all,” I said.  “Tell me what you want to eat.”  And it was the perfect distracting move because Badley always has very definite ideas about what I should make for his dining pleasure.  I was expecting boiled eggs for sure, but no, he had much grander ideas.  “That raw fish stuff in those cones,” he said, “and that meat wrapped around lemons.”  “Lemons?”  I queried, “what in the hell are you talking about?”  And he just looked at me expectantly while I did the Badley Speak translation in my head and realized he was requesting that culinary cliche, a thing I made one time when informed fifteen minutes before a major dinner that I needed to offer a little something with cocktails:  proscuitto-wrapped melon.

All I Know

Saturday, March 6th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Almost two years ago, when I was at least as weary of fraternity cooking as I am now and was interviewing for other jobs, I came into work and as I was unlocking my kitchen door, I was met with the news that Kevin (pictured center in black) had suffered a serious fall.  I didn’t have my blog then, but a few days later I wrote, “I have only good memories of him.  Of how he loved my food and could make me laugh when I was determined not to.”  And then, describing the anguish of walking into the ICU and seeing dozens of the guys already there sobbing and reaching out to me for a hug, I wrote in an email, “if I ever thought this was just a job, I know differently now.”  It was the first day of summer break when Kevin died and against my earlier decision, I returned in the fall and started this blog.  The press surrounding the events of that awful morning was thick with inuendo and the usual fraternity-bashing disguised as community concern.  But the truth is that Kevin, like most of the guys I’ve met in my time here, was smart and funny, respectful and compassionate, and I thought I could show that through these little stories. 

I made coconut blondies for the guys to share when they returned from the hospital and left them at the kitchen door with a note:  I love you all and I don’t live far away.  Please always know that you can call/text/email me anytime.  I want to give you some space tonight.  It was summer and my contract was over, but I cooked a lot in the days that followed because, as I explained to the alumnus who had given me the news, “it’s all I know to do.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCDWu_q8qkc

The Most Enviable Job

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

I can’t remember whether I took this picture when we were naming Pledge Who Complains The Most And Does The Least or when Daniel offered to be CFO of my new business.  Not that I wouldn’t hire Daniel in a heartbeat because as far as I’m concerned he’s one of the Perfect People.  This attitude of mine annoys a lot of the guys who assure me that he doesn’t need any help in the self-esteem department and I’ve heard a lot of stories where I’ve had to shut the story teller up to tell him that I just simply don’t believe that about Mr. Do It All Well and Charmingly Daniel.  This job can suck the life out of you.  When you find the cereal canisters uncovered for the gazillionth time and you have to breathe deep and ask yourself why you care about stale cereal when you don’t have to eat it, only the offender does.  When you find your soup inserts in the basement having apparently been “borrowed” as ice buckets but having served another more grim use.  And then you find yourself stirring spaghetti sauce on a Tuesday afternoon with three guys hanging out in the kitchen for no other purpose than to share the joy of being alive in community and it seems like the most enviable job in the world.

V.I.P.s

Thursday, February 25th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

“Well, not Warren Buffet important,”  Steven clarified when he announced that we’re having an important guest next Monday night.  After I’d already received the last food order before Monday.  Warren Buffet is in fact an Alpha Sig, but despite my famous blog, he has yet to make an appearance at Chapter Dinner.  Still, being just slightly beneath one of the richest men in America in importance calls for something more than the “I’ll just wing it,” attitude I had been taking to next Monday’s meal, coming after 14 days of non-stop work.  I must have looked on my way to postal when my driver arrived this morning and asked me if it was getting any better.  “I’m totally strung out stressed out nutty,” I told him.  And went on to explain that on Sunday, I’m making lunch for the Moms.  “Ladies lunching,” I emphasized.  “At a frat house.”

Girls Gone Food Wild

Friday, February 19th, 2010 | daily | 1 Comment

“What does ‘jizz-worthy’ mean?” I asked Patrick after reading a message my little food bandits had left for me in praise of my contribution to last night’s sorority dinner.  “Darlene, the cornbread was jizz-worthy!” they had declared.  It was clear that this was not a comfortable question for Patrick, who managed to explain that the girls were telling me my cornbread was similar to a certain pleasurable physical sensation.  “Oh,” I responded with equal awkwardness, “well, isn’t that nice.”  Who knew?  And then, at the very end of my very hard week, I finally met two of those notorious food theives, Talia and Taylor, and their hugs and smiles and exhuberant passion for food made all the ugliness of this week vanish.  “Don’t you like your cook’s food?”  I asked.  And they told me that lunch EVERY DAY is Chicken with Shit on It.  “Chicken,” Taylor felt the need to elaborate, “and then some kind of shit on it.”  A different kind every day, but ever the same.

Home Made

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 | daily | 8 Comments

I read Christie’s comment to my last post first thing this morning and it stuck with me for hours.  The part about the drive to make more cheap food.  What struck me is that there are people who have forgotten–or more likely never knew–that for humans, food is not just about filling bellies.  It’s about community and love and comfort and celebration and healing.  I was living in Dallas when Katrina hit and there were hundreds of New Orleans evacuees to feed at a local church.  They’d had days of bad Mexican food and while they appreciated the charity, they were restless.  So when it was my turn to choose a menu, I thought of the food of my childhood in Louisiana:  Roast beef with gravy, mashed potatoes heavy on the black pepper, greens with smoked sausage.  And when I served that up, you could see it in their faces:  it wasn’t calories.  It was Home.  There was a time when people baked cakes for their little girls.  With flour and sugar and butter.  And they whipped egg whites and let their child watch the magic of gelatinous clear liquid turn fluffy white, which happened every single time and was never less thrilling.  And they frosted those cakes imperfectly, the way nothing out of a box or a grocery counter could ever match.

Consumer Demand

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 | daily | 3 Comments

Derek and Brandon got pressed into service breaking up peanut butter cups, one of the toppings for tonight’s ice cream social to benefit the Treehouse Foundation.  I came in on my day off to make the sauces–raspberry, caramel, and hot fudge–because it mattered to me that it be pure stuff–butter, sugar, vanilla, good chocolate.  And US Foodservice donated 9 gallons of premium ice cream.  Rod had agreed to $200 worth and suggested that his money would go further with Blue Bunny.  “But I have a reputation to uphold!” I protested.  “You know some of those houses serve cold spaghetti and a can of sauce for these things,” I said with horror, which only generated the practical-minded response that we could get a whole hell of a lot of that for the same money.  We have these debates a lot, as we did last night when I complained that the company has discontinued cambazola cheese, which I had just introduced to the guys and which they are nuts about.  “I’m showing we only moved two cases last month,” he emailed in explanation.  And it didn’t take a lot to figure out who the buyer was.  I fumed about it all night and thought they probably carry three kinds of customer-pleasing Cheez Whiz.  And so this morning I checked.  Not three kinds.  Only one.  And not in stock, but by special order, which gives me a little hope.

Speaking My Language

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 | daily | 6 Comments

“That better be a damn good sandwich!” Zach  roared at me as he headed for the lunch table.  And it was, or at least Big Dick thought so as he derided Riley who preferred a bowl of Special K Berry, with all the strawberries meticulously picked out.  “I read the entire blog last night,” Mitch told me first thing this morning.  And frankly I think that should be required reading for all of the pledges.  Forget Divine Comedy.  Because then they would know that I’m not “intimidating,” as Patrick so delicately put it, but merely insane.  And they would understand that my favorites got to be that way by agreeing to be photographed and mercilessly mocked for a blog read by tens of people.  It was just an awesome day really, capped off by Casey introducing me to a prospective Spring pledge.  “He’s a food guy,” Casey explained, “and I told him you source all our meat within 50 miles.”  “Well not quite,” I corrected, “but I’m at least working on the humane part.”  “Grass-fed?” this new victim responded.  And I would have thought this was a thoroughly transparent attempt to trick me into staying on except that he kept the questions coming.  Not even my most well-versed guys have that kind of fresh food porn vocabulary.

Fakery

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 | daily | 7 Comments

Zach wants French Dip for lunch tomorrow and I am not giving it to him.  Once, when I was very new at this job and naive and impressionable, I made the mistake of giving them what they ask for, but even then I did not understand this thing called French Dip.  Sad, limp slices of roast beef on a roll with a bowl of beef stock (if you’re super lucky and it’s not water-diluted MSG  paste).  But tomorrow I’m asserting my will, and so today I braised some Creekstone Farms beef shoulder in a tomato sauce for five hours and tomorrow, I’ll heat that up and serve it with baguette rolls and jalapeno mayonnaise.  What’s so sad is that, delicious and real as that luch will be, there will be those who just want a crappy Denny’s-style dried-up, over-salted sandwich that’s not just not French, but Not Actually Good.  I was feeling sort of glum and defeatist about all this, until Sunday when I received 2 emails (2!) from supporters and forwarded them both to Rod with the clear subtext:  See, I am not the only crazy bitch in this country who can tell the difference between food and fakery.

Winners

Sunday, February 7th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

I had a text seconds after New Orleans won the Superbowl.  “Who Dat?” it read and it came from Daniel who last week shared the news that he’s trying out for UW’s football team.  That he remembered I’m from New Orleans, that he thought to text me, that I was one of the first people to hear of his good fortune…well, if all the guys were like that, I would have nothing outrageous to say and it would just kill the blog.  Overall, it’s been a bad few days for this site, what with niceness breaking out all over the place–Brandon offering to take my garbage out three days in a row, Mitch behaving impossibly chipper despite midterms, and Blair offering technical advice in the most diplomatic way possible, when, after I’d spent three hours in a simmering rage, unable to access the internet and place my order, he leaned over and gently asked, “you wouldn’t have your wireless turned off, would you?”

Wanderlust

Thursday, February 4th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

“Do you think we need a visa?” my husband asked minutes after I booked and paid for a Spring Break trip to Vietnam.  And yes, we do.  We’d been thinking a long time about where to go and it was as we were enjoying the sensual pleasures of Long Provincial restaurant on Second and Stewart that it hit us.  Vietnam!  So we applied and when I discovered this morning that someone from Ho Chi Minh City had spent 4 1/2 minutes reading Fraternity Kitchen, I realized that this satirical blog could be standing in the way of me and my visa to a fabulous exotic food-centric wonderland.  “Do they understand it’s a JOKE!” I lamented to Brandon, who assured me I was way over-thinking this.  “You’re not political,” Kirk told me flatly when I related the story to him, and then went on to tell me he’s never been anywhere outside the country.  ”Not even Mexico or Canada?”  I asked, incredulous.  ”Well, Canada,” he granted as if that wasn’t foreign, which just confirms every Canadian’s fear.

Common Sense

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Blair and Carlos saved me from homicidal fantasies today when I found myself having to explain three times why dishes have to go upside down in the dishwasher.  Why, no, it is not okay to just dump the dirty, nasty dishwater out and call it a day.  “That’s just common sense!” I said to Blair (a master dishwasher), as I stood there wondering how nice it must be to be totally oblivious to such matters as hygeine.  I am convinced that the unbelievably dumb acts committed in this place are just acting out after a day of mental exertion in the classroom.  Because the person who’s made it all the way to Junior year could not possibly be the same person who unplugs the fridge to plug in the tabletop grill.  And leaves the former warming nicely while the latter gently melts into the lunchroom table all night long.

Whatever It May Be

Monday, February 1st, 2010 | daily | No Comments

In the minutes before dinner was to come out, Daniel asked if I’d like to go to Formal and it would have been flattering if they hadn’t all laughed a little TOO hard.  I love these guys and it’s odd lately because I’ve told them I’m not coming back next year.  “It’s not personal,” I told Carlos, who shot back “I take it very personally!”  It’s professional.  A need to do something bigger than improve the food at one house.  Lately, I feel like I’m living 2 work lives…the one I’m paid to do, which is to put out 700 plates of food each week, and the one I’m not paid to do which is to help with an initiative to improve campus food in general.  “I’m crossing my fingers,” Badley told me when he announced some potentially big news, “I’m excited about the future,” he added, a real departure from the general gloom these days for kids his age.  “So am I,” I said, “whatever it may be.”

The Last Laugh

Friday, January 29th, 2010 | daily | 12 Comments

Sometimes, and especially lately–what with meat buyers dismissing me as a nut and certain commenters to this blog calling me deluded–I get a little discouraged about my plans to take down the food system as we know it.  But not so today when I met Laura who totally gets it.  And I should say right off that, while Laura is a sorority gal with a mission to makeover the food plan of her house, this is not the blog post where I announce my new job at Alpha Alpha Alpha.  Laura just came back from an intensive food study program in Italy where she gained a kind of knowlege and inspiration that you only get from changing your environment.  It happened to me when I spent some time on a remote farm in Eastern Washington (http://quillisascut.com ) last summer and witnessed a goat move from life to death to my cutting board to my plate and felt something we’ve lost…connection to food.  While in Italy, she discovered my blog and I’m so happy she did because I was starting to feel lonely in my delusion.  “I want to suck up everything you know,” she told me when I met her today.  I’ve witnessed the cynicism and hostility of industry insiders and I’ve been told to watch my mouth, and I don’t know where this new partnership is going, but after today I think Laura and I are going to have the last laugh.

The Good Guys

Thursday, January 28th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

One hour before dinner had to go out, about 6 guys decided this would be a good time to hang out in my tiny kitchen.  Daniel was permitted to make real orange juice on my limited counter space because he’s not the kind of guy who would look at me like I just asked him to trim my toenails when all I asked him to do was bring out some fresh soup from the kitchen while I was in a meeting.  I don’t pick my favorites; they pick me.  By being funny and helpful and by finding more good things than bad to say.  And by just going to get the goddamn soup without a major production.  Because it is not like I was knocking back vodka shots  on the job.  No, that meeting turned out to be a significant one, where Rod from US Foodservice was able to report progress on sourcing local chicken from Draper Farms, to offer local ice cream and to push forward with a larger selection of meat from sources that don’t force their cows to stand knee deep in their own shit all day.  And then, too, which I so appreciate, to convey an understanding that I am not a raving nut for thinking we should all know as much about how our food is made as we do about how our new couches and cars are.

Dumbing Down

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

“So, where’s this meat from?” Blair inquired as I served him a burger from Morasch Meats in Oregon.  And I’m not sure if the question was prompted by reading yesterday’s post or if he just witnessed the scene of me telling my supplier “I’ll just keep it, John, the cow is dead, if I send it back to you, you’ll just throw it away, which would be like torturing it all over again.”  I don’t know if Blair heard that exchange, but he went on to ask brightly, “do you make your suppliers give you what you want?”  I find this so charmingly naiive.  Like I could make the second-largest distributor in the country, for whom 99% of their customers are not like me, bend to my will.  “No,” I said after some thought, “but I am wearing them down.”  For anyone who wonders why I am so increasingly troubled, you just need to look at today’s post on Fed Up With School Lunch http://fedupwithschoollunch.blogspot.com/, the one about pre-fab Peanut Butter Sandwiches.  When the food industry has convinced us that we are too unskilled to make a PB&J–about the simplest cheap form of protein to slap together from scratch–, well, we are just too stupid for pity.

Know the Source

Monday, January 25th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

Well into my grueling Monday and minutes before the cut-off time to place an order for tomorrow, Mike from Full Circle Farms called to see if I still wanted anything because he hadn’t heard from me.  “Shit,” I said, “I totally forgot…can I just give you my order over the phone?”  He was able to talk to me about what’s available because he actually sees it growing.  “Do you have anything at all remotely green?” I pleaded and he was able to offer up 7 heads of cabbage.  He had some beautiful potatoes like the ones pictured and baby carrots, too.  “Know where your food comes from,” is the mantra now, and it’s a worthy one.  This whole conversation was so not like my experience earlier in the day when I discovered that the sirloin in my order was processed at IBP, now actually owned by Tyson, a company that doesn’t have warm conversations about what’s good and fresh today.  And when I dared to ask the simple question, “what farm is this meat from?  Who raised it?” I was met with a response from the meat buyer that can best be summed up as, “We don’t know.  Who cares.  Get over it.”  I wish in situations like this that I could call upon my rational mind and my knowlege and respond in a contructive manner.  Instead of like a crazy wild bitch on meth.

Lurkers and Food Bandits

Friday, January 22nd, 2010 | daily | 1 Comment

I don’t know who left this note from last February, but I’m starting to think it isn’t any of my guys who pen these missives.  When I came in this morning, there was another one from Dagney and Taylor:  We think you’re the BEST.  Dagney and Taylor are sorority girls who sometimes choose to sign their messages but have never actually made my aquaintance.  They do, however, eat here, secretly apparently, because no one claims to have actually witnessed their dining pleasure.  “Who?” one of the guys responded when I asked who Dagney and Taylor are.  I’d think they weren’t students at all, but just brazen home intruders except that today as I was setting out lunch Julien asked the question, “did you see your love note this morning?”  and went on to tell me that the authors are devoted fans of my blog.  And when I pointed out that they’ve never commented or introduced themselves, he told me with such gravity, “Oh, no.  They’re Annonymous.”  “Lurkers,” I said.  “Lurkers and food bandits.  Someone ought to do something about that.”

Priority One

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Pledge Richard’s dad introduced himself to me today and added with a laugh,  “I sure am enjoying the hell out of your blog!”  Besides feeling nauseous when a parent tells me that, I feel at a distinct disadvantage because I know nothing about them while they have learned that I’m a narcissistic, foul-mouthed obsessive compulsive.  It’s not fair!  I learned later in the day that he’s a lawyer, which could come in handy when I get sued for my posts like the one I’m mulling over called, “Now Cadbury Sucks, Too,” a companion piece to my previous work, “Kraft is Crap.”  A while back when Rod was looking at me like someone who hates his job more with each word coming out of my mouth, I shut up for a second and then explained in very simple terms why I’m such a difficult customer.  I want a choice, and when 3 massive companies gobble up all the other players, choice gets devoured.  But there’s hope we’ve reached a tipping point when the topic of conversation on the dinner line of a frat house is the movie Food, Inc.  http://www.foodincmovie.com/ “You all need to see that,” I butted in.  “And then you will totally understand me.”  Which I know is Priority One for these guys.

Sweet Thing

Monday, January 18th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Okay, so here is the picture of last week’s Chicken Cacciatore which I didn’t want to post because I thought it looked less appetizing in the photo than it should given that it was actually very delicious.  I know this because Joey said so and I’m posting it because, while it’s clearly not art, it is clearly actual chicken, peppers, onions, garlic and tomato.  And those readers who’ve discovered Mrs. Q.,–a teacher blogger who’s decided to eat school lunch every day to expose the nasty truth at http://fedupwithschoollunch.blogspot.com/,– will appreciate that the food I’m dishing out is at least, well, how can I put this…food.  I’m worried about Mrs. Q. losing her job by speaking truth to power and I’m worried about all those kids eating plastic slime.  And while I’d like to save the whole world one real chicken dinner at a time, the problem is much greater than putting out good food.  Because there are evil forces all around us who think that Hot Pockets are a hearty meal, that squares of orange stuff in plastic is cheese, and that a heavy dose of high fructose corn syrup is a very sweet thing.

Happy Kitchen

Friday, January 15th, 2010 | daily | 6 Comments

I get daily reports on the search terms people use to find my blog and this morning I learned that one person’s typing of the phrase “disturbingly happy kitchen,” had led them here.  I wasn’t surprised about that because, well, Zach for example just screams “disturbingly happy” and not just because he’s off to Whistler with his Brothers and a sack of frozen burritos to sustain them at the Canadian border when they get frat boy profiled.  No, what surprised me was that whoever was searching spent less than one minute reading this site and I feel oddly crushed by that.  It’s so weirdly fascinating to see what terms have led to this blog that I thought about creating a whole separate page of the best of them, from the completely appropriate “dazed and confused sleep deprived,” to the slightly creepy “frat boys shirtless,” to the total head scratchers like “shaveless can openers,”  ”traditional papist” and “cruel kitchen,” the latter perhaps submitted by the same seeker who found us to be insufficiently disturbed in our happiness.

Future Plans

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

I wasn’t sure if I was going to post a picture of Joey or a photo of last night’s Chicken Cacciatore, but it wasn’t that hard to decide.  No matter how great Chicken Cacciatore looks in real life, it just appears to be vomit in photos not manufactured by a food stylist.  And Joey doesn’t look anything like vomit, so there you go.  He was excited about that dinner because he’s from a genuine Italian American family–former restauranters in fact–and came into the kitchen to talk to me about his dad’s wonderful meatballs and about the other, less important life matters like what he plans to do after graduation this summer.  It’s hard for me to grasp that these guys who were fresmen when I started are almost done.  “Did Badley tell you he’s going to France in the fall?” their advisor asked me when he stopped in this morning. And given that I’ve been listening to French language podcasts in endless boring repetition, you’d have thought it would have come up.   ”No,” I responded chagrined, “he just gave me a song and dance about being depressed about the future.”  Which no one planning a post-college fall in France is allowed to be.

Winter Food Woes

Monday, January 11th, 2010 | daily | 6 Comments

“Skip it, I’ll just tell them to eat more salad,” was my response to Rod when he emailed an apology for the lack of green beans in my order and asked if a replacement would do.  It wasn’t that they had neglected to put the vegetable on the truck, but just that it’s  winter and the quality was bad and John, Rod’s report, was running all over town trying to meet the particular requirements of the Demanding Customer with A Blog and was finding no green beans in the whole city of Seattle.  Shit happens in a kitchen and you just have to deal with it on the spot.  I explained this to a couple of the guys last week when they questioned all the sudden menu changes.  “Shit happens in a kitchen!” I cried, “haven’t you ever watched Top Chef!”  Everyone has their opinions in this house about what I should and should not be doing and none more so than President Badley who emailed me this link from the New York Times   http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/the-11-best-foods-you-arent-eating/?em with the subject heading “WE should eat more of these!.”  “Sure thing,” I told him today, “and you can be the one to announce that sardines with beet coulis is on the menu next week.”

Plan B

Saturday, January 9th, 2010 | daily | 1 Comment

This is one of my favorite guys in the House.  At least he was until he decided to be a bad sport just because I wanted to take a picture of him.  “I don’t even want to know what that’s going to be about,” he protested as I approached.  So this won’t be the blog post about how and why he didn’t get…okay, never mind.  It tells you something about the physical and mental toll of this job that on Friday I couldn’t remember if it had been one or two weeks since Winter Break.  When I knew on Wednesday that my Thursday dinner plan needed to be completely scrapped, I did think for a second about ordering prepared chicken breasts.  But that would be Wrong.  So I ordered 3 dozen whole raw chickens and used the Lebanese spice mixture I’d made for the lamb as a rub for the roasted birds. And with only two ovens, I didn’t stop moving for ten hours that day.  “When you were catering, did you ever have a complete disaster?” Jake asked me at one point, and I don’t know what prompted the question, but it could have been the haggard look and the spice-colored chicken juices halfway up my sleeves as I carved the 36th victim.

Old Stories

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 | daily | No Comments

I didn’t want to hear any more when pledge Blair told me I was in his dreams last night, but he just plowed on ahead.  “I was reading the blog from the very beginning last night.  The whole thing,” he told me.  And at some point he’d fallen asleep (thanks, Blair) and dreamed that he and Badley were delivering my bonus to me in cash, in small bills, and dozens of the guys were attacking them for the money.  I know I should have been flattered at someone actually wanting to go back to posts like “Official Visitors” and “Party Time,” but I just wondered what sort of easy ass classes he must be taking if he has time to waste on this trash.  Late in the day I heard the unmistakable voice of Josh at the front door.  He’d been VP when I started here four years ago and one of my earliest memories of those first days was finding a note some young ladies had dropped in my pantry with suggestions for activities they’d like to engage in with Josh.  If you know what I mean.  So when I told him that I’d started blogging after his time here, he howled at the thought of the bullet he’d dodged.  “The stories you could have told…”

Hungry Boys

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

Julien was back in the kitchen yesterday after a quarter spent in Italy.  Unlike Newman, his European sojourn involved significant language immersion and a broad range of fabulous food experiences.  I could have listened to hours of chatter about the locals cooking him real Italian fare in Perugia and Venice, but he also had up-close stories to tell about the Amanda Knox trial.  Because he was there.  “I saw her escorted out of the courtroom after the verdict,” he told me, and “I lived right by the apartment where it happened.”  Sometimes I get so caught up in being VERY pissed off about their messes and their shocking laziness that I forget how interesting and food-curious they can be.  And sweet.  Later in the day, I mentioned jokingly that I’d not received so much as a Christmas card after my first winter here and Badley gave me such a look of pain.  I forgot all about it until this morning when Jace presented me with flowers (and not the $5 ones from Safeway) and a card.  “Thank you for all that you do!”  it said and was signed by many of  my “hungry boys of Alpha Sigma Phi.”

Resolution

Friday, January 1st, 2010 | daily | 1 Comment

When food writer Leslie Kelly asked me what I was preparing for New Year’s Eve, I’m sure she expected a reply more inspiring than burgers and fries.  But after considering all the usual fare, what I really wanted was the lamb burgers with balsamic onions like the ones from Barking Frog restaurant.  And fries.  Real ones, with homemade ketchup.  “It tastes so much like…potato,” my husband said at first bite and as obvious as that sounds, they were sublime because of it.  This morning, there was a story in the Seattle Times about the company Beef Products, which supplies ground beef to fast food restaurants and schools across the nation.  They treat the meat with ammonia, a process they’re actually proud of, and include “fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil.”  I thought about this as we drove by a Mc Donalds today and wondered if people know what they’re eating.  It made our hand-crafted burger and fries New Year’s Eve menu seem positively luxurious.  I have a back to work resolution and it’s sadly harder than, oh, giving up crack or losing that last 200 pounds:  buy nothing from questionable sources.

Any Movement is Positive

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

I know it’s fashionable to make fun of Martha Stewart, but I think she’s just great.  The scene a short while back where she showed Thomas Keller (only one of the world’s most famous chefs) that she was better at tackling a pomegranate than he was…hilarious.  And was it just me or had she been sampling the wares a little too much before the holiday cocktail episode last week?  Can’t wait to see the “Whatever, Martha” commentary on that one.  Let’s face it, she can do everything perfectly, even if three sheets to the wind, and we cannot.  So I’m touched when I receive email from people who seem to think that I know what I’m doing, when most of the time I feel like I’m on the losing side in the battle against, for example, a certain gigantic chicken company.  There’s something seriously wrong with our food supply when it’s easier to find sustainable lamb than a chicken that doesn’t come from a company that puts it’s stock price on it’s home page, which honestly to me as a customer who cares about the taste and quality of the food is like the company giving me the finger.  So I’m going to take some comfort in a statement I just read from Chefs Collaborative in it’s flyer ”Five Tips for Managing Food Costs When Running a Sustainable Kitchen.”  Start with what’s easiest.  It’s not all or nothing.  Any movement is positive.

Art Mom

Friday, December 25th, 2009 | daily | 8 Comments

 When people ask if I’m like a house mom to the guys, I’m not sure how to respond.  Because I wasn’t what I’d call a good  ”regular” mom.  I would look at “Art Mom” and “Helper of the Year Mom” and think that I was just never going to measure up.  I didn’t treat it like I was CEO of the household and I wasn’t the cookie baking kind either.  It’s probably because I was so young when I had my kids that the first thing the doctors said when they gave me my pregnancy results was that they were not in the abortion business.  Like  a nice, simple “congratulations” was unthinkable for a 21 year old.  And it’s probably because I’m just generally the sort of trouble-making person that shouldn’t be anyone’s caregiver.  But the one thing I did exceptionally well was to raise two boys who dive into everything food-related without hesitation and it confirms my conviction that if you give a baby a squid ring to teeth on they will grow up eating anything.  Our Christmas breakfast was homemade gravlax with citrus creme fraiche http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/dining/091hrex.html?scp=1&sq=citrus-cured%20gravlax&st=cse, Snake River Farms bacon and deviled eggs.  And our dinner was Smoked Salmon Souffles http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/13382/smoked-salmon-souffls followed by Beef Rib Roast, Oyster Dressing, Roasted Broccoli,and  Sweet Potato Puree, with Stilton and Humbolt Fog cheeses and local pears for dessert.  And the production of such a day’s food is as close as I will ever come to being Art Mom.

Serious Craft

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 | daily | 7 Comments

The irony of Ryan’s t-shirt is that what’s actually coming from his mouth is strictly classical.  When he and Derek are practicing, the operatic vibration reaches the kitchen and reminds me that, beer pong and prankster behavior notwithstanding, this is not Animal House.  I say this because blog traffic was up 250% yesterday, largely because of this:  http://ask.metafilter.com/141242/Your-fraternity-has-a-chef-Are-you-kidding-me in which the very funny Cool Papa Bell reports finding this blog and being stunned at the very idea of a full-time cook at a fraternity house.  ”I just can’t imagine a bunch of average frat boys sitting around thinking, ‘We really need to focus on our studies, so we should take some of the beer money and get a chef, so we don’t have to worry about this.’”  And the repsonses he got indicate that there are thousands of Greek system cooks out there serving up the kind of dreary crap that I am fighting against.  So I sort of hope that Mike Seely is wrong and that when his Seattle Weekly article hits the streets tomorrow, I get a ton of hate mail from chefs indignant at his suggestion that what I am doing is unique.  Because nothing would make me happier than to hear of serious craft being practiced in fraternity houses all over the country.  http://www.seattleweekly.com/2009-12-23/food/brotherly-grub

Favorites

Sunday, December 20th, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

On her last day of work as my prep assistant, a job she held as research for a book, Leslie Kelly, former restaurant critic for the Seattle P.I., put a microphone and camera in front of some of the guys and asked them to name their favorite of the meals I’ve prepared.  I was mortified, especially since the favorites seemed to be whatever they’d had in the past 48 hours, making for an impression that I have a repertoire of about 4 dishes.  Blair and Matt W. weren’t filmed, which is a pity because they’re two who not only know the names of classics, but casually ask me things like, “where do you get your inspiration?”  and ”do you think you could make chilaquilles sometime?”  I was horrified by the filming of the guys, but charmed when I saw it included in an article Leslie wrote for Serious Eats.   Charmed not for what the clip says about me (which seems to be that I’ve got a major thing for chicken), but for the  diversity of people in this House that it captures.  And not that I want to draw unnecessary attention to it, but Shane is NOT stoned off his head in this video…that is  just Shane…    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li2svDQgKok

Authenticity

Thursday, December 17th, 2009 | daily | 6 Comments

“Movie snacks!” Badley exclaimed when I asked him what he was doing with 4 bags of Tim’s chips.  “Guess what I have from Netflix, Darlene…Food, Inc.!”  Just before this, Blair (pictured center) and I had been having a conversation about fresh food and the lamb shanks from Superior Farms simmering in the oven. He’s one of the few guys in the house who cooks himself and appreciates the subtle things like a color other than brown on the buffet line.  Here  they’re chowing down on the peanut butter bacon cookies I felt compelled to repeat when Big approached me yesterday.  He’d missed them the first time and didn’t believe there was such a thing, even when some of the guys pulled up the blog post on it, complete with a photo.  I’d take this as an attack on my credibility, but I’m told that when the guys watched the BBC production “Planet Earth,” he’d claimed it was all fake.  And given the choice of taking a science class from David Attenborough or Big.  Well, I’m just saying…

Finals Week

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

I sent this shot of John and Kirk to John’s boss with the subject heading “What USF Sales Guys Really Do All Day,” and the message “hang out in the rain at frat houses trying to pick up chicks in their cool ties.”  Okay, I know they’re both married and have numerous customers in the U District, but the sight of them having a meeting in our driveway at the same time I was expecting a photographer from the Weekly was irresistible.  They didn’t make it in and neither did Badley, who had a lame excuse about finishing up final papers.  He looked like hell when he finally dragged himself into the kitchen this evening–I mean like someone who hadn’t shaved or showered in days.  Such a faker.  But still I presented him with a Christmas present:  Mike Seely’s book Seattle’s Best Dive Bars.  ”For the House,” I said.  Like they need the help.

Not Wacky

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“I missed the food,” Newman told Brandon in the same breath as “I missed this place.”  He’s back from Germany and spent a few minutes in the kitchen with me yesterday while we talked about Mike Seely’s upcoming little  piece about Fraternity Kitchen in the Seattle Weekly.  A photographer is coming tomorrow and I sent an email to Badley, “tell all the cool people to be here.  And that doesn’t just mean you.”  I don’t know what Mike will say about his visit here, but I’ve realized something lately; the guys don’t really know what I’m trying to do; they just eat.  Yesterday, I had a phone call from Wayne at Creekstone Farms in Kansas, one of US Foodservice’s meat suppliers that’s doing business in a way I support.  It was a thrill to be able to talk to an actual human being at a slaughterhouse, someone not ashamed or afraid to talk.  He sent me some of their marketing material today and that’s when I really knew what a job I have ahead of me.  “Apparently the target market [for natural meat]  is wacky people,” I emailed Rod.  But I am NOT!

Serious Eating

Friday, December 11th, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

There was a funnier picture taken 5 seconds after this when Brandon and Dan popped blazing hot chestnuts into their mouths.  I’m mean enough to have laughed at the time, but not evil enough to make it the cover shot.  And anyway, I love what this captures; the joy at discovering a new food.  Sometime ago, Badley had asked me if I would roast chestnuts.  For him, it wasn’t the song, it was that he’d read Dickens and just wondered, and so one day when I was at Big John’s PFI (http://www.bigjohnspfiseattle.com/) I saw a barrel full of them from Oregon and thought of the guys.  I didn’t expect them to like them, or for many of them to even try, but I was so very mistaken.  My kitchen is always open when I’m there, and so, while I had been in serious conversation with Rod from US Foodservice about my desire to eliminate large feedlot beef from my menus, to buy only from their small suppliers, the guys thought nothing of filling the room with their boisterous prescence.  Serious food talk can wait in line behind serious eating.

The Answer to Everything

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

Mike Seely from Seattle Weekly came by to interview me and the guys.  I was nervous as hell before he got there, and contemplated breaking out the rum the guys’ advisor had left in my safe keeping.  Knowing he was coming, Zach and Badley strategically placed themselves in the kitchen and offered useful contributions like, “we don’t know what she is to us,” and “we like the food.”  It was riveting, sure to make great copy for a vibrant, edgy paper like the Weekly.  And to tell the truth, I don’t even know why this should be a story.  I cook.  Actual food.  So I was relieved when Mike broke the ice by asking if those short ribs were ready for him to taste, and I proceeded to shove tasting plates at him:  braised beef chuck, kurobato squash with spices and maple syrup, organic kale, and the ace in the hole twice-baked potatoes.  “It’s why she was hired,” Badley suddenly remembered as he wathched Mike dive in.  “It was what she brought to her interview.”  I have a theory that twice-baked potatoes are the answer to everything and I’m thinking about sending my recipe to the White House.

White Elephant

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

My husband is in Japan eating exquisite meals and enjoying spectacular views from his hotel room, while I am…not doing that. I was going to include a picture of one of those meals, but it’s bad enough that his wife writes a bawdy blog about working at a frat without dragging respectable Japanese businessmen into it.  So I included an irrelevant picture of Jesse looking as uncomfortable as a Japanese businessman in a frat house.   It’s “dead week,” the week before finals, and everyone is in a sour mood.  Except for a group of young ladies who were doing what I can only describe as Not Studying in the basement at 9:30 AM this morning, which is just way too early for that kind of thing.  And I imagine that the guys, too, will be in a more festive mood tonight when Pledge Mitch dresses up like an elf and they all exchange White Elephant gifts which, if past years’ examples are anything to go by, are…not the kinds of gifts you give your mother.

Real Goodness

Friday, December 4th, 2009 | daily | 5 Comments

Pledge Matt and I bonded this morning over our mutual disgust at the twit who left the remaining 2 or 3 pounds of flank steak from dinner sitting out at room temperature all night.  “It was so good,” he said as we watched it slide into the trash.  In situations like this, it’s best to keep a distance from me, but Matt followed my grumpy ass into the kitchen to make a request.  “I want to get a couple of your recipes.  For the grits with goat cheese.  And that butternut squash thing.”  Just when you think all they really want is chicken nuggets with a side of fake bacon salt, they shock you with a craving for real goodness.  There were lots of great moments today, blog-worthy stories, and I won’t even touch the one about the incident at Dick’s Hamburgers last night that culminated in a little chat with a Seattle police officer outside the House in, I’m told, my parking spot.  And for the parent readers, no drunk driving was involved, which probably explains why they got off with little more than a tongue-lashing.  No, I’m not going to even mention that story because the best part of my day was having Jesse show up, notebook in hand to tell me, “I’m taking this class and I’m doing this project on how crap the food is on campus and I just wondered if I could pick your brain because our food doesn’t suck.”

Real Chicken

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 | daily | 7 Comments

“I know what’s making Americans fat and sick!” Badley announced yesterday like he had discovered Camelot.  “Corn, wheat and soy in all that processed food,” he went on.  And I’m not sure if he thought he was educating me or if he had just suddenly decided to join my cult and thought he’d throw out a few “secret handshake” words.  I was thinking about this today as Leslie and I spent hours making Real Chicken Cordon Bleu. And it is a good thing I am so passionately dedicated to the “No Tortured, Manipulated Fake Food” cause.   There might be a more labor-intensive task than stuffing and breading 130 chicken breasts.  I don’t know, maybe peeling paint with a pair of tweezers.  But by the end of the day, I turned to Brandon to tell him that I couldn’t decide if I wanted them to love this or hate it.  Someone had underlined the word “real” on the hand-written menu posted in the dining room and so Jake asked the question.  “Do we ever have chicken that isn’t real?”  He’s one of the least food-knowlegable guys in the House, but he invariably asks the questions that leave this mouthy woman speechless.

Food Security

Monday, November 30th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

At the precise moment that I pulled into the driveway at work today, the suspect in the hideous police shooting here was reportedly stepping off a bus a block away.  I received an email press release warning us all about his potential presence on campus and when I forwarded it to my husband, I was going to give it the subject title “there goes the neighborhood,” but thought better of it.  I’m pretty solidly anti-authoritarian, but right now we’re all in awe of our men and women in blue after five murders in a month.  I was doubtful that we had much to worry about.  After all, a crazy child-molesting, cop-killing out-of-shape creep with an ankle bracelet and a bullet wound wouldn’t exactly blend in with the UW crowd.  Still, like a mother hen, I fretted all day about my guys and was happy that my blackened wild coho (an Alex Guarnaschelli recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alexandra-guarnaschelli/blackened-salmon-recipe/index.html)  was not just great-tasting, but spectacular to behold.

A World Away

Saturday, November 28th, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

There’s been a noticeable void in the House with Newman away in Germany this quarter.  He’s bright and funny and has the rare ability to do everything that pisses me off without actually making me angry, a quality that I’m sure will serve him well with his future in politics and law.  I don’t know what he’s doing in Germany because, while I had understood he was studying abroad, all I’ve heard about from Dan and Zach is beer and women.  And I don’t know why he had to go all the way over there for that.  If he’s going to waste his parent’s money, he could at least be sending me reports on the food and the culture to dispel the tired old notion of men in lederhosen eating nothing but brats and potatoes.  I knew I had this one reader in Germany, and one in Rome, but until I installed tracking software last week, I was unaware of readership in 10 other foreign countries.  I know it’s all becoming one big mono-culture, but still I can’t imagine what the readers in Westgate, South Africa and Mandaluyong, the Phillipines make of Fraternity Kitchen.  It strikes me as so peculiarly American.  Like putting marshmallows on a vegetable and, just one day a year, dressing up like Sarah Palin to threaten the neighbors with harm if they don’t fork over the Snickers bars.

Favorite Holiday

Thursday, November 26th, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

Giving thanks for all the guys who amuse, question, delight and challenge me every day. 

Blackberry Vodka Cocktails  (from last summer’s wild blackberry picking)

Cajun-Seasoned Roast Turkey with Cornbread Dressing and Cranberry Sauce

Sweet Potato Cake (thinly-sliced sweet potatoes and leeks layered with clarified butter and baked)

Sauteed Kale with Bacon and Sherry Vinegar

My Grandmother’s Buttery Dinner Rolls

Northstar Columbia Valley 2005 Merlot

Homemade Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and Brandied Peaches (from last summer’s glorious Seattle farmers’ markets)

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Morning Game

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“Well, I heard there was moose meat over here, and so I had to come,” Stephanie explained when I observed I’d not seen her all quarter.  Not, “I’m here to see Brian,” or “I’m here for the superior Alpha Sig ambiance,” but, “I’m here for the moose meat.”  It was my favorite of all the comments about yesterday’s lunch, including “I thought you were kidding,” and Daniel’s inquiry into leftovers this morning.  7AM this morning, when I was barely up for a piece of toast, let alone a roasted serrano-spiced moose sloppy joe.  “Cereal just doesn’t appeal right now,” he explained, as if that was supposed to make some kind of sense.  But I have learned not to ask the obvious follow up questions here, after one too many TMI responses from guys who forget that I could be their mother.

Favorite Teacher

Monday, November 23rd, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

“We decided you’re our favorite teacher,” Richard (pictured in the center) said to me in the chaotic moments of placing the final items for Chapter Dinner.   So I snapped this terrible picture to capture the tremendous joy I felt at the sentiment.  I love this comment on so many levels, and not so much the “favorite” part as the “teacher” part.  I had put out a Brie en Croute a little earlier and a surprising number of the guys had never heard of this totally cliche appetizer.  And I had been thinking all day about my last blog post, about how much is being hidden from us about our food choices, and about Cookie’s wish for us all to be thankful, and about all the people who contribute their energy to this blog, and just as I was feeling so richly blessed, one of the guys (not pictured) told me he thought the brie had a texture ”like snot.”  And it was just at that moment that precious Richard uttered his words about me being his favorite teacher, saving them all from a cruel fate.

Enemy of Good

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 | daily | 11 Comments

My husband and I watched Food, Inc. last night. No matter where you stand, if the scene of the tiny chicks getting smashed up against the scanner doesn’t hit you just a little, you’re a jerk.  And if the news that you can go to prison for talking trash about Big Food doesn’t strike you as a little Big Brother-ish, well, just how American are you?  Being a major trash-talker, I can tell you I’m not sleeping easy.  It’s not that these issues were new to me, but I found myself waking up several times last night fretting about it.  I’m not subversive.  I’m not an activist.  I’m just  a food lover who cares about where my raw material comes from, but I also live in the real world of trying to provide a cost-effective product in an instituitonal setting.  I’ve been approached about speaking to students at the UW about what I’m trying to do here–the radical notion of providing meals that aren’t total crap to a frat house–and I can imagine how smacked around I will feel when their youthful idealism meets my counterpoints.  Well, first, you have customers who would just as soon eat prefab cordon bleu as your fresh herb-roasted  birds, and then there’s the question of whether your distributor even carries the product you want, and just forget about skipping the distributor and going straight to the local farmer.  Unless you can convince your guys to eat beans and rice the other 4 days of the week.  But in the spirit of not letting perfect be the enemy of good, I’ll be adding another page to this blog, listing affordable products I have found.  The kinds of products that made me stand back and say, “holy shit, I’d eat this myself!”

The Day in Pictures

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | daily | 7 Comments

John sent me an email today with photos of lettuces.  “Real Photos!” the message advised, after I’d mocked previous produce emails with obvious cartoon clip art.  “Wow, who knew iceberg lettuce could be so HOT!” I replied, resisting the temptation to send my first choice of replies, ”Wow, iceberg lettuces make me hot!”  I was feeling especially superior because I had just captured this shot of  Real Green Beans Wrapped in Bacon.  If you’re finding vegetables to be a challenge, I say just tart them up with a slab of pork fat and watch those babies fly.  This photograph beat out today’s challengers of “Darlene about to quit on the spot,” and “Darlene holding a bottle of wine and roses from Badley and Daniel in damage control.”  Badley really wanted me to know that he gets what I’m doing, really gets how hard it is to put out good food for large groups, and so he had me pull up this picture on Facebook, a picture he knew would make me laugh, and which he had titled “What Alpha Alphas consistently eat for dinner.  No joke.”  .  “But it’s not funny,” I told him. ” It’s true.  And it’s not me you need to share this with.”  It’s the handful of whiners who wipe out all the positive energy from all the Badleys and the Daniels, the Mitch’s, the Brandons, the Patricks, Brians, Richards, Alexs, the Nicks, the Dans, oh, the Joey’s, the Newmans, the Bobs, the, uh, the…okay, lots of the guys are not ungrateful little shits.

Dinner Guests

Sunday, November 15th, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

On Friday, I emailed Rod to check on the availability of more of those Alabama shrimp.  “We’re having the UW police to dinner next week!”  He temporarily ignored my food question and replied back, “were they invited?”  My husband had a similar reaction when I was working on the menu.  “We’re having the UW police for dinner on Wednesday,” I shared and he asked me how I planned to cook them.  It’s illustrative of how hard it is to be taken seriously in this job.  But we have had other VIP guests, including Mark Emmert, who just loves to be subtitled The Third Highest Paid University President in the Country during the Great Recession.  And I’m sure he was surprised to be served something other than frozen chicken a la king and tater tots from a fraternity kitchen.  I consulted Badley on the entree for next Wednesday’s dinner, not that I intended to follow his suggestions but because it was fun to shoot down everything he proposed.  Beef?  Red meat avoiders.  Pork?  Religious restrictions.  Veal?  Controversial.  Fish?  Allergies.  “Well chicken then,” he offered.  “Oh that’s good, Badley, let’s give the little woman cop a condescending piece of feminine chicken.”  And I think it was at that point that he gave  the look of someone mentally transporting himself to a tropical island.

In Defense of “Dirty”

Thursday, November 12th, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

I wasn’t about to hand the camera over to John to take a picture of me looking like a marshmallow having a shower, not after I’d gone to all the trouble of dressing like someone who doesn’t spend her days sweating over spattering marinara sauce.  It was my day off, the first I’ve had since I went back to work in September, and being the food nerd that I am, I chose this day to schedule a tour of Seattle’s Darigold plant, where the local, farmer-owned company bottles it’s milk.  It made me grumpy to hear about the majority of customers demanding super-safe product, devoid of anything resembling a living product,  but I brightened up when I learned that they do sell non-ultra-pasteurized heavy cream, that “dirty”, stuff I need to make the luscious creme fraiche that makes the Best Potato Gratin Ever.  It’s a slippery slope, this drive to sanitize our food supply and pretty soon we’ll all be protected from the threat of raw milk cheeses, street food, sushi and other dangerous deliciousness.

Great Expectations

Saturday, November 7th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

As a former English major, the first thought I had when I saw this is that I bet Shakespeare never thought of that one.  I love you like a lamb and barley stuffed pepper topped with sharp cheddar.  And then I wondered why only two people signed on to this.  Do the others not love me?  Or is their fondness more akin to a slice of Korean-marinated skirt steak?  Is their affection more like a spoonful of homemade Ranch dressing?  I marvel that these guys routinely overlook my faults and failures and choose instead to show gratitude for the effort.  And I should probably pass some of that along to John, who, after suffering the whiplash of my acid tongue, spent a good part of Friday procuring and delivering shrimp from Bayou La Batre, Alabama, the setting of Forrest Gump and a place devastated by Hurricane Katrina.  He was grinning like Santa Claus when he presented the box to me, and I’m not sure what great expectations we had, but we both wanted to open it and look inside.  “Did they have American flags on them?” Rod asked when I called to tell him his direct report had come through for me.  Not exactly, you know, but wild beauties all the same.

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | daily | 5 Comments

“I take it you don’t want the shrimp?” my driver inquired superfluously as he lifted the box of  product from Thailand .  I’m not sure what tipped him off, but it might have been the sight of me pulling out my camera, cell phone and computer all at once.  Regular readers will know that I’m on something of a crusade against cheap, low-quality shellfish from Asia and will understand that I had words to say that made even frat boys blanch this morning as my delivery arrived.  I couldn’t reach John for ages because he was at a seminar.  And I didn’t know what sort of seminar, but by the time I did talk to him during a break, I bet he was wishing it was one called, How to Respond When the Customer Vomits the Toxic Contents of Her Brain Into Your Ear.  It’s just that I had been promised my longed-for domestic shrimp.  You know, the ones not swimming in sea-polluted waste laced with antibiotics.  Those shrimp.  John got the message and promised me the world would be made right tomorrow and shortly afterward, I received an email from his boss letting me know that they were both at the Gitomer seminar.  As in Jeffrey Gitomer, the “Yes! Attitude” man.  The “how to win your customers over” man.  “Oh, God, that is too perfect,” I replied as I thought about the blog and realized there are some things you just can’t make up.

Thought and Will

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | daily | 8 Comments

The prep time on trimming the sirloin for 175 kebabs was over 2 hours, so it made me smile to see Alex L. positively giddy over them as they sizzled on the flat top.  I had stumbled on some old notes, just lists of ingredients really, one for a Middle Eastern meat marinade.  Cooking good food like this–the kind that makes the Alex’s “so psyched”– is not hard, it just takes thought and will, so it made me crazy tonight to see a commercial for an Ore Ida product to “simplify” the task of making mashed potatoes.  There on the screen was a woman in total mental meltdown over the complications of peeling a potato and putting into a pot of water.  I grew up in the seventies and it was clear to me even as a child that advertisers thought women were idiots, but you’d think we’d have progressed a little.  And it’s not just harried moms who are the victims of this “you’re too stupid to boil an egg” processed food industry brain washing.  “That’s so involved,” John marvelled yesterday as he watched me chop some herbs to add to a bowl of ricotta, mozzarella and Parmesan for lasagna.  “I know it’s a lot of steps,” Nick countered today when he told me what a hit it had been, “but there is nothing quite like scratch lasagna.”

Better Food

Saturday, October 31st, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

Back in late summer, restaurant critic Leslie Kelly took me and my mom to lunch at Steelhead Diner in Pike Place Market. The chef is from my native Louisiana and had received a small shipment of shrimp from back home, which he was sharing only sparingly.  I was thinking about those plump, sweet crustaceans yesterday when I spent hours in persistent search  of Wild American Shrimp from my supplier.  It started innocently enough, “do you carry any non-Asian product?” And not because I’m anti-Asian in particular or a bigot in general, but because, well, those cheap Vietnamese shrimp you see at Costco…they are cheap for a reason.  And we could all just say NO! and demand better food overall, but then, as John pointed out when he called to tell me he could source some from Alabama, “It will cost you.”  I know I can be an exasperating and demanding customer, but when I later received a defensive email from their seafood buyer, I realized just how much of a pain in the ass I am.  “I’m having a hard time following this,”  I wrote to John in response, “but I think he’s telling me to shut the hell up.”

Clean Police

Thursday, October 29th, 2009 | daily | 5 Comments

Mitch stopped by to offer help this afternoon.  “Or,” he added, ”I could just sit on my ass watching TV while you work.”  This was better than actually getting some help, so I declined the offer, but he still hung around to ask me how the health inspection went this morning.  I live in a permanent state of expecting the clean police, not just because I’m slightly obsessive-compulsive myself, but because it amuses me to watch Mr. Steve get agitated when he fails to find raw chicken swimming with the deli meats or chili being held at 100′F.  He never finds anything like that, so he does things like lecture me on making sure the guys wash their hands or tells me the mouse traps are pointed the wrong way.  But I really scored today when I took him to the basement storage room and he thought he’d hit pay dirt:  “Well, what do we have here!!!” as he pointed his flashlight at the suspect only to reveal…some lavender I was hanging to dry.  If only he knew that in a few weeks when it gets to 50′F down there, the duck breasts are getting hung up for the great proscuitto experiment.

Fresh Meat

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“So, I was wondering what you’re doing tonight?” Devin asked slyly after he shared that his date had cancelled out on the Halloween dance.  “Having dinner with my husband!” I howled, enjoying the flattery, but aware that this was perhaps a set-up.  “Well, what about after dinner?”  Now, I am not a cougar, but if I were, Devin is way too nice, polite, and agreeable to be my type.  And I’m not sure who put him up to this because he’s not even a freshman.  If he were, I’d have suspected Badley, who’s taken to harassing the pledges by sending them into the kitchen as surrogates to relay his own specific, narrow requests.  To the point that I finally stopped one of them mid-babble to say “go tell your Fearless Leader to F*** Off.”  I was in the middle of telling Badley and Zach about Devin’s cute proposal when Daniel, interupting a cell conversation with his dad, relayed the information that there were 30 pounds of elk for the taking.  “I never say no to fresh, wild meat,” was my answer.  “Me neither!” Zach piped in.  But I’m not sure he was referring to the wine-braised stew I’d instantly conjured for a dreary winter night.

Parent Readers

Saturday, October 24th, 2009 | daily | 5 Comments

I was in today at 6AM preparing a Father-Son brunch for Homecoming.  “It’s so nice to see you here on a Saturday!” Ian exclaimed.  “Nice for YOU!” I shot back.  I regretted it immediately and wished that I could learn to zip it once in a while.  Bryce’s dad, whom I had never met, stopped by the kitchen to tell me he enjoys the blog, which surprised me because Bryce never talks to me.  Well, there was this one time when he told me he’d be happy to sweep up a dead mouse.  Disturbingly happy, something about his childhood as I recall.  All I know about his dad is that he must be thick-skinned enough to find enjoyment reading my trash-talk about the guys.  It does surprise me how diverse my readers are; you would never invite all these people to the same cocktail party.  It’s especially anxiety-provoking for me to learn that a parent is reading and some are so thoroughly respectable that I can’t help wishing the earth beneath my feet would part and suck me in when they smile and tell me, “loved that birthday sex post!”

So Dirt

Friday, October 23rd, 2009 | daily | No Comments

Joey brought me some of the spicy cherry peppers his family cans every year and, contrary to my reputation, I don’t have anything flip, sarcastic or vulgar to say about this.  In fact I was touched.  The jar was accompanied by a card listing the ingredients:  “cherry peppers, tomatoes, onions, extra virgin olive oil, fresh garlic, fresh sweet basil, sea salt.”  By contrast, John came by today with some hors d’oeuvres he wanted to sell me on, and as soon as he pulled out the large square box of samples, I couldn’t help myself; ”I feel like I’m at one of those chain restaurants where they come by with the tray of ’homemade’ desserts for you to choose from.”  He wasn’t feeling well and he wasn’t in the mood for my shit, so instead of continuing down this path of deflating ridicule, I just pulled up the list of ingredients and after about the tenth unrecognizable item, he got my point.  No sale.  When I got home, I had a text from Badley:  ”So I’m at Alpha Alpha and their dinner is:  canned chili with melted cheese on top, cornbread and rice crispies.  So Dirt.”      

Food Bribes

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

“Would you care for a bacon-peanut butter cookie?” I asked the electrician like the proper Southern hostess I am.  And you’d have thought I’d offered him a canape of roasted human baby heart.  I pouted when he declined, and wrote him off as a food loser.  Rod came by later for the sole purpose of trying one and offered the opinion that they were “strangely good.”  Which I don’t think you would say about human baby heart.  Even if it were.  The guys loved them, and if you want the recipe, go to the website for Snake River Farms www.snakeriverfarms.com the source of some of the natural meats that US Foodservice is carrying and I am buying because, for example, their ground beef doesn’t have weird looking stuff in it and makes fantastic meatballs.  It’s just nice to eat ground beef that doesn’t conjure images of cow feces and e-coli.    Dinner included skirt steak with a Korean-style marinade.  The original recipe called for squeezing Asian pears to extract their juice, and while I love the idea of that, it struck me as something akin to peeling the black coating off of peppercorns or gathering pine cones to harvest the pine nuts.  I went for the case of fresh oranges instead and found the combination of sesame oil, soy, garlic and orange juice to be almost as intoxicating as the blood orange vodka I’m steeping in the basement to bribe the health inspector with.

Better Things

Monday, October 19th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

It’s not the best picture, but I had to work quickly to capture Badley halfway through a whole plate of hors d’oeuvres I’d placed in the dining room for everyone to share.  I caught him racing through my kitchen with the plate and I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing and he told me it was for everyone in the TV room.  Everyone meaning the only one who matters.  It’s hard to tell here, but he’s clearly enjoying the crackers topped with cambazola, roasted figs and bacon, a variation of the very same fig appetizer that he had turned his nose up at a few days ago.  Pledge Charlie had called those “little orbs of ecstasy,” a description that thrilled me to the core when I heard it.  “Great Birthday Sex Tonight!” I exclaimed to the TV room crowd as I locked up on my way to dinner at Crow with my husband (the birthday boy).  “Did she really say that?” one of the freshmen asked, having missed the history of my text to Nate a couple of years ago when he’d asked me to come hang out at the house on the 31st.  Sorry, I’d told him, but I had better things to do on Halloween.

All Sunshine

Thursday, October 15th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

Zach is trying out a new hairstyle and I don’t know why, he’s not ready for his midlife crisis.  I looked up synonyms for mullet and found “associated with working class, or even bad taste.”  But, not to be outdone, my husband tapped on his laptop at the same time until he found enough material to have us both in tears.  “Achy breaky bad mistaky”…”hockey hair,” and, my personal favorite, “yep-nope.”   I don’t pretend to understand the mytery man Zach, but he’s always been sort of one of my pets, and today especially so, because while some were oblivious to the stress I was under on this day (formal dinner for a special guest), Zach actually offered to go out of his way to help me out in a major way.  I’ve been reading the book Rod gave me on positve attitude and found that, when people complain, I’m supposed to say, “Thank you for pointing that out.  Now that I know, I’ll try to make it right.”  I tried it a few times and it was great, really disarming.  But I guess you’re not supposed to use exactly the same words every single time, because when you have a serial complainer (as we do here, who doesn’t?) it becomes obvious to the Perpetually Unhappy Person that you’re just taking the piss.  But no such problems with Zach who is just all sunshine all the time.

Fig Virgins

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

The first thing Badley said to me when I told him I needed a picture of him eating a fig was “how does my hair look?”  Like that is in any way relevant.  He’d never eaten a fig before other than “the shriveled ones” and so I told him to just imagine it hot, stuffed with cambozola and wrapped in bacon.  But he seemed to have a hard time on that score, because the picture just after this, well, you’d think I’d given him a dirty diaper to suck on.  Badley and his peculiar tastes.  Here’s a guy who begs me to cook mussels and duck breast, who loves olive salad and capers, but gags on raw red onion.  Some are picky in predictable ways, but Badley is just plain indecipherable.  He rivals by my sales guy John, who spent his whole day running around on my behalf, showing up late afternoon, his arms loaded with figs and blood oranges, only to have me show my appreciation by bellowing, ”What??? You’ve never tasted a fig?  Or a blood orange?”  And, where Badley can be his true self, when I made John open wide,  he had to swallow and be the consumate salesman.

Like Paris

Sunday, October 11th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

I’m counting on the fact that the King County health inspectors are too busy checking for perfectly clean bare hands and delicious unpasteurized cheeses to read my blog and find out that I am making creme fraiche for the guys.  (Just wait until they discover the duck breasts hanging in the basement turning into proscuitto.)  I was at Metropolitan Market in Upper Queen Anne on Saturday buying the non-ultrapastuerized heavy cream for this when the check-out lady asked me what I was doing with it.  And when I told her that I was making creme fraiche for a fraternity, it was like the entire store just froze and everyone looked at me.  The cashier took out a pen and started scribbling, the woman behind me pressed me on the details.  I suddenly felt that I was on stage as I told them how beautifully, brainlessly easy this is:  1 Tablespoon of buttermilk to 1 cup of NOT ULTRA-PASTUERIZED heavy cream.  You heat the cream to 80′, you add the buttermilk, you put it in a jar and leave it slightly uncovered for 8-24 hours at room temp until it thickens and then you refrigerate it for a day.  And it is the most luscious thing, that, when combined with sliced potatoes and gruyere cheese, makes the easiest gratin ever.  Or you can serve it over sweetened berries and feel like you’re in Paris.

Shiny, Happy People

Friday, October 9th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

Rod stopped by today to loan me this book, and not because he was trying to tell me something, but because my husband requested it.  Personally, I would way rather read the Little Book of NO! Attitude.  He actually forgot to give it to me at the House, what with savoring a piece of pear almond tart, tasting my chorizo, and grilling Brian about his love life, so I had to meet him at an interstate exit to get it, which had the feeling of a drug deal, trafficking in premium good attitude…(not that I know anything about drug deals or good attitudes!)  During his visit, he was able to enlighten me on who buys pre-cooked salmon and, not that he spilled any specific customer names, but let’s just say I won’t be eating fish sandwiches at any Seattle bar that charges under $8 for a martini (like I’d ever be caught in a bar like that anyway).  I did flip through the happy book, but I don’t think I can take much of it.  It’s bad enough that last night, when my husband asked how my day went, I had to break the news:  Pledge Mitch seems to think I work too many hours.  How am I supposed to blog about that?

The Good from the Bad

Monday, October 5th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

My sales guy John told me today that when he’s feeling too good about himself, he just calls me to smack him down.  I repeated this to some of the guys, “can you believe he said that?” and they just looked at their feet.  But some context is needed here:  John asked if he could bring a broker to see me tomorrow, a broker who, amongst other delights, wants to sell me pre-cooked salmon.  And, shocker, I said I’d never buy that.  Never.  I mean, who in the hell would in Seattle?  You take a fresh, local product that requires 8 minutes to cook from raw and you’re going to buy it cooked so you can spend 20 minutes re-heating (incinerating) it.  But, lest everyone think I can never be satisfied, I learned today that US Foodservice is carrying meat from Creekstone Farms, a supplier that takes the humane slaughter of animals seriously.  It was a surprising and happy discovery which came to me as I was unwrapping the stip loins to cut into steak this morning for tonight’s Chapter Dinner and saw the label.  So it was good that I was in such a contented mood as I watched Jake throw away the chanterelle and lobster mushrooms he’d dished onto his plate without a clue what they were.  “What is that?” he asked as he tossed them.  “Jesus, Jake, maybe tomorrow I can put a bowl of caviar out for you.”  It’s a constant struggle, this trying to educate on the good from the bad.

The Hotness

Thursday, October 1st, 2009 | daily | No Comments

This is Brian severely in my way tonight making dinner for Stephanie.  My fresh wild halibut with coconut green curry was not special enough for this occasion and so he brought his own stuff.  He wasn’t exactly begging for my tips and advice, but it’s hard to bite your tongue when someone is just not doing it right.  And granted, Stephanie is so besotted with Brian that she wouldn’t notice the tips on the green beans, but when someone is boiling potatoes without salt and searing fish without any oil…I mean, it just makes you crazy.  Still, he did manage to turn out two extraordinarily pretty plates of food.  Earlier, Sal had stopped in to tell me about his previous night, but while I snapped photos of him, I wasn’t really listening because Sal’s night before stories always go like this, “blah, blah, blah…She thought I was HOT.”  And it’s not mean of me to say so because he would concur:  it’s all about the hotness.

Golden Moments

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

I stayed at work late last Friday to make chorizo and I churned out a whole five pounds.  It was great but five pounds is about enough to make breakfast for Sal and Big, with the other 70 guys empty-plated and long-faced.  I’ve learned over time that some things are a huge effort for the payoff, while other things are quick, easy and infinitely better than the convenience product.  Salad dressing, soup, and lately I’ve discovered, salsa.  I always have the stuff for it on hand and making my own means I can offer up a different variety every time.  Today it was habanero and pickled garlic.  But hors d’oeuvres in particular are a real problem…both hard to make from scratch for a crowd and usually horrible when purchased ready-made.  So I was ecstatic when, having ordered some samosas Rod recommended, I discovered that not only were they completely natural and authentic, the sort of thing I’d make and freeze myself, but then…my phone rang at work and it was the woman behind the delicious things, an actual human being, asking me what I thought of her company’s product.  “Really?”  I asked, incredulous, “you’re the creator?”  I’m all about a closer, more personal connection to my food, a less Tyson-Kraft-Monsanto sort of fog, so this was a golden moment.  So many positive, upbeat things are happening at work that it’s becoming a liability.  A real blog killer.  Like when Brandon the Freshman interrupted a conversation between Badley and me to ask if I needed anything, any trash taking out, any thing cleaned…  I just looked at Badley dumbfounded and said, “We need to write down this date.”

Food Nerdery

Monday, September 28th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

Kirk thinks he wants to return to being my sales guy, but he’s having selective memory loss about how annoying a customer I can be.  When it comes to food matters, I can be like that irritating kid in the front row of class raising her hand constantly.  My new guy John got a heavy dose of this over the weekend when I asked what should have been a simple question, but which turned into three days of sarcastic emails:  how can I get orange potatoes, which I (correctly) call sweet potatoes and which his company insists on calling yams?  And it would be okay if they were just consistenly wrong so that I knew that if I ordered yams I’d get the orange things, but what really had my knickers in a twist this weekend as I was placing an order was that I found out they were now calling everything “sweet potato yams.” Which is like calling something “green red peppers” or whole wheat white bread.”  Then today, John innocently asked if I could help him out with a sales competition to win a Wii by ordering a bunch of Kraft macaroni and cheese microwavable packets.  Clearly a request from someone who missed my blog post “Kraft is Crap.”  “Are you kidding?” I responded, “I’d rather buy my guys a dozen Wii’s than serve that trash.”  He was crushed and read my email to his boss.  But Rod just laughed, because Rod knows a little history;  there was this one time when I tried to pass that off to my guys for end of exam week dinner.  And when I did that, I could hear the response from the other side of the house, “WHAT THE F*** IS THIS?”

A Beautiful Thing

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

I know you can’t see my expression here, so I’ll just tell you that what I’m thinking at this point is that next summer, I’m going to a pig farm to learn pork anatomy.  For those who think I’m a total narcissist, this is the blog post where I point out my own screw ups.  (When one angry reader called me self-centered and narrow-minded, my husband assured me I’m self-centered and broad-minded.) I won’t bore you with how this stupidity came about, but at 1PM I realized that my 20# hams were not going to be tonight’s dinner without some surgery and so I pulled the pretty blazing hot things out and proceeded to hack them to death.  But this is the joy of cooking for hungry frat boys…first, no matter what, if you tell them that’s how it’s supposed to be, they believe you.  And second, when Brian saw me cutting into that crackling at 4:30, he told me it was a beautiful thing.

Fabrication

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | daily | 6 Comments

Brian didn’t want me taking his picture looking like he just rolled out of bed.  Which he had.  At 1PM.  And he probably didn’t want to be on the blog, but too bad because he was blocking my parking space this morning.  My husband says I should turn my inventory of pictures of the guys into magnets that I can then stick on their common fridge.  Then they’ll all know who’s on my shit list and who is the current darling.  I hesitate to publish how last night went for me because it’s creepy and I’ve had one reader who I’m pretty sure was unstable, so I hate to encourage any more crazies, but last night I dreamed that I was fabricating live human beings.  And for those unfamiliar with the term, it means I was expertly cutting them into their edible parts.  The weird thing (okay, it’s all hideously weird) was that they were perfectly happy to have me taking a boning knife to them.  This is called work interfering with life in the extreme.  I only remembered the dream when I was breaking down a dozen whole chickens today for Friday’s Pho and explaining to the guys what a production this all was for soup.  This is how it is with scratch cooking for a fraternity;  what takes three leisurely hours for a few friends takes a dozen pots, four days and graphic nightmares when done for a crowd.

Taste Off

Monday, September 21st, 2009 | daily | No Comments

Newman came by today, his last visit before he flies to Germany, and he is one of those food lovers who have made the effort worthwhile for me for three whole years.  There are a million reasons to take shortcuts in this job and I completely understand the cooks who are faced with insurmountable logistical problems that force them to take that route.  But, as crazy-making as it can be, there are more good reasons to do the kinds of nutty things I was doing today.  Like roasting and grinding dried ancho and chipotle chilies to make chili powder for homemade chorizo.  The aroma was just incredible, so warm and wonderful that you just knew whatever that was going into was going to be amazing.  And never mind that the chile dust nearly killed a few of us who inhaled.  It made you want to cook.  It made cooking not seem like a chore but like recreation.  Bob the new chef here who’s trying to learn from me came to help out again today and I got the feeling that I was causing more anxiety than comfort, but what I wanted to say is, “not everyone is as crazy as me.”  You can do this job quite well without being so utterly food-obsessed that when your food sales guy sends you info on his company’s latest great product, which just happened to be chorizo, you send an email saying, “I’m grinding my own pork shoulder and I’m roasting my own chilies to make my own chorizo, thank you, and we should just have a taste-off.”

Shoe Bandit

Friday, September 18th, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

“Did you put something in the brownies?” Rod from US Foodservice asked me when he paid a visit today.  He was looking at the enormous tray of them in my arms and I must have looked puzzled because he went on to tell me that there were two cops at the front door chatting with some of the guys.  We’d had an intruder right before I arrived for work and it was now noon, FIVE hours after all our lives were in danger.  “Well about time,” I huffed.  The home invader had been spotted by Daniel wandering the halls stealing shoes, an act so weird that none of us really knew what to say.  And apparently we were the third house to fall victim to the shoe bandit.  But other than that little Friday drama, this has been an extraordinarily smooth and positive Work Week, summed up beautifully by Pledge Richard here.  I’m happier than I’ve been in 3 years and, not that I’m synical or anything, but that just makes me wonder what horror awaits me  next week.

Shadow Chef

Thursday, September 17th, 2009 | daily | 5 Comments

“Oh, so you think it’s a good idea to show him your potty mouth?”  This is how my sales guy responded when I asked him where my delivery was and pointed out that, because I have a new fraternity chef shadowing me, today would be a good day to impress.  And, okay, I did use slightly more colorful language when I inquired into the whereabouts of my truck.  I love dealing with vendors who feel completely comfortable talking to me like that because then I know they’re real and that they actually may not be full of shit everytime they open their mouths.  The picture is of Bob, the new chef in question, and if I didn’t scare the crap out of him today, he’s going to be fine.  I made him work hard because, let’s just be blunt, if someone wants to hang out in your kitchen all day learning from you when you’re cooking 140 plates in a shoebox, they better be prepared to be of use.  And he was of great and cheerful use.

Decent Shit

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 | daily | 7 Comments

It’s a picture from my transforming summer farm experience where I have this expression that seems to say ”I don’t know, Karen, you’re classically trained and all and you wrote a gorgeous book and you have a cool job, but I can cut up a chicken, too.”  And there’s Leslie to the side of me so obviously not paying attention at all.  Leslie started working for me on Monday.  She’s a food writer, a restaurant critic and she’s just helping me out for a bit.  And when you have a person like that working for you, there’s sort of a bit of pressure to cook decent shit.  I mean, you can’t be asking her to place the prefab chicken cordon bleu on the sheet pans, you’ve got to be having her helping you make pesto or something.  With organic basil.  I was having her help me today with the “Creamy Grits with Goat Cheese and Sundried Tomatoes” (a Bon Appetit recipe) and she said, “remember when goat cheese was in everything…it was just THE THING?”  “And sudried tomatoes,” I said, laughing at the pile of them in front of her.  Okay, it’s a retro 80’s recipe, but the guys went wild for it.  I knew this when they were coming back for seconds and it wasn’t for the flank steak…it was for…”what is that stuff?”  “Grits,” I said.  “Or Polenta…depending on how much you want to pay for it.”

Better than G&T’s

Monday, September 14th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

I didn’t want to go into work today.  I admit it.  The first day of cooking for the fall quarter…70 plus ravenous guys, it’s just frankly terrifying.  I was up at 4:30 this morning watching my cats roll around and when I told my husband I wished I could just do that, he said “No you don’t.  You’re doing what you want to do.”  I had heard a rumor that Sal was on a mission to be my favorite this year and so when he stopped by and saw Brian voluntarily peeling carrots for me, I couldn’t resist.  “He’s trying out for cook’s pet,” I said, “and I hear you want to audition, too.”  But Sal is way too cool for that.  He’s just sure it’s locked up.  It was a long day, a totally mentally and physically exhausting exercise.  But the number of guys who said “thank you” and ”glad you’re back,” and Collard greens!!!!  I can’t wait for jambalya and collard greens!”  Well,  that’s way more jolly than sitting at home sipping G&T’s watching Food Network.

Like Newman

Friday, September 11th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

I just heard from Newman, who will soon be leaving the country, and as we all know, there can be only one Newman, but this picture reminds me of one taken of me with him when I was very green.  I’m so much wiser now.  And scarier.  Although clearly freshman Brandon is so unintimidated that he brought his mother to meet me and shared the blog with her.  The letter that I had Badley send to all the incoming pledges seems to have had an effect–the effect of making them aware of what to avoid and giving them an understanding that I can be fun to be around, warm and loving…when my head isn’t about to explode. Newman understood this so well that he knew just exactly how far he could go, and not a millimeter further.  “This year I’m adding to my list of things that piss me off,” I told some of the older guys as I prepared made-to-order omelettes.  “Waste.  If I see you throwing half this omelette away, I’m just going to kill you and be done with it.”

Too Cruel

Thursday, September 10th, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

James was about the fifth person to come into my kitchen today to do totally annoying things like heat up canned chili (gag) and slice vegetables directly on my (previously spotless) prep tables.  I’m back, but I’m not cooking yet because I’m supposed to have a couple of days to reclaim my kitchen, cleaning and restocking.  But really I’m here to babysit and take endless texts from Badley saying things like “why haven’t you posted now that you’re back at work?”  Like he’s paying me to write this blog instead of paying me to do the crazy shit that I just happen to write about.  I had told him I’m planning to plate dinners this year to cut down on food waste and he sent me this little missive:  “I’m still a little wary.  I like to pile a huge mountain of meat on my plate and little veggies.  Will the meat portions be huge?”  Later in the day, a new fraternity chef came by.  He’s never done this kind of job and wanted to get some tips and advice and while I did consider it, I did not give him the URL to this blog.  It just seemed too cruel.

My Own Air

Monday, September 7th, 2009 | daily | 6 Comments

He didn’t exactly put it this way, but the tone of Matt’s email to me a couple of weeks ago warning me that he’s my second gluten-intolerant customer was that “this is going to hurt me way more than you.”  And it’s not so much the fact that he can’t enjoy my macaroni and cheese, quiches, lasagnas and homemade biscuits.  It seemed to be more about the liquid substance he’s barred from.  So now, on top of recently learning that I will have over 70 guys this year, I will have to prepare separate choices for these two.  But it’s okay, I told him, “It’s a challenge and it’s my job.”  Still, I was relieved to get approval to hire assistance and thrilled to find that my help is going to be Seattle food writer Leslie Kelly.  She was at a dinner party last night hosted by fellow Quillisascut Farm School alum Ellen, and when I said I needed to hire some help, she offered herself up.  And not like a sacrifice either, but like someone to whom I was passing out private suite tickets to the Mariners.  My husband was amused by these new friends of mine, these people at least as food crazy as me.  I brought home-cured salmon, an appetizer I was sure would delight and impress.  But Ellen makes her own marachino cherries for cocktails.  Ellen makes her own bitters for cocktails.  Ellen is currently curing duck proscuitto.  She’s inspiring, and while I know that with at least 70 mouths to feed, I have to be realisitic, I also want to be that kind of frat cook who, as my husband put it “makes her own air.”

Positive Reinforcement

Friday, September 4th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

There’s a joke amongst some of us that a bunch of Cougars (and I’m not talking about the four-legged beast that’s supposedly on the loose in Seattle right now) check out this blog specifically to see pictures of cute guys.  So for them, I sort of wish I’d captured a photograph of freshman Brandon who stopped by as I was assembling and installing these compost bins.  He’s for sure cuter than these things, but to me, because I’m weird that way, this picture is exciting enough that when my husband asked me about my day, they were my highlight.  Brandon is an example of the sort of pledge I instantly love.  He saw me dirt-crusted and sweaty and didn’t need to be told that I could use an extra hand to “screw the insert and the outer cone into the basket,” an instruction more easy to read than to execute.  And he jumped right in to help.  I know the older guys enjoy their power over the freshmen, but I’ve never been comfortable with that.  I like to see who has the brains and the bravery to step into my world motivated by their own free will and I’m never wrong about this…they are always the best guys in the house.  “When’s food starting?” Mike asked as he watched Brandon the freshman work.  “Well, that depends on how clean I find my kitchen when I come back next week.”  Positive reinforcement.

Less So and More So

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 | daily | No Comments

I pickled these peppers today and are they not just glorious to look at?  Okay, the photography isn’t great, but I promise, they are a wonder to behold.  The pickling brine was so good that when I finished filling the jars and had some left over, I was spooning the remainder into my mouth lustily.  The recipe is from the September issue of Bon Appetit and you need to just run out to your local farmers’ market right now and get the stuff for these.  This is my last week of summer break before I head back to the fall semester, a time when I savor the opportunity to do things like pickle peppers, make butter…and arrange necessary appointments.  I had one with an allergist yesterday to try to determine why I, of all people, have a severe, chronic inability to swallow at times and he asked me what I do for a living.  “I cook for a fraternity at the UW,” I said, a sentence that  even after 3 years, I have not been able to get out without laughing.  Usually the questioner asks me to repeat myself, sure that he misheard.  “What is that like?” the fresh-faced resident asked me and I knew he was not too far off from his college days.  “About what you imagine,” I quipped.  “Only both less so and more so.”

So Lucky to Have Me

Sunday, August 30th, 2009 | daily | 7 Comments

Once again, I’m hearing from Greek chefs around the country.  A lot of them are back at work, whereas I’m still on summer vacation.  In theory.  Last week I spent three days on an alumni event, one of which was the most stressful day of my working life.  And this morning, a Sunday, a glorious late summer day, I received an email as I was enjoying my Sunday New York Times with my freshly brewed coffee and homemade huckleberry muffin.   It was from the guys’ advisor telling me that Badley and a handful of helpers were painting today and would I possibly be able to just whip up a simple lunch for them?  I knew I had several choices in this situation, but decided to do it, knowing that every single time Badley has a petty little complaint I can use this as one of my “remember that time…” examples.  I set some chicken poaching and headed to the West Seattle farmers market where I received a text from Mr. President himself asking me when lunch would be arriving.  “Johnny has a present for you!” he interjected irrelevantly when I called him to tell him he was really pushing his luck.  When I delivered the chicken salad with dijon apricot mayonnaise, I discovered that the “present” was a shiny new mop bucket, these guys apparently never having witnessed their own mothers’ disappointment with a washing machine for Christmas.  “You’re the best!” Badley yelled after me as I exited the building, reiterating the fact that I am not on the payroll yet and it’s not even a day I would be working even if I were so you’re so goddamn lucky to have me!

Pledge Slaves

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 | daily | 5 Comments

Badley asked me to compose a letter for a packet he’s sending to the incoming freshmen.  He wanted me to write a bland bio that would comfort the parents, but I didn’t want to do that.  I wanted to aim straight for my future customers with the hard, cold truth.  I got the impression he didn’t much care for my letter when he sent me an email asking me for my letter.  The one to the parents.  I won’t rehash it all here, but this is a little segment:

As to my reputation for being mean, it is categorically not true.  I simply have two very firm requirements:

1.       Sanitation in the kitchen and dining area.  This should be self-explanatory, but let’s be perfectly explicit:  if you make a mess, clean it up; if you take something out of the common fridge, return it before it develops enough bacteria to kill someone; clear your plates and throw away your trash.  We receive frequent Health Department inspections from a very sarcastic, nitpicking inspector.  Even more sarcastic and nitpicking than me.  Don’t embarrass me.

2.       Respect for my work area and the tools of my job.  I come into work at 7AM and I need a clean and stocked kitchen right from the start.  So please don’t block my parking spot, put a six pack of Coke in the freezer, break into my kitchen or pantries, or unplug cooling equipment, leaving food to spoil.  Not that anyone’s ever done any of that.

What he didn’t see were all the great lines I left out.  Like when I talk about how early I come into work and how I have to knuckle right down, I was going to add, “because unlike your President, I don’t have a bunch of pledge slaves to do my bidding.”  “It’s a perfectly fair letter,” I said to Dan, “I’ll cook great food if you don’t fuck with me.”  And I know I have the support of several former pledges because when they told me they’d read the letter, they laughed.  And it was one of those knowing laughs.

Charm Offensive

Friday, August 21st, 2009 | daily | No Comments

I’m installing 2 compost bins at the House and you would think this would be pretty straightforward, but I’m finding that some of my great ideas for the coming year are being met with a huge wad of red tape.  So that, besides the City of Seattle, 6 parties and a dozen emails are involved in this effort.  Johnny has been named Compost Chair (not to be confused with the Sustainability Chair, the Recycling Chair, or the “Turn Out The Goddamn Lights When You Leave the Bathroom” Chair), and when I first learned this, I was skeptical; he and I have had a somewhat, well, rocky relationship over the years.  (Search “Johnny the Funny” for an example).  But this morning I received an email from him that changed my view.  He’s not just more enthusiastic about table scrap dirt than you’d expect of your average college boy, but he’s been working all summer at Fort Lewis on an army compost project of huge proportions and he is nothing short of an expert now.  It’s an example of something that happens time and again in this job; just as I’m about to kill one of them for cause, he’ll turn and say something so unexpectedly interesting or touching or insightful that I just can’t do it.

House Made Sausage

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 | daily | 7 Comments

I watch Food Network when I work out and I hate it when I time it to coincide with Robin Miller.  It’s not her personally, or her tips on getting weeknight meals on the table, which are very sensible.  And I know she has a tv show and sells lots of books, which clearly I do not.  It’s just that every single episode I manage to catch, there she is cooking boneless, skinless chicken breasts, a “why bother?” ingredient to rival cottage cheese.  I just don’t see the point of  paying someone a premium to strip out the only two flavor elements–the bone and the skin.  So I was thinking about her when I was making my first sausages composed of not just chicken thigh meat, but chicken fat.  I bought a commercial meat grinder with the notion that I’d be popping out artisinal sausages for the guys this year, but it will take some practice because stuffing hog casings is a little like milking a goat:  Not as easy as it looks.  When I told some of the guys about my new toy, they weren’t nearly as thrilled as I was, but they could see it as a potentially useful hazing tool, giving new meaning to the term house-made sausage.

More Jam

Monday, August 17th, 2009 | daily | 6 Comments

I realize that only hard core cooks and certain weirdos in Montana can appreciate how happy it makes me to stand and admire this collection.  Since returning from my sojourn at Quillisascut, I’ve been a little obsessed.  I admit it.  Must Put Up the Peaches Before They Are GONE!  I knew that I was becoming just plain crazy when I was late taking my stuff out of the washer in the laundry room of our condo building.  “I’m canning!” I cried to the woman whose machines I was hogging and she looked at me like I’d said I was late because I was lost waxing my floors listening to 45’s on the gramaphone.  ”Canning?  People still do that?”  So when I was at the House today doing inventory, it was me who came up with the idea first:  let me come back to work early.  Let me have my professional kitchen back.  Not just because I miss the guys, you know, not just because they miss the real food that I love to cook, but because 8 burners on a commercial stove can make shitloads more jam.

Change Resisters

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

Some of the comments I get on this blog never make it past my viewing.  I have a huge foreign fan club  who try to post sentiments like “Thanking you!  You improving my mood!”  I was thinking about these ego boosters when Brian looked down upon me with such enthusiasm as I explained the menu changes I had planned for the coming year.  He was not thanking me and I was not improving his mood.  You’d think that plans like “no more filler junk for lunch” and “if I wouldn’t put it on a restaurant menu, I’m not putting it on this one” would be met with applause, but you’d be someone who’s never cooked for a fraternity.  It’s not that these guys don’t like healthy and delicious food.  It’s that they also like total crap.  But I have hope because it was Brian who first encouraged me to put lamb and collard greens on my menu.  That despite the fact that he is also the person for whom I once contemplated creating “Ketchup Soup.”

Apricot Love

Thursday, August 6th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

I forgot to bring my camera when I took an Apricot Custard Tart to the House for Zach, so this is a picture from March.  But this is how he always looks, except when he’s trying to lure the ladies in which case he shaves, combs his hair and doesn’t look like a two-year-old picked out his clothes for the day.  You can see an example of this on the “about this blog” page where there’s a photo I call the “GQ Cover Audition.”  I brought the tart because I had rejected his request  for a birthday dinner while I was on my farm retreat.  Zach is 21 now, so he could have his very first drink ever.  I took a picture of the tart, and while up close it looked way better than a finals-burned-out-half-awake frat boy, the photograph looked like poached eggs floating in a bowl of milk.  It smelled great and was still warm when I delivered it.  While I was on my retreat, I purchased a 25# box of apricots from Cliffside Orchard.  They were seconds, but you wouldn’t know it, and so for $25, I have made not just that tart, but 14 cups of Bourbon Apricot Pickles, 2# of oven-dried fruit, 7 cups of preserves, 4 cups of Apricot-Amaretto Jam, 4 cups of poached fruit and a dozen whole ones just for splendid eating.

Farm to Table

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

It’s Zach’s birthday today.  I know this because, of the 7 texts I received from the guys during my retreat to Quillisascut Farm in eastern Washington, 3 were on this subject.  And given the tone of those messages, I’d say ZP was having a hard time accepting that my need for an intense food experience without outside communication trumped his need for birthday cake.  When I say intense, I mean that when I required whole wheat flour, silly me…I was handed a sack of wheat berries and a grain mill.  I mean that when goat was on the menu, we knew that we would be up at dawn to participate in the slaughter and buthchery of one of “the boys.”  It was profound and moving to be a participant in this life-taking, but there were lighter moments.  Like when we were removing the organs from freshly-killed chickens and a few of them “squawcked,” headless as they were, and one of the chefs broke our startled silence by stating flatly, “well now I know PETA is full of shit.”  Or when the owner told us that when they slaughter pigs in the fall, they’ve discovered the most humane method is to get them drunk first.  I went to great effort not to think about my job, but it was hard not to contemplate a practical application for that where I work.  When we were doing all of this beheading and scalding, plucking and evicerating of the chickens, I thought about a cooking class I once gave to a group of Junior Leaguers in Texas.  The women were happy to eat flesh, but recoiled at the idea that they would have to touch the raw breasts before them.  At the time, I wanted to ask how the hell they thought it was going to get onto their plate and it was simply irritating then, but now I see it as a deeper thing, an example of how disconnected we’ve become from our food.  I went there wanting to make some changes in how I do my job, but I came away changed myself, because there is something life-affirming about working with a group and sitting down in the evening to share a meal we all prepared quite literally from scratch.  Zach may not be over it for a while, but the best thing I could have done for my guys was to come here.

Summer Treats

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

There was a joke last year about Newman and Dan texting each other before they dress in the morning and I was going to say something today, but I didn’t want them to leave without taking the furniture Phil and I are unloading.  It won’t hit me that they’re getting their own place until I’m back at work and then I’ll feel like their mothers did three years ago.  When Badley heard I was giving this old blue chair to Newman, he texted me asking for it.  And when I confirmed what he already knew…well…I’m going to be hearing about this chair all next year every time I want anything from President Badley.  So it won’t help when he sees this photo of Newman holding a jar of homemade raspberry jam and Dan with what I had left of my stash of last summer’s blackberry vodka.  But of course they will share.

Wines Constantly

Friday, July 17th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

This part of Washington state is new to me and nothing like the Pacific Northwest of most imaginings.  It’s almost desert-like and full of photo-begging views of blue and grey-hued mountains and valleys.  We’re at Maryhill Winery for a Counting Crows concert later tonight, but the band is immaterial.  It was just an excuse to sit in a spectacular setting eating an outdoor concert picnic, a genre of meals that sounds good even without knowing the menu.  Back in Seattle, I prepared caponata, humus, Israeli couscous salad with roasted vegetables, and bought a goat cheese from The Spanish Table and some walnut bread from Boulangerie Nantaise.  In the winery retail shop, I saw  an apron imprinted with “Wines Constantly” and was instantly reminded of my working life.  Last week, I received a series of texts from the guys…”we miss your food, when are you coming to hang out with us?”  I’m sure I’ll eventually tire of sitting under vine arbors drinking syrah and cooking for just two.  But I’m not sure when.

Field Trip

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | daily | 6 Comments

When my husband asks me what I did today, I’m going to have to confess to something as embarassing as saying I was hanging out with the addicts under the 99 viaduct knocking back a fifth of gin.  I spent hours in Bellevue.  For those not from these parts, Bellevue is to Seattle what West Plano is to Dallas.  I get why people live in souless suburbs.  I did it for years when my kids were school-aged.  What I don’t get are the people who like living in suburbs.  My vision of Hell is scrapbooking and PTA meetings as my only recreation and Cheesecake Factory and Chilis as my only dining options.  And, okay, I know that Bellevue has some very trendy, expensive stores and restaurants, but it’s a little like fine dining in an airport terminal.  There’s just something cold about not having any dirt or homeless people on your streets.  Still, I needed to shop for home furnishing fabrics and we don’t have that in Queen Anne. So I was cheered up greatly by the sight of a real farmers’ market in a strip mall parking lot.  The okra was a stand-out and if there’s a point to this post (is there ever?), it’s to offer this simple tip:  any firm vegetable (okra, green beans, broccoli, asparagus…), olive oil, pepper or other spices, 10-15  minutes or so in a 400′ oven, then salt.  You can make that in quantity hours ahead and serve it at room temperature and it will change how you feel about some produce.  I’ve reduced my vegetable recipes down to this single method, the only way I’ve found to get more than 3 guys to make room on the plate for something other than flesh.

Forbidden Fruit

Saturday, July 4th, 2009 | daily | 7 Comments

I got talked into buying way too many raspberries at the farmers’ market today.  You have to be lazy or blind to actually buy blackberries in Washington, but these beauties are different.  Still, after making jam and a lemon-raspberry syrup (to mix with vodka or sparkling water), I’m sort of done for the day and there are a bunch of them still sitting on the table accusingly.  It’s good to be busy because after 2 weeks away from the House, I’m running out of things to do and find myself browsing the internet for other blogs like mine.  But there isn’t much and what there is makes me wonder if the writers are on heavy prescription meds or don’t actually work in a Greek house.  In my searching, I found an ad for a live-in fraternity house mom (a concept that is just ludicrous on it’s face) that listed in the requirements “avoid inappropriate relationships with members,”  which just made you wonder about the previous termination.  It was right there along with education and experience…oh, by the way, hands off the boys.  I haven’t heard of any such shenanigans here at the UW, but one sorority cook was fired last spring for drinking during Greek week.  “There was more to it,” Kirk told me, the chef in question being one of his customers.  And where I work, there would have to be a whole lot more, because one thing I will say for this job, you really have to  try hard to outdo your employers in outrageous behavior.

Not Just a Job

Sunday, June 28th, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

One of my favorite posts from last year is Snowpocalypse, and it’s one that others remember not for the epic weather description but for the Bourbon Chocolate Cake, so longed for that I risked my life over it.  This time, though, I’m baking it on a warm June afternoon and taking it to Badley and Daniel to thank them.  The guys have been sinking into a crisis and I should say that it’s entirely their problem and yet somehow I was the one losing sleep and bursting into tears of frustration.  At one point, when one who had better reason than me to be ticked told me I “shouldn’t be so mean to those boys,” my incredulous response was that someone has to beat the crap out of them.  As leaders must, Badley and Daniel took the direct hits and turned things around, so they can eat the whole bourbon-drenched thing themselves as far as I’m concerned.  “This isn’t a normal job!” I cried to my husband who suggested that my last pay day of the year might perhaps have marked the end of my responsibilities and seemed not to share my conviction that without me in their lives, everything would just fall apart.

Seattle Summer

Sunday, June 21st, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

“Are you going to keep up your blog over the summer?”  It was my mother who posed this question as we ate corn and crab soup and grilled gulf shrimp with grits and andouille at Dante’s Kitchen in New Orleans.  I flew out to Louisiana hours after my last day on the job.  And when I told her I thought not, she asked how she would keep up with my life.  “It’s not about me.  It’s about the guys,” I said, but then I was eating boiled crawfish with my brother and his wife and they asked me what I had planned for the summer back in Seattle.  “Mostly outdoorsy things,” I said, “concerts and picnics and hikes.”  Their expressions said it all…Summer.  Outside.  How very, very foreign.  And then there are the people who wonder what a fraternity chef does for 2 1/2 months.  So I thought, what the hell, I’ll write about shopping at our amazing neighborhood farmers’ markets and at cool ethnic shops like Uwajimaya, the source of the whole fish for tonight’s dinner.  “I’m looking for arctic char,” I told the fishmonger, but they didn’t have it and so after a little discussion about how I intended to prepare it he suggested the Rockfish pictured above.  Stay away from a fish with dull or sunken eyes they say, and this one’s were so much the opposite I swore he was watching me slathering him with lemon-dill butter before his trip to the oven.

Bums on the Ave

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

“This has the potential to turn out very badly,” Jeff said to me, which, come to think of it, could have been the subtitle to this blog.  I was in the kitchen smiling to myself about what was going on in the dining hall.  It’s finals week and so, while I keep cooking because that is what is required, guys keep leaving, so that we end up with mountains of uneaten food.  I let my disgust about this be known today…”all that flank steak, all those potatoes, just WASTED.”  Sometimes I feel like my bitching just floats out there ignored, but then at other times they try to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT WOMAN’S ANGER.  And so Shane had the brilliant idea to pack up all the leftover food and deliver it to the “bums on the Ave.”  They used the word a dozen times before Jesse suggested that “we don’t call them that anymore, the term is homeless” and they all just totally got into it.  “Philanthropy!” James cried.  They left the house expecting a perhaps less than happy experience, but they returned beaming.  And I was reminded why I love these guys so much.

Hot as Hell

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

“What did I say?!” Alex wondered aloud after I chased him out of the kitchen with a chef’s knife.  It was 89′ in Seattle today, so that in my air-condition-free, low-circulation workspace with ovens and a flat-top perpetually burning, it was oppressively, wiltingly Hellish.  And so, when Alex was the tenth person to saunter through and comment “sure is hot in here,”  well…you get the picture.  There’s been a heatwave here for a couple of days and a corresponding dearth of guys hanging out to chat with me, but Alex redeemed himself by plopping himself on my kitchen stool for 30 seconds to ask me if I signed the contract for the coming year, which I did.   Earlier, Daniel had stopped in to ask me a “professional question.”  But nothing to do with food.  “It’s hot, so do I still have to wear a suit to a job interview?”  “Yeah,” I said, “and a tie,” as I remembered Perry heading off to an interview with Rod unshaven, late, and wearing a polo shirt.  “You’ll be memorable.  For the right reasons.”

Like Nothing Else

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

The guys hate it when the cover photo is of food.  It’s a food blog I tell them, but they’re not buying it.  Today Scott bragged to Corey that he made the cover first and when Corey told him he was on here months ago, the two of them came into the kitchen to settle the matter.  Like kids wanting to know Who Mom Likes Best.  I’m not the sort to say they’re all my dear ones because they’re not.  But there’s a big enough group of freshmen like those two to make me lean towards signing a new contract.  Newman and Dan will be moving out, as will several other major “blog hogs” like Zach and Jesse and so it’s a great comfort to see new blood like Alex contributing the kind of thoroughly sarcastic comments that keep this thing alive.  

The picture is whole roasted fresh wild salmon, which, while simple and wonderful for 4 people, becomes a horror when done for a family of 60 bone-phobic young guys.  You can’t just bring it out and say “Ta Da!”  You have to skin it and fillet it and all the while wonder why you put insane things like this on your menus when you could just shove a bunch of frozen fish sticks in the oven and call it dinner.  Still, I will do it again because the taste was like nothing else.

Birthday Brownies

Monday, June 1st, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

“Take a picture of us watching ladies soccer for the blog,” the guys emplored as I was locking up the kitchen for the night.  When the guys ask me to expose the intimate, embarassing details of their private lives to my fans, well, how can I not?  But it wasn’t the cover picture I had intended–that would be James.  He’s our houseboy this quarter and he was cleaning up when Eliab came in and told us James’ dad had called him three times on the weekend to request a cake for James’ birthday on Saturday.  “He should have been calling you!” Eliab exclaimed in my direction, to which I responded ”when exactly do you suppose I have time for baking a cake!”  Rather than sulk about this, James laughed and told me he didn’t care for cake anyway.  And then in a characteristic non-sequitor, he suddenly announced that his brother had accepted an offer from Texas A&M.  And turned down offers from UW and UT Austin.  “Whaaaat?” I howled.  “College Station over Seattle or Austin?”  But it was when I remembered meeting his brother last summer that I really lost it, “And he’s SMART.  Did he have some kind of brain injury accident?  Is there a woman?!”  Things took on a more civil tenor when I got back to the birthday cake thing and asked him what he’d really like.  “Well, I do like brownies,” he declared.  So there it is.  Special Brownies for James’ birthday.

Dish Detail

Saturday, May 30th, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

Not all of the freshmen are afraid of me.  The lunch dish guys spend a couple of hours a day close enough to learn I don’t really bite.  The day I took this picture, I had asked Scott if he was okay because he seemed a little down and he stopped to tell me about the physics exam he was preparing for.  It’s baffling to me, but the guys hate getting dish duty more than cleaning bathrooms–in a frat house!  When the health inspector once asked me if he could take a look at our bathrooms I couldn’t have been more mortified if he’d ask me to fry up the dead rat he’d found at the previous house.  Past dish duty people have included Steven L., who regularly needed Johnny to show him clean from dirty, Kevin and Julien who reminded me of George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe, and Stephen, whose glumness over the task was so depressingly infectious, it made me want to hang myself.  “You’re coming back in the fall, aren’t you?” Scott asked as I snapped this photo, and then, “who’ll take care of us if you don’t?”  Which is so sweet I almost smiled.

Magical Thing

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

Sometimes I’m reminded that other people don’t have the kind of job I have, they have normal jobs–the kind where they’re not permitted to tell their customers to “shut up and eat it.”  I was reminded of this today when my new sales guy stopped in.  This is John and he is so conscientious, so eager to do a competent job, so determined to please, that I was completely thrown off.  His boss is my friend Rod and that just made it all the more perplexing.  “Didn’t Rod tell you I’m a crazy bitch?” I blurted out when the niceness had gotten out of control.  And when that didn’t produce the correct answer, “He didn’t tell you to read my blog?!”   I was getting a little pouty as it became clear to me that I wasn’t going to be able to throw expletive-laced tirades around this sunny salesman, but then, as he watched me spooning buckets of fat off of the pot roast he did the magical thing of asking me what I was doing.  And then asked me what I was going to do with the fat.  And seemed interested.  A food sales guy who’s curious about food.  Wow.

Clueless

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

I had this idea today that instead of roasting  the chickens, I would butcher them, roll the pieces in a mayonnaise-creole mustard mixture, coat them in fresh herbs and breadcrumbs and bake the pieces.  It’s a great idea.  For a family of 4.  I just love butchery, but after the 30th chicken, I became utterly convinced they were procreating…dead chickens begetting more dead chickens.  It was at some point during my delirium that Jake passed through the kitchen and stopped to ask me if he could have the big pile of “gross stuff” on the side of the cutting board.  One of the things you learn as a fraternity cook is to question every seemingly innocent request…can I have a Ziploc bag?  An apple?  A piece of plastic wrap?  It’s all highly suspicious.  “It’s for, uh…a school project,” he stammered as I insisted on a reason.  I let it go, but when I went to wash my largest pot and saw that it had disappeared from the kitchen, I was pretty sure I’d been an unwitting accomplice in…something.  I heard today that any future contract will have a clause forbidding me to divulge any secret information and I find this so very funny because I can’t even get an accurate headcount around here, let alone an accounting of what the heads are up to.

Darleneaphobia

Thursday, May 21st, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

Ryan is our Spring Pledge and his hazing for the week is to spend an hour a day with me.  But he already has my vote (not that I get one) because he’s not stupid or lazy, he’s a good eater, and he knows kitchen terms like FIFO.  The year is almost over and most of the freshmen still have Darleneaphobia.  I know this because just the other day, Matt came into the kitchen to announce that “the freshmen are too afraid to come ask you for more chicken wings.”  Dumbfounded, I replied that they would rather starve than come talk to me.  “Go tell them I said that.”  At which point Matt turned to the dining hall and yelled, “Darlene says stop being pussies!”  I’m sort of glum today because yesterday I fired Kirk.  He took it really well as he helped himself to one of the paninis I pulled from the oven.  You know how when you’re having a really unpleasant conversation and you just can’t keep it short and bitter, you just have to go on for a hundred words too many?  That’s how I was feeling as I blabbed on an on ending with “It’s just that you bring out the very worst in me.”  Which is great blog material and is hugely entertaining for the guys, but does nothing to increase their respect for me.  So we’re getting a new sales person and I told the guys to be nice to him when he stops in tomorrow.  “Does he know what a hard ass you are?”  Zach asked with the sort of smirk that only Zach can fully master.  Which is funny, because that was the first question that popped into my head.

Quitting Time

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

This picture is from the morning of our Big Event on Saturday and I was too stressed at the time to really see what’s going on here, even though I took the picture.  We’re happy, we are laughing.  At the time, I was immersed in hollowing out 130 tomatoes (”remind me never to put this on a menu again” I told Badley who, upon observing me doing it had blurted out “well that looks like a big waste of time to me.”).  The whole week–Greek Week and all it’s accompanying frat life cliches, followed by a major alumni dinner–was a trial.  I mean like the medieval definition:   ”subjection to suffering or grievous experience“…that sort of trial.  Saturday morning the father of one of the guys entered the kitchen as I was working on dessert to tell me in really emotional terms how much it meant to him that I’m here for his son.  I paused for a moment before telling him how nice it was to hear that because “I quit yesterday.”  But it’s okay, really.  I’m back.  “I’m just like Kenny from South Park,” I told my husband and son over dinner on Sunday, “only, instead of getting killed, I just quit at the end of every episode.

Event Planning

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

Lucas and Daniel stopped into the kitchen yesterday to talk to me about our big event on Saturday.  We have sorority girls coming to help and the last time we had such assistance, I thought they were…uh, the entertainment.  “We’re your help,” they announced brightly and I thought the only thing they were going to be helpful for in that garb was to liven up the elderly alumni.  “Don’t scare them off,” I told Lucas, “just tell them to dress like they’re visiting grandma.”  As I write, I’m waiting for Kirk to arrive with The Pig, the star of our other major event this week.  He didn’t want to personally deliver it to us; I could tell by the way he ignored my email yesterday with the clear subject heading “Wednesday Delivery” by replying that it would be coming on the truck with my regular Thursday delivery.  He was glum on the phone when he assured me he’d personally take care of it on my preferred day.  “I guess I’ll be sticking that thing in my trunk,”   he moped, but I wasn’t about to indulge him.  “Just put a pair of sunglasses and a wig on it and stick it in your passenger seat.  You can take the HOV lane.”

Brian having a private moment

Pig Rub

Brian and Newman with the Beast

Greek Farce

Thursday, May 7th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

Rod sent me this picture to cheer me up after last week’s meltdown. It says something about my food sales guys that they know the proper response in my case is a picture of a pig-licking toddler.  We’re pig-obsessed here right now and not just because of swine flu.  Next week is Greek Week and the guys are going to entertain some other houses with a luau.  I tried to order a dainty, manageable beast–the kind that fits in a commercial oven, but the only ones available are the size of…well, me.  Which means we can neither store the thing here nor cook it inside.   So we’ll rub her down on Wednesday, haul her off to a sorority for cold storage, and then bring her back for roasting on a spit early Thursday.  Anyone who knows anything about Greek life can see this has FARCE written all over it.  “It’s going to be a blog post,” I told Dan and Newman.  “For all the wrong reasons.”   And it’s not a complication I need because immediately after this, we have the biggest event of the year, an alumni dinner for 125.  The guys asked me what events I’m participating in for Greek Week and I didn’t have to think too hard about this:  “Working my ass off.”

Brotherly Love

Friday, May 1st, 2009 | daily | No Comments

Besides the fact that Mr. May needs a thesaurus and that, being such a teddy bear of a freshman, it was hard to take this seriously, what had us all laughing was that one of the sorority girls claimed to have written the second note.  Exactly what happened to his belongings I don’t know, but I totally sympathize; this is how I feel every morning when I see the dining hall.  But I’ve learned not to write the kind of vitriolic notes that just beg for ridicule.  I was sitting in the dining hall doing some paperwork and B May’s work was Topic #1 for some time.  Trevor finally owned up to being both the cause of the rage and the author of the second note.  Earlier, we had had a little survey of who’s mom still does their laundry and Trevor had chimed in that not only did he have to do his own when he lived at home, but that if his mom found it in the dryer, she’d dump it on the floor.  I’m not saying there’s any psychological connection between these two stories.  I’m just saying that between these anecdotes and his glowing assessment of my ham and Swiss crepes for lunch, Trevor was my daymaker.

Just So

Thursday, April 30th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

It occured to me today that I might be a happier person if I didn’t expect everything to be just exactly, precisely so.  You’d have thought that working at a fraternity house would have cured me of this, but no, I’m infinitely worse now.  It was when I was meeting with the transportation manager today, telling him I would like my deliveries at 7AM every time consistently, and he asked if 6:58-7:02 would be okay, that I thought perhaps I should seek therapy.  Earlier, my delivery had indeed arrived at the magic hour and I had a new driver.  “They send me to the angry customers,” he said with a huge grin and this is what I love about the drivers; they’re so completely, refreshingly lacking in bullshit skills.

Poltergeist

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“It wasn’t me!” Julien cried out from the dish room as we all heard a huge crash.  Broken bowls everywhere.  About ten of us were in the dining hall, including Badley, the President, and it was Badley who shouted back, “you’re by yourself in there.”  Meaning of course, who the hell else was it if not you?  I was sitting in the dining hall working on Thursday’s order and I found this so funny.  It’s the essential problem with a house full of guys…it’s never any one particular person’s fault…it’s someone else’s.  But when you are the ONLY person there when it happens…Still, Julien continued to swear that the bowls flew off the shelves of their own accord and reenacted it for me in this photo.  There are days like this when I reconsider my daily decision to quit.  Days when I find them really funny and they cut me some slack and it’s all just one big hilarious excuse for a job.

Tantrum

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

This isn’t Jake.  It’s Shane enjoying lunch in February.  I looked through my inventory of photos for one of freshman Jake, but I think I deleted the only one I had taken.  He was eating a banana in a way that made you think, “ooooh, I don’t want to be that banana.”  I wanted to post his photo because yesterday he made me laugh (and yesterday was no laughing matter) by coming into the kitchen and announcing “this stuff is GOOD!…this quiche stuff.”  I relayed this to my husband over dinner and it amused him, too, as we realized that these guys are too young to know about that whole stupid 80’s thing ”Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche.”  That was the only good part about yesterday, other than being alive.  When Kirk told me my truck was going to be late, only for the hundreth time, I went completely bonkers.  It was amazing how calm he was in the face of the rantings of a crazy woman.  “What do you want me to do?” he asked, and I screamed, “I want someone to get my goddamn sausages off that truck and bring them to me NOW so I can make these guys a goddamn lunch!”  I said this as I opened the door to a startled contractor who’d just arrived to work on the patio.  And then I hung  up on Kirk, pouted at the contractor and stormed back into the kitchen like a two year old.  So today I received an email from the Transportation Manager offering to meet with me to discuss “what has transpired with your deliveries” over these three years and to find a solution.  I said that Thursday would be good.  Noon.  “If I’m not dealing with a late delivery. ” I couldn’t help myself.

Dirty Linen

Sunday, April 26th, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

This is Chris, my linen guy.  For someone that I see five minutes once a week, I know an amazing amount about his wife, his kids, his debt collectors.  In a former life, I was a paralegal and I spent some time interviewing jail inmates and volunteering at legal aid, listening to the stories of clients’ chaotic lives.  At legal aid, it was my job to summarize the whacked out existence of the clients for the lawyers who might take their cases.  Like cooking, it could be creative to distill an hour’s worth of desperate pleading into a catchy sentence:  Client A is being evicted from her shoe, which she shares with her 50 kids whom she’s accused of beating and starving.  Chris reminds me of those days, not that he’s a criminal or anything.   It’s just that the stories are so unlike my serene life.  ”Put that in your blog!” he says each Tuesday as he winds up his monologue.

Doppelganger

Friday, April 17th, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

There’s been a creepy phenomenon going on here for some time.  Newman and Dan swore to me that one of the guys–we’ll call him Chris–has been usurping Newman’s identity.  At first I thought they were imagining it, but then I started to notice it, too and it inexplicably got under my skin.  Chris would come into the kitchen and go through exactly the same moves, ask for exactly the same things as Newman had done 30 seconds earlier.  I wasn’t sure who was being driven more insane by this weirdness, me or the Doppelganger victim.  “He can’t be me!” Newman finally cried out, “because I’m me!”  So when I saw Dan yesterday morning with a scrape on his face–a scrape amazingly and suspiciously similar to one I’d seen the day before–it was my first question:  “Is this a Chris thing?”

Food Show Neurosis

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

This is me at the food show today talking about local, sustainable farming–a subject so serious for me I’m paying $700 to work on a farm this summer.  And you can see that Rod–a senior manager at US Foodservice–is just riveted.  To be fair, he had been there for hours before this and I would be wishing the customer would just shut the fuck up and let me go home, too, if it were me.  The customer just has to stay long enough to try the hot dog sliders (sure to be a big seller with the sororities) and indestructible raspberry mousse.  Even good food shows like this one are wretched.  Like a cocktail party without the liquor.  I went alone, but I noticed that some people brought a date, which probably helps with that junior high angst as you wait for your nametag feeling like you have a big tatoo on your forehead that says, “I’m uncomfortable as hell and please don’t make me taste your squirrel soup.”  And it’s no use trying to be my natural self at these things because that just gets me into trouble–like when I inadvertantly let on to the Post cereal guy that we use half the containers he gave us for Kellogg’s product.  Oops.  The worst part for me, though, is that some of these vendors have read the blog and so when they look longingly in the distance as Rod is doing here, I can’t tell if they’re avoiding national exposure or just searching for a much more important customer to bore themselves with.

Renaissance Men

Saturday, April 11th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“Have a boiled egg,” I suggested to Sal when he caught me heading out the door on Friday.  I had left them for the stragglers along with other items on the buffet table.  “No omelette?!” he cried.  I explained that I was going home, but Sal has a way of inducing more sympathy than the limbless man on 4th and Union.  “I’ll make you a deal,” he said brightly, “you make me an omelette and I’ll tell you about my night at the party.”  Somehow statements like “girls told me I’m hot” just didn’t seem like a fair trade, but the cheese was already melting into the eggs before I realized that Sal didn’t have nearly the exciting night that Jake had had, and that was a story I got to hear for free.  Newman was the artist for the party and he is clearly squandering his talents with his political science major.  Rod from US Foodservice used to call Newman the cook’s pet, but it’s not true.  Perry was my pet.  He is simply one of my favorites because he does interesting things like gutting fish in Alaska and studying in Europe.  .  And then there’s  Brian, pictured above with Sal, who takes the Reniassance Man prize by being both an engineering major and an actor/poet.  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that he trains bees and speaks dog,too.

Child-Proofing

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

For those who might think I’m lucky to have the sort of job where I can talk to my customers like this, I would counter that I have a job where I occasionally need to talk to my customers like this.  And for the parents who read this blog, your son is not my perp, I’m pretty sure of that.  In fact, three of them came into the kitchen laughing to tell me that I was way too kind.  One even added his own comment to the sign, but I decided to leave it to my readers’ imaginations rather than capturing it on camera.  I know I should probably assume good intentions, but some of the detectives in the house pointed out clues that whoever did this had clear criminal intent.  A couple of years ago, the freezer was unplugged three times before I finally installed child-proofing deterrence.  Of course, I could discover that the guys’ adult advisor did this for completely logical reasons, at which point I will be suitably embarrassed.  And fired.

Food Folly

Monday, April 6th, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

I read online today that the economy is pushing the unemployed into cooking schools.  Like the former Wall Street trader who “loves Top Chef” and has 400 cookbooks and has decided to pursue a career “with soul” in the restaurant business.  Or the former legal secretary who’s going to raid her kid’s college fund for culinary school because her friends rave about her dinner parties.  This is sad stuff.  What these people don’t understand is that most food service jobs are horrible.  You’re not whipping up a souffle for Tom and Padma, you’re peeling 500 pounds of potatoes, or worse, supervising the miserable kitchen serfs who are peeling 500 pounds of potatoes, if they show up for work, which they often don’t, so then you’re doing it and asking yourself why exactly you paid outrageous tuition to do what any monkey could do.  I want to shout out to these people:  loving food is not a good reason to go into this business.  In fact, hating food is probably a huge advantage because most of the people hiring are not going to be paying you for your great ideas.  I actually read an ad that said so:  your creativity is not required here.  It’s not that all food jobs are soul-crushing endeavors; I’m taking a blissful summer job preparing exquisite food for highly cultured people on the Olympic Peninsula.  And I’ll be lucky if the pay covers my ferry rides.

Brain Lag

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“Did you know that goat meat is a staple in many countries around the world?”  Brian asked as I entered the dining hall.  I had glanced at the New York Times food section before leaving home, so I knew immediately what he was reading.  The guys peruse an eclectic mix of material, some of it so shocking I’ve brought it home to show my husband and then discretely disposed of it so that other condo residents wouldn’t guess the origin.   But this stopped me in my tracks–one of the guys reading the food section–and had me reaching for my camera.  This first week post Spring Break has been a tough adjustment for us all.  “I don’t have jet lag,” I told Kirk, “but I have brain lag.  I’m not here.  I just look like I’m here.”

Chef Thing

Saturday, March 28th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“Be sure to try the risotto,” a friend had quipped when I told him we were dining at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s as part of my Spring Break Eat London trip.  Anyone who follows Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares will have the impression that he is fond of risotto.  Really fond.  That wasn’t an option, but we did get the personal attention of a dead ringer for the charming French maitre’d who whips the front of house into shape on Hell’s Kitchen, along with about four waiters, not including the crumb sweeper.  Filling out the Customs form on the flight back, I listed my purchases…Cookbooks, Chocolate, Crackers, Tea…Salt.  I hesitated about listing the last one, but was afraid to not report it; even I saw how weird it might seem to a Customs officer to discover 4 boxes of undeclared smoked Maldon sea salt.  It’s a chef thing.

Professional Development

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

I tried not to give “that look” as Phil discussed beer options with the waitress.  It wasn’t the liquor; it was that he had just ordered wild cherry pancakes and there are Rules about food and wine/beer matching.  If he had ordered, say, the rabbit terrine, well, that would have been just fine.  But when it arrived, I thought it looked like my guys’ sort of thing and I pulled out my camera.  “You’re not going to take pictures of the food, are you?” he had asked the night before when I told him the whole point of this trip is to eat, for professional development of course.  And I had said no, but pancakes and beer had Fraternity Kitchen written all over it. 

http://www.thenaturalkitchen.com/

http://www.turningearth.co.uk/thepigsear/thepigsear.htm

Spring Break Fever

Friday, March 20th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“You haven’t been my cover guy for ages,” I told Zach during finals week.  Unshaven, hair unkempt, sleep deprived…he was the perfect poster boy.  It always seems to be the case at the end of a quarter that things fall apart.  Our dishwasher remained virtually unusable for the last three days and trying to feed 61 guys without it was so stressful that the time has seemed interminable.  A couple of weeks ago, feeling down and uninspired–and having saved for it for ages–I finally booked a trip to London for Phil and me.  And so this week he told me that he supposed by Thursday I would not be caring about work.  That’s not true, but as it happens on Thursday I was chatting with Dan about boarding my cats at the vet while I put some boiled eggs into a bag to leave in the guys fridge.  I intended to write “Boiled Eggs” on the bag, but wrote “Vet” instead.  It’s time for a break.

Spending Spree

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

This is Stan trying to find a part for our dishwasher which yesterday decided to spray it’s contents on the lunch dish guys.  They were thrilled because this excused them from wash detail, but less thrilled when they realized this also meant no “home” cooked food.  There are days as dull as a parking lot attendant’s and then there are the ones where Dan looks at me and says, “this is a post.”  Here he is on the phone and you would think from the concern on his face that he too is trying to find a part, but no, he’s just having difficulty ordering a gazillion pizzas to be delivered to a frat house.  With his chef’s debit card.  And you can sort of understand the skepticism, but I suppose Dan’s earnest voice got through because he eventually returned to the kitchen with a total for me.  Now, I will be reimbursed, but still…I should have been prepared for a shock when he wrote it down rather than telling me and then ran out of the kitchen before I could get him to explain just exactly how someone spends $500 on pizza.  I’m expecting to hear glowing reports on the foie gras and caviar toppings when I check in tomorrow.

Job Description

Sunday, March 15th, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

A couple of weeks ago, when I had been particularly unbearable, I sent Kirk and his boss a link to despair.com, a company that produces parodies of motivational posters.  The particular poster I linked them to was:  “APATHY:  If we don’t take care of the customer, maybe they’ll stop bugging us.”  I followed that with:  “CUSTOMER DISSERVICE:  Because we’re not satisfied until you’re not satisfied.”  I didn’t hear back for a couple of days after that one, but I expected to receive a link to the blogging poster:  http://www.despair.com/blogging.html

And I would have laughed, because I often do feel that way.  But then I get an email like the one yesterday from ”Jennifer” in Atlanta who is applying for a fraternity chef position this week and had questions.  It made me reflect on what my job actually is.  Brian texted me three times this weekend, once to tell me that, after failing to get a part in Hair, a subsequent audition had gone well, and again to let me know he had two parts in another show.  And then a third time to tell me the dates.  I was touched by this because despite the fact that I am hard on these guys–some might occasionally have a stronger word for it–they know I’m genuinely interested in their lives.  There’s a job description in my contract that I could send to prospective chefs like “Jennifer”, but forget that…if you’re not prepared for off-hours texts, applying bandages and hearing more than you want to know about the private lives of college men, this is not for you.

Gentlemen’s Club

Thursday, March 12th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

I snap photos all the time at work and some of them just seem to capture a real moment.  This is one of those: Perry (who is now a financial advisor with MetLife) talking to Newman who will head into his senior year in a few months.  Perry remains attached to me even though I say deflating things like, “must be hard to be a financial advisor these days, what with Madoff about to be sentenced to everlasting hell.”  Earlier in the day, I had a new driver deliver my goods and he asked me, “how did you end up in this gentlemen’s club?”  I found this question amusing on so many levels.  Later, he pressed me on it, “no, really…how did you get here?”  Like this wasn’t an act of free will on my part.  Like I was kidnapped from a restaurant and forced into the dark underworld of fraternity kitchen slavery.  “I applied,” I said.  “I brought pot roast and twice-baked potatoes to my interview.”  Not quite the salacious answer he was clearly hoping for.

Dazed and Confused

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

Brian entered the kitchen as I was slicing the pot roast to tell me that he’s auditioning for “Hair” tonight.  And then he asked, “who are your favorites?”  I don’t know what prompted the question and I was going to give that Mom answer about how I love you all the same, but I answered truthfully, “I like the ones who come talk to me.”  Not quite buying it, he pressed on, “if the house were on fire, which ten would you save first?”  “Well, I do adore the freshmen.  Corey is great.”  And then I remembered.  “Oh shit, Corey.”  He had come in at 2:30 to ask for some turkey because he has class on Tuesdays during lunch.  It was a simple request and I told him I would get it, but at the time I was busy torturing Kirk and I guess at some point he had given up on me and left the kitchen.  So there I was telling Brian about one of my favorites whom I had starved today.  “I think I’m getting Alzheimer’s,” I mused to Dan and Newman as they watched t.v.  Without looking away from the set, Dan assured me that, no, if it were Alzheimer’s I wouldn’t remember who Corey is or what happened to his lunch.  And then Newman added, “gotta lay off the weed, Darlene.”  It was a joke, of course, and no drug test required because the boys will back me up on this:  I like to be in complete and absolute control at all times.

Real World

Sunday, March 8th, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

It was pizza on Friday and while making my own sauce seemed reasonable and desirable, when I told a friend I’d made my own dough, I got that “oh yeah, you would do that” ribbing.  But it was easy and they really did notice the difference.  I wasn’t planning to post today.   Every time the narcissism of writing a blog starts to trouble me, I get a call from someone wanting to know when the next post is coming.  It happened this weekend, but my answer was different.   It was a dark week.  It’s not just that we keep trading viruses around here, or that finals loom or that the seniors don’t want to graduate into this particular real world.  It’s that there was an unexpected death of a parent, which shocked us  and brought echoes of an earlier loss here and made everything, especially this blog, seem trivial.  Then as now, cooking is the only thing I know to do and it’s what I was doing Friday, feeding the guys homemade pizzas before some of them headed out in mourning suits.

Care and Concern

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 | daily | No Comments

I didn’t tell them it was my birthday, but someone must have sent out a mass text because it went from just an ordinary day to a mass love-in culminating in a bouquet and a really rather excellent choice of wine.  But just before dinner, at my most busy, freshman Jake showed up with a steak and a lobster tail in his hands.  Not for me…for him.  “Can I keep this in your fridge or freezer?” he asked.  I reminded him that they have their own freezer and he was about to head down there when he said, “is it okay to freeze this?”  He handed me the lobster tail, which was marked “previously frozen raw.”  “Well, no,” I said, “you can’t re-freeze it and because it’s raw, you need to cook it ASAP.”  It was 15 minutes before I was supposed to be out the door on my birthday, but there was no way I was letting him hold that thing.  I put a pot of salted, seasoned water on to boil and then it slowly dawned on me.  He’d bought that thing at noon.  He was asking me about refrigeration at nearly five.  “Jake,” I said, “where has this lobster tail been all day?”  I almost forgot to take my garbage out when I left work and that would have made for an interesting odour in the morning, a rotting disguarded lobster tail that had spent the previous afternoon sitting at room temperature in Jake’s bedroom like a neglected pet.

American Fish

Monday, March 2nd, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

“I’m just the driver,” Alex said to me when I railed, “have you ever heard of a Chinese Sockeye?”  When my delivery came today, I noticed the “wild sockeye salmon” I had ordered was a product of China.  This is Seattle and, I don’t know, I thought it was reasonable to assume that a major west coast product labled “wild” would be from this continent.  So I told Alex to take it back and Kirk called a broker to find me some American fish.  It wasn’t that hard and the price is only slightly more.  You don’t have to be deeply into food politics to get this;  a little search on food safety in China produces appetizing subject headings like “Soy Sauce made from Human Hair.”  Now I will admit a bias here:  I first gained my loathing for Chinese fish production when I saw them flooding my native Louisiana with cheap crawfish, putting local fishermen out of work.  I know times are hard, but the thing is:  that shit tastes BAD.  I was watching the guys on the basketball court today and I was thinking about how much they care about their weight and their health and yet one of them asked me today if I they could ”get cheaper food” at Costco.  Well, maybe, I thought, but you’d have to find another chef.

Tough Week

Friday, February 27th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

It wasn’t just the big event on Monday or the mutinous meat eaters on Ash Wednesday.  It was also that on Tuesday I was so uncharacteristically sick that I could barely stand up.  Badley found me at 4PM immobile on the TV room couch.  I had managed to get the food into the warmer by then and thought I would just collapse until dinner service.  He looked at me with grave concern, but I’m not sure it was for my health.  “If you can’t come to work tomorrow, well…we’ll manage.  I don’t know how, but…somehow.”  His voice trailed off and I could see that he was taking a mental inventory of his options.  Cereal, peanut butter, bumming some takeout off of his richer brothers.  Fortunately, whatever it was left my body in time for me to face a futher assault from the confirmed carnivores the next day.  So by today, I felt like I had been at work for a month and it was a welcome break to get a call from Kirk asking me to write a testimonial for a US Foodservice publication.  I found it so brave of him to ask me to write a serious piece because, after all, he’s read the blog.  “Well,” I said, “I’ll send you two.  One you can print.”  I’m still working on saying something earnest and sincere, a skill I seem to have lost since starting the blog.

No Meat

Thursday, February 26th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

“Is that ginger and honey I smell?”  I looked up from my computer, amazed that Jake could detect individual ingredients from scent alone.  Until I realized he’d just read the menu posted on their fridge.  Jake is in the camp who were not especially happy yesterday, Ash Wednesday.  I had written “NO MEAT” on that day’s menu and while the Catholics were grateful, the rest were perplexed.  Jace told me that one of the guys ate a cold steak the night before.  Just that, nothing more, just grabbed a hunk of cold meat and gnawed on that for his dinner.  And when Jace told me this, I thought it sounded suspiciously like the person who says ”I have a friend who…”  I have watched some guys walk away from the dinner line with nothing but brown on their plates, ignoring all the pretty colors of the fruit, the salads, the “green stuff.”  So I knew that a vegetarian lunch was going to be novel, but I had no idea how very cold the wind would blow through my kitchen.  But I suppose the fish dinner made up for lunch, at least if I sort of understand the less than complete sign that greeted me this morning. 

Big Dinner

Monday, February 23rd, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“Cocktails at five,” Lucas told me at 11:00 this morning.  I had not been made aware that I needed to provide hors d’oeuvres as well as dinner and when I told Lucas this, he paused and said, “No worries.  I have drinks!”  This happened to me all the time when I was a private chef, minus the cheery “no worries” part.  Just as the veal chops were going onto the grill, I would be told that the guests of honor were vegans.  You learn from those experiences and fortunately I had puff pastry in the freezer and proscuitto, parmesan and fresh thyme in the fridge, and so there it was…an hors d’oeuvre that Dan called “upscale pizza.”  It also helps that, unlike the job of private chef, the role of fraternity cook means that your customers will quite happily pitch in as your unpaid staff.The entree  was New York Strip steaks topped with a Blue Cheese Walnut Butter and I am assured that not only did no-one scrape it off but that no-one asked for steak-ruining sauce.  At least that’s the version they chose to share with me.

Sweet and Useful Animals

Saturday, February 21st, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

I think of most of this year’s pledge class as a herd of Bambis, especially when they venture into the scary forest of my kitchen.  And none is more seemingly innocent than Andrew, whom I am told had a very eye-opening experience when the older guys showed him around Vancouver last weekend.  Here he is bravely making scrambled eggs while I stood just feet away with a 10″ chef’s knife dicing roasted beets.  There must have been ten guys who walked through and asked me what those brilliant purple things were and so I would take a tiny cube and pour some balsamic reduction on it and hand it to them like it was an edible jewel and they discovered they love beets.  Except for Shane who said it tasted like dirt.  It was while I was in this Zen-like beet appreciation state that Dan was scouring my kitchen for offensive matter like the Ranch Dip mix and I told him to just stop because I had had an epiphany.  “We’re going to make changes here.  More organics, more local.”  I suggested that we could get a goat, too.  He could eat all the garbage around the house and provide us with milk for cheese.  ”It would be great for the blog,” I said and Dan suggested that we wouldn’t need a real goat; we could just make it up.  Like this blog isn’t 100% accurate and truthful.

Consistency Police

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“Weren’t you just on a rant about that sort of thing?”  Newman said this as he watched me pour  Hidden Valley Ranch dry mix into sour cream for their lunch chicken wings.  With your own kids, you can be inconsistent; they think you’re stupid anyway.  But it’s another thing to be caught red-handed by your customers.  The fact that the macaroni and cheese didn’t come from the blue box, that the kitchen was filled with the smell of fresh marinara sauce simmering on the stove, and that I was about to spend hours forming meatballs did not mitigate this at all:  I was making Ranch Dip from a mix.  “Well, I hate it, but I haven’t found a homemade replacement that tastes right.”  He wasn’t impressed and neither was I when I looked at the ingredients list and noticed that the maker is Clorox Professional Products Company.  Clorox.  As in bleach.  Even I can’t make up stuff like that.  So then I was hiding the package like it was porn, afraid to throw it away in case I needed more and yet so very ashamed of myself.

Edible Experiments

Sunday, February 15th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

Shane was the first taker when I offered up poached eggs on Friday.  I had somehow never learned this skill (a shock to Dan who thought I thought I knew everything) and so I decided to teach myself.  And I know that it looks like he’s saying, “here, you take this,” but he is not!  I made eight and they were all ugly but eagerly adopted.  The great thing about working for a horde of young men is that you always have takers for anything remotely edible.  You can experiment and be sure that someone will say, “Yes!  Toad fries!”  When I put out Deer and Antelope Chili for the breakfast burritos, Matt D. asked me if it was a joke.  But someone ate it…lots of someones.  Still, I usually try things out on my family first, which is why we ate Udon Noodles with Shrimp and Chicken tonight, the cover recipe on January’s Food and Wine Magazine.  I know my guys will put hot sauce all over this, ignoring my nerdy lecture about subtle Japanese flavors, but they will be happy.

Battle for Hearts and Minds

Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | daily | 6 Comments

“So, we’re in a war with Kraft now are we?”  Dan said this to me in that tone of voice he uses when he’s about to launch into a political argument, so I braced myself.  “Come on, you have to admit that Mac and Cheese in the box is the BEST.”  This dismays me, not only because Dan is one of my loyal subjects, but because he is someone whose father brings him homemade tzatziki and tapenade, which he has shared with me and which are delicious and real.  And I know he thinks so, too, so it was hard to tell if he was serious or just winding me up.  Later, Alex my driver dropped off some items  that Kirk was going to pick up for another customer, which I misunderstood to be a sorority.  So when I saw Kirk, I handed over the jug of sodium polychemical and said, “tell the chef at Alpha Alpha that I have a couple of excellent salad dressing recipes on my website.”  There were also some breaded frozen chicken patties which bore no resemblance to a formerly living creature, and I was about to add, “this is what gives frat chefs a bad name,” when he told me it was for one of his restaurant customers.  “They just want cheap and labor-free.”  To which I responded that I was doing my part to indoctrinate a generation to put those restaurants out of business.

Kraft is Crap

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

I wonder how long it will take for the lawsuit.  I’ve been thinking for a while now that the economic downturn will have the beautiful silver lining of sending people back into the kitchen to cook.  And then I heard an interview with the CEO of Kraft saying that very thing…how people would be returning to the kitchen…to make Kraft Singles Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.  She talked of it as if there were just no other way.  I hate this whole dumbing down of the American palate and I want to take a stand:  you really don’t have to peel your manufactured, pasteurized product out of it’s embalming plastic.  As someone who just executed an easy and cheap grilled cheese sandwich lunch for 60 (minus Badley), I can say with authority that it works with actual cheese.  

The sign greeted me this morning and it was nice because the dinner they’re referring to was an example of what I’m talking about…just very simple, real, inexpensive food.

New Things

Monday, February 9th, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

Joey called out from the dining hall just before dinner, “Darlene, are we having fish tonight?”  I confirmed that they were and he wanted to know why his mom knew that.   This tells me that Joey doesn’t read the blog, while his mother does.  That’s okay with me.  In fact, it would probably be good if none of the personally involved parties read it so that I could write all the things that I tell my husband about, followed by the comment, “that won’t be going in the blog.”  Like the “Application to be My Date” that one of the guys posted on Facebook for their upcoming formal in Vancouver, the text of which I received today from an annonymous source.  And let’s just say that I won’t be sharing it with my public.  Not that they’re bad kids; they really are not.  This morning my husband glanced up from the Seattle Times and said, ”there’s a fraternity house in the news and it’s not your house.”   It’s always a comfort to know that when you head into work, you won’t be pestered by the SPD. 

Badley was back from Indianapolis today and he was full of woe about the food at the training.  “You know that kind of cat food that’s sort of granular…”  He told me the cook tossed their salad with her bare hands, which were covered in tatoos and cigarette stains.  Which is about all I needed to hear.  Dinner tonight was fresh cod with a cilantro lemon cream sauce, and while I worried about what kind of reception that might get, I worried less when Johnny told one of the fish-fearful, “It’s delicious,” and then said to me, without the slightest irony, “you have to get them to try new things.”

Treats

Saturday, February 7th, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

Jesse and Jen showed up Thursday while my computer was screaming at me.  I will have to stop talking trash about sorority girls because while the guys and I were clueless, the very sweet and chipper Jen knew exactly what to do and shut that thing right up.  They had come to see me with a selection of little cups of jello they had made.  I tried all six and let me tell you, it was a challenge to get through the work day after that.  I guess it was the week for culinary experimentation because earlier James and Sal had returned to the house with Chex and chocolate and requested vanilla from me.  I sampled their stuff, too, but it didn’t have quite the same effect as Jesse’s treat.  By yesterday, I had been at work for 12 days straight, so I was feeling the need for a break and lunch was grilled cheese sandwiches.  As in, here’s the bread, here’s the cheese, here’s the hot flat top.  But it wasn’t me who thought of this first-grader’s lunch; it was Badley, who was crushed when he realized he would be in Indianapolis Friday and that I am not likely to repeat that item in his fraternity house lifetime.

Sales and Marketing

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

For the most part, I do my own ordering online, but there are some items that require the intervention of my US Foodservice rep, like this toaster, which you would have thought was a giant flatscreen for all the hollering that greeted its arrival today.  So the sales guy gets to be a hero for making a phone call and I want to know how much that job pays.  I once hinted to Kirk’s old boss that I could be a sales rep and he looked at me the way my cats do when I suggest they diet.  And this puzzles me because from what I can see, it’s just not that hard.  My husband frequently works with a sales guy that we particulary like and his job consists of taking us out to dinner at places of my choosing.  I could do that.   The only part that might be challenging for me is the part about not saying the first inappropriate thing that pops into my head.  That and learning not to look at someone like I think they’re an idiot if I think they are an idiot.   Because I know that sales people have to put on a show, one of my favorite forms of amusement is to say awkward things when I’m with them in the company of innocent third parties.  Like today when Kirk brought Gail the broker for a visit and she and I were chatting about the effect of the economy on business and Kirk claimed to be doing well in spite of it all.  “Really?” I said, “do you suppose that’s because you deal with a lower class of customer?”

Classy When They Wanna Be

Sunday, February 1st, 2009 | daily | No Comments

As I snapped the hundreth photo of the “f***ing awesome” tuna tartare in wonton cones, Badley quipped that ”I guess we won’t be making it onto the blog.”  When I set these out for the wine tasting event, one of the guys asked if they were special tortilla chips filled with salsa.  I refrained from sharing my thoughts on that.  Chips and salsa.  As if.  Fortunately there were enough sushi lovers in the crowd that these did not sit out long enough to kill anyone.  I did worry about that, but not enough to stop me.   The wine tasting was yesterday, a Saturday, a non-working day for me, and so Badley came into the kitchen early to tell me he’d be presenting me with flowers and a nice bottle of wine.  “I thought I would just tell you now so you wouldn’t be pissed off all day.”  “Well, don’t let on,” I replied, “but I’m actually really into this.”  Tuna Tartare, Chinese Duck Rolls…not the kind of thing that makes a regular appearance on the dinner line.   Even here.

Casey, Dan, Badley, Zach and Newman

Second Home

Friday, January 30th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

“Does my hair look okay?” Stuart asked as I snapped this picture.  “Oh, yeah, fabulous, perfect for your blog debut.”  They were waiting for buttermilk pancakes, growing restless because I insisted on doing them to order.  It’s important for them to stand there and watch the batter sizzle and puff up and brown so that they understand that the frozen discs in a box are mere starch delivery devices, not pancakes.  It would be nice if I could also offer them packets of real  maple syrup instead of liquid sugar, but when I suggest these great ideas to Kirk, I am invariably met with ”who would order that?  Other than you?”  I was feeling especially cranky today because, whereas Friday afternoons usually find me working out at the Pro Club and generally enjoying a short work day, this Friday I was working late on hors d’oeuvres for a Saturday alumni event.  And then something happened that made me realize attitude is everything.  After returning from picking up my paycheck, I noticed smoke billowing from my Jeep and found no shortage of eager young males at my workplace ready to pitch in.  It’s at times like this that it seems less a place of work than a second home.

Cult Following

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

“It’s like your own Jonestown there.  That’s exactly what it is.  If you start asking me to sell you kool-aid, I’m not doing it.”  That was Kirk’s assessment after today’s meeting.  He had arrived with a broker from Hormel and as she headed for a table in the dining hall with her wares, she passed a line of guys helping themselves to lunch.  “Who’s that, Darlene, is that a pusher?”  I know which guys read the blog because they do cute things like quoting me at the moment most likely to cause embarassment.  And it got worse.  As I sat listening to her describe her samples of pulled chicken, Jesse came over to inquire “what do we have here?”  I edit myself in polite company, but Jesse does not.  It was clear that the nice Hormel lady, whom the guys later told me was “hot,” (”too bad she wasn’t selling to a guy chef”) was realizing that this was a waste of her time.  And I was sort of wishing I knew how not to sound like the know-it-all kid in class when, as she showed me her ready-cooked, ready sliced brisket, I chimed in that I was cooking that very thing tonight.  Brisket.  But not her stuff.  Mine.  With portobello mushrooms and dried cranberries.  I understood what Kirk meant about the cult thing when I learned that, while I wasn’t around, Dan had told the broker that they would love to taste her stuff, but, “we’re not the ones you have to convince.”  Like he was crying out for help:  “Our leader makes us eat FRESH FOOD!”

Food Pushers

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

Kirk called today to ask why I hadn’t complained about anything in three days.  I was going to tell him that the economy is making me more contemplative, less trivial, but before the words were out, he told me he’s bringing a broker to the House tomorrow.  “Could you be nice,” he pleaded, “and try to sort of halfway look interested.”  Past visits from brokers have elicited comments from me like, “my guys don’t eat that” in a way that clearly translates, “my guys don’t eat that garbage.”  I don’t mind the meat reps, the produce reps…but the brokers peddling plastic chicken with high fructose corn syrup sauce…well, I just can’t help myself.  At least Charlie the broker had the good sense to push an actual food item, dried cranberries (which he insisted on calling “craisins”), during his visit several weeks ago.    “You could make chicken salad with craisins and toasted almonds.  Your guys would love that.”  I had my doubts about serving gussied up chicken salad to guys and Jeff M. did scoff at the “red things,” but it was a hit.  That was real food, though, not processed chicken salad from a tub which is even more gag-inducing than ready-boiled eggs.  I know it’s their job to sell that stuff, but they remind me of the health inspector who showed up my first week on the job and declared, “I know you frat cooks don’t actually cook anything, so I’m going to make this quick.”  They don’t understand; my guys are the type who ask me for some olive oil and balsamic vinegar for their sandwiches.  And then come back looking for oregano. 

Confessions

Friday, January 23rd, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

It bothers me that something this disgusting gets the biggest smiles.  As a fraternity cook, you have to come to terms with it:  a surprising percentage of the guys will have sophisticated palates, but 100% will love you for killing them with crap like this.  I knew that today was going to be good material after my cell phone rang at 2 AM this morning.  Knowing it had to be one of the guys, I let it ring, but when I checked voicemail before work, there was no message, just the sound of  much merrymaking.  ”Am I going to read about myself in the blog today?” one of the guys asked me after confessing to a less than noble Thursday night.  “Probably,” I said, “but I won’t use your real name.”  The morning had started in the kitchen with me bitching at Kirk about bringing me hoagie rolls three times the size of the Philly Cheesesteaks.  “They’ll love them,” he declared.  “Well, I’m sure the first 20 will.  Too bad about the other 40 who don’t get any meat because I had to stuff it all into the Frankin-rolls.”  He was expressing some irritation at my lack of gratitude when Bacchus (not his real name) walked through the kitchen and paused to ask, “Darlene, if I told you I went to bed with one person and woke up alone, would that give you an idea of how my night went?”  It gave me no idea at all, but I asked the hopeful, “was it at least Athena (not her real name) that you started with?”  It was and I told him he should just leave her alone for a while; he’d be forgiven.  Later when I recounted this story to Thor (not his real name) he looked at me with utter non-comprehension.  “Went to bed with a woman, woke up alone?  Far as I’m concerned, that would be the bees knees.”

Grim Times

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 | daily | 1 Comment

At one point today, I gave up and took a picture.  The ladder is from the fire safety team.  They came to turn off my gas and climb all over my stove, an act that did not seem to register as perhaps a slight inconvenience for a commercial kitchen at lunchtime.  At the same time, the hot water was turned off to take care of a broken pipe, which, quite apart from interfering with the cook’s ability to wash her hands meant that 64 guys were unable to take a shower.  64 18-21 year old unwashed men.  It was also at this precise moment that my delivery arrived, and if that were not enough chaos, I had the radio tuned into the business news of the day that my husband’s employer had just announced 5,000 layoffs.   Things have become so grim for the whole nation that one feels guilty for complaining about any little thing.  It reminds me of the weeks I spent in the oncology waiting room feeling grateful to have stage one breast cancer.  Y’know, with all those sick people in the room.  Lucky me!  So I did feel a little petty getting on the phone to tell Kirk that my hoagie rolls did not come with the delivery.  My hoagie rolls!    He must have sensed the disproportionate level of anxiety because he asked if I’d “heard anything” from Phil.  The guys had a much bigger concern;  if my husband were laid off, would I continue to cook for them?  I had to break it to Badley that my salary does not pay the bills and that a move out of state was a possibility,  to which he asked, clearly not getting it, “but don’t you like cooking for us?”

Inauguration Day

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

It’s not a great photo, but what I find interesting about this is that at least two of these people voted for the other guy.  And yet there was a remarkable lack of friction in the House today as people drifted in and out of the tv room to watch the coverage.  Coincidentally, dinner was the same one I served on election night.  Last week, Carlos had asked “when are we going to have barbecued chicken and bacon-topped baked beans again?” and so there I was filling the house with the smell of the same meal I had chosen for November 4.  The guys had been in Whistler over the holiday weekend, and it finally dawned on me to ask how it went.  “Great,” Jace responded, “no arrests!”

Right Fit

Saturday, January 17th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

While I was checking email early yesterday morning, a sorority sister appeared at the kitchen door and began to spin around slowly.  At first I thought she was just trying to get her balance, but she did it again and I thought maybe she was practicing a dance move while she waited for her date to get out of the shower.  I tried not to stare, but she caught my eye and stopped spinning.  “Where’s the front door?” she asked.  Trying to be helpful, I told her she was standing at the back door,  and she asked me if she could get outside by going through it.  I decided not to provide further assistance.  I should quickly add that the picture is of Dan with the lovely and intelligent Hilary.  She is a sorority girl, too, but not the spinning kind and she has her own (unprintable) name for those who act stupider than they could possibly be given their acceptance to the UW.   Before I was hired here, I interviewed at a sorority and consider it an act of mercy (to them) that I was rejected.  I’m just as mean to my guys as I would have been there, but somehow that works here.  I mention this because in the past two weeks, I’ve heard from three chefs interviewing around the country for a “Greek” job and I’m not sure if any of them were hired.  But if they weren’t, it’s likely not about their cooking skills; it’s about compatibility.  All of the fraternity cooks I’ve met, and I include myself in this, are just slightly crazy and a little hard-edged.  And all of the sorority cooks are either very motherly or male.  It’s a generalization I know and I will hear about it, but I’m guessing that this is because the motherly ones have a high tolerance for drama and the guys are completely oblivious to it.  Which is precisely why my guys put up with me.

Tell Me

Thursday, January 15th, 2009 | daily | 3 Comments

Before the blog (and hard as it is to believe, there were two years BB), guys hung out in my kitchen for one reason…to procrastinate.  They would come in and pace and sit on my stool and sometimes talk and sometimes not and it finally dawned on me.  “Do you have a paper to write?”  Newman was one of the most frequent paper writing avoiders, but today he broke the news that he doesn’t have any such assignments this quarter and so he won’t be hanging out so much.   But I still have Badley, whom I affectionately call a blog hog.  And then there’s the unnamed brother, who tells me things that I am convinced are specifically crafted to be publish-worthy.  Like tonight, as I was setting out the tilapia, southwestern pasta and salad with cilantro-cumin vinaigrette, when he was telling me about his day and he shared that it had started out “in the best possible way.”  “If you know what I mean,” he added and then, ”Oh, maybe you don’t.”  Which I am quite sure was not so much a commentary on my advanced age (44, for the curious) as my thoroughly sour mood today.

Gratitude

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

Jeff M. walked by the kitchen today and saw two bags of trash…and asked if they needed to be taken out.  And then he took them out.  I know this should not be news, but it’s major.  I’ve just gotten used to taking out my own trash and sundry other menial tasks specifically not in my contract.  One day I was mopping my kitchen floor and Eliab asked me why I was doing that and I looked from left to right.  “Where’’s the mop fairy?  Have you seen the mop fairy?”   But later today, one of the new lunch dish guys asked me if I’d like him to run some of my things through the dishwasher and I started to think they’ve all heard some false rumor that I have a month to live.  Take these unsolicited offers to help and add that to the fact that on Sunday someone actually, for the first time ever, cleaned out the communal fridge and the microwave.  Well, it’s all just downright suspicious.

Last night’s Morrocan Beef Stew dinner, which was spicier than the test run I did on my family at Whistler, seemed to go over well.  What really amused me was that, as they were standing in the dinner line, Mike S. (who once gasped with excitment over okra) asked of the starch, “is that cous cous?”  And when I confirmed that it was, he declared that I had totally made his day.  Totally made his day with a side dish that requires literally 10 minutes.  Which makes him akin to Sal who doesn’t just thank me for the food, but declares that “this is the most amazing fabulous thing thank you so much for all your hard work on this most wonderful thing you have done for us.”

Blog Moms

Sunday, January 11th, 2009 | daily | 6 Comments

I love this picture of Julien and Gus and I’d been wanting to post it, but neither of them hangs out in the kitchen enough for me to talk about them.   Badley went weeks wanting to be the focal point before he learned that you have to hang out with me long enough to say something unintentionally funny and now he’s a star.  I know this because my mom, who lives 2 times zones away and has never met any of the guys asks me how Badley is doing before thinking to inquire about her own daughter.  But a couple of days ago, Julien planted himself on my stool and told me that he got his mom reading the blog over winter break.  When guys tell me this, I find myself mentally reviewing the past ten posts.  I can’t help it; what if they’re autistic and don’t understand the gross exaggeration?  But then, while I’m doing this little inventory of things perhaps best not said, the guys will add “she loves it.”  And then I think maybe their moms are like I was:  the kind who wasn’t  PTA President.  The kind who told her son’s fifth grade teacher to stop trying to beat the personality out of her kid.  But lest anyone think it’s just subversive moms and Russian spammers who read this trash, I do hear from the target audience and today I was thrilled at contact from a future UW chef, the first time a local has reached out.  We could organize.  Or we could just go to happy hour and argue over who has the better deal.

Next week’s menu includes some ideas from the guys, including Jesse’s request for a dish he enjoyed at a restaurant.  Well, sort of.  “Chicken with Artichokes,” he said, and when I asked for some guidance, what I got was, “It had chicken in it.  And artichokes.”

Food Phobias

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

I haven’t posted recently because things have been decidedly unfunny here since Monday’s post holiday start.  But today was full of levity, starting with the fire protection team showing up to fix the alarm system when the house was in a state not quite fit for polite society .  They were standing at the front door when Graham (on the left) suggested we tell them to reschedule “because someone broke in and ransacked the house.”  Like that wouldn’t invite a few questions, like they’d just say, “sure, broken fire alarm at a frat house for another day, no biggie”  And so they came in and did their thing.  And said nothing.  A lot of things go on around here that are a complete mystery to me, too.  I know that some readers hope for the day that I tell all, but even if I was trying to get my ass fired, the truth is I know nothing.  I’m like an alien landing on Earth in the spring wondering why some of the natives dress up Jesus as a big rabbit.  A little knowledge and zero comprehension.  I just stay in my little sitcom set that passes for a kitchen and occasionally guys come through giving me misleading glimpses of their lives.  Graham is smiling here at the prospect of deer-antelope meatballs, while Jesse, who is perfectly happy to eat a creature raised in its own filth, blanched at the very idea.  Later he softened his stance: “I’ll try it.  But I won’t like it.”  Which reminded me of the time I got Perry to eat chicken tetrazzini, even with that “fungus” in it.

Cooking for Guys

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I pulled Moroccan Beef Stew out of the oven to check on it a few minutes ago and my husband was a happy man.  Any culinary challenge I expected from past experiences at ski resorts (Copper Mountain comes to mind) were dashed when I saw what passes for standard grocery store fare here:  live crab, freshly delivered loaves from Terra Breads in Vancouver, imported gorgonzola.  Some of the supplies I brought from home were good calls:  the spice mixes, the measuring cups…but popcorn?  How foolish of me not to know that I could get organic, free range artisanal popcorn here.  So we are not confined to hot dogs and spaghetti and are having this Moroccan Beef Stew with Whole Wheat CousCous.  I would say that if my sons love it, I’ll make it for the guys, but my sons are not a true test.  They eat everything.  It comes from growing up with a mom who thought that children should just eat what the grown-ups are having or damn well starve.  This is partly what makes my relationship with the guys at work different from that of a mother.  When people say “oh, you’re sort of like a house mom,” I reply that, no, if I were one of those I would be much, much meaner.  But the guys at the House are paying customers, so I have to care about all their food preferences.  Still, the job could be harder; just after we arrived yesterday, I checked email and had a message from a woman who found my blog and wanted some input on her interview for a sorority chef position.  Not to discourage her, because we all know those Houses are cleaner and more disciplined, what with their maids and tyrannical corporate boards and all, but it reminded me that I am so grateful for this:  I cook for guys.

Ski Cooking

Saturday, December 27th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

The snow is melting and just in time because it was beginning to look like a scene from Mad Max around here:  abandoned buses, uncollected garbage spilling onto the streets, perfectly respectable citizens indistinguishable from the crazy people.  I knew our perspective was veering in an unhealthy direction when, upon hearing that some family members had been unreachable for two days, we both immediately thought “murder-suicide.”  But that’s behind us and now we’re preparing for New Year’s week in Whistler, where the snow is supposed to be.  The guys spend a weekend at the same resort later in January, but I’m guessing it’s a slightly different experience for them.  I don’t imagine any one of them is looking through ski country cookbooks or planning menus, although a few of them do actually occasionally cook real food.  I’ve heard rumors of quail dinners, and grilled oysters and pasta dishes that don’t require a can opener.  And so because I like to delude myself that they might care as much about the food as the liquor and the women, I’ll blog about my experience, starting with what I’m packing from home:  knives, salt, peppermill, sugar, brown sugar, four homemade spice mixtures, baking powder, baking soda, flour, chocolate, popcorn kernels, coffee, tea, oatmeal, plastic wrap, foil, Cognac and Champagne.  The rest we’ll pick up at the Granville Island market in Vancouver on our way up, or at the local grocery store (which, while Phil assures me it’s “a nice IGA,” should provide me with some real challenge.)

Snowpocalypse

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 | daily | 3 Comments

My husband received an email today from a colleague remarking that we are in day six of Snowpocalypse.  I know people in other parts of the country do not understand the headline “Winter Storm in December,” but we are rendered feeble here.  This morning’s paper reported that the Seattle police are “avoiding hills and responding on foot.”  I read this as I sat in our condo in the quaint, and now clearly lawless, neighborhood of Upper Queen Anne.  The upperest part.  I was daydreaming about Officer Breathless testifying at my wrongful death lawsuit against the City when I was distracted by Eliab’s comment on yesterday’s blog post.  It was nearly as sad as the man standing in the slush at Mercer and Fairview with a sign that read “Laid off until the Feb. Carnie.”  (Were we supposed to be more or less sorry for him?)  I found Eliab’s comment so heart-wrenching that I pulled the Bourbon Chocolate Cake I was saving for our Christmas dessert, to be accompanied by homemade Eggnog Ice Cream, out of the freezer and pleaded with Phil to chauffer me down our deadly, copless streets to the U-District.  I left the cake with a note that it was saturated in quality bourbon, to sort of punctuate the statement I was making: The city is paralyzed and still I brought you cake!

Cabin Fever

Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | daily | 1 Comment

This is not normal in Seattle, this foot of snow, freezing temperatures and people snowboarding down Queen Anne Avenue.  I know I should think it’s really pretty and just be glad we still have power, but I’m finding the attractions of falling on my ass limited.  Fortunately, we can walk to stores and get the necessities like beer and Spray n Wash.  There’s a bakery, a seafood store and a butcher, too, so Christmas dinner will go on provided the cabin fever mixed with Clementine Cocktails hasn’t resulted in a “domestic incident.” 

A few of the guys are staying at the House over most of the break and I had intended to bring them a treat…some Bourbon Chocolate Cake or one of those Stilton Cheese balls Newman enjoyed at the Holiday Party.  But I don’t love them enough to brave the 99 bridge in this.  I’m not sure I even love my cats enough to take them to the vet, so I’ll post the recipes instead.

All Growed Up

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

Perry called me today to report passing his Series 7 General Securities Representative Brokerage Exam.  I know the exact title because when I was talking to him, I asked him to give it to me and his reaction was “are you blogging?”  It’s a big deal because it means that he’s on track to leave the college-frat life behind and move into a Real Job with MetLife.  I was supposed to be fretting about him all day, but instead I was fretting about my own baby Simon flying in from Austin for the break.  So late in the day when the name “Perry” appeared on my cell phone, I suddenly remembered it was exam day.

I would include a recipe that he loved while he lived in the House, but he is without question America’s Pickiest Eater.  Perry would be happy if you gave him a grilled chicken breast with a side of grilled chicken breast.  With no “stuff” on it.  Every day.  He might have liked this roast beef he’s holding, but I doubt it.  I only tolerated him because he was extraordinarily responsive to my concerns, helpful, clean, chatty, kind, supportive, responsible.  But other than that, he was a pain.

Joey

Monday, December 15th, 2008 | daily | 2 Comments

With the Christmas break started, I’m working on getting more recipes posted and going over pictures that didn’t make it into the blog.  For good reason.  Joey begged me to include this one, but it never fit into a story.  I’m trying to imagine why a guy standing in boxer shorts eating a hot dog didn’t inspire me.  Still, Joey deserves a posting to himself if only because he never fails to do the really simple thing of thanking me…after every single meal.  Early in my time here, he interviewed me for a fraternity paper article that was never published, but which is probably full of all kinds of naive statements from someone who thought this was going to be a normal job.  That he’s holding a hot dog bun here should not be misinterpreted…I may give them boring old hot dogs once in a while for lunch, but I accompany it with a homemade chili that is one of Joey’s favorite things.  And he comes from restaurant people.  “Joey’s Chili” is on the recipe page.

Eggs Badley

Friday, December 12th, 2008 | daily | 1 Comment

Which is not to say “eggs done badly,” an unfortunate connotation I only thought of after I’d given his dish a new name.  A while ago, Badley approached me with a “great” idea for Friday lunches.  “You take a piece of bread and cut a whole in it and fry it in a pan with an egg in the center.”  I was busy as he told me this (I usually am when he’s talking about his latest great idea) but I paused and told him that I had seen that “recipe” before.  “Yeah, I know, it’s a kiddie thing.  Y’know, something you make for five year olds.”  He didn’t like that response and told me it was the best thing ever and I should make them for the House one Friday.  It didn’t occur to him that making 120 of those by myself might be a little impractical.  But I agreed it was a great idea. And he should do it for himself on a day he wouldn’t be in my way.  Like the last day of the quarter.  I have to admit, they were lovely and provoked some long faces from the other guys who got there’s scrambled, so we decided it needed a name other than “that kiddie thing.”

Finals

Thursday, December 11th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I was in the dining hall when these arrived and when I opened the card, I sighed, “Ahh.  And I’ve been so unbearable to them lately.”  I suppose it should tell me something that without a pause, Brian asked “Who, our food service guys?”  I called to ask Kirk who was responsible and he swore it was Chris, his boss, the same “Mr. H.” who received an email from me last week so thick with sarcasm that when my husband read it, he asked, “Have you sent this?” with a look that plainly said “You haven’t sent this?.”  Having shared the “Happy Customers” post with some of his colleagues, Kirk told me he’d be expecting a photo on the blog and  I told him it was going to be tough because I had a picture in mind.   Casey had stopped into the kitchen earlier on his way to do laundry.  He seemed lost, headed towards the dishwashing area, when he stopped and said, “Can I sit on your stool and talk to you?”  I could have responded, “Only if you have something blog-worthy to share,” and it would have been so like me to do that, but he seemed…fragile.  When Nick saw him there, he said, “Casey, man, you can’t be walking around the kitchen half-naked.  You have to earn that right” which is about as close to hazing as it gets around here.  It’s finals week and they’re all in various stages of sleep deprivation and euphoria.  Jesse K. (as Vice President, my boss), is clearly on the happy end:

Dearest Darlene,

I would like to thank you for another amazing quarter!

Because of the food quality, staying within budget, and just putting up with us…

You have earned your bonus!

(This may or may not be because you let me make a grilled cheese when I was sick)

Thank you,

Jesse

Charlie

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I debated which picture to put as the cover today:  Charlie or the Ancho Chile Braised Pork Shoulder I made for dinner.  Charlie won, not because he’s better looking than a pork roast, although he is, but because I really believe that food divorced from people is not very interesting.  Besides being one of the funniest people I know, Charlie was a realtor until recently and now he’s back in the food business as a broker, doing real estate on the side “for fun.”  We bought our condo from him and the fact that I’m still nice to him and fed him lots of garlicy pasta salad today despite the fact that he made tons of money off of us for very little effort right before the Seattle real estate market tanked is proof that I am not a complete bitch.  He will have to work much harder for me now and has promised to bring us lots of food samples of products US Foodservice doesn’t carry so that I can bug Kirk mercilessly to start carrying them.    But one thing he is never going to convince me to buy are prepared spice mixes and rubs.  He tried to sell me on that today and I showed him all my homemade stuff, including the ancho chile, cinnamon, cumin, and cocoa rub that went on tonight’s dinner.  In fact, I’m so defiant about this that I’m going to post all my spice mix and rub recipes as soon as I have time and he will just have to find something else to push.  Charlie the Food Broker isn’t going to find me as easy to handle as Charlie the Realtor.

Happy Customers

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 | daily | 2 Comments

Kirk stopped by today to drop off the toilet paper the guys neglected to tell me they were out of.  It was nice of him to do that since it’s not my delivery day and so he had to drive out here in the rain to make 10 cents commission.  I talk a lot of trash about my vendors because it’s funnier than telling the whole truth, but since Kirk has his review soon, I thought I would write the “Why I’m a Happy US Foodservice Customer Despite Blog Posts to the Contrary” post.  Firstly, I know I’m a little high maintenence, or, as Perry once put it when he was contemplating a food sales career, “who wants to deal with her?”  while he looked straight in my direction.  Anyone who puts up with my crap and can still laugh about it has a special sort of character.  I’ve been known to demand that Kirk and others at the company explain to me in detail exactly why their world doesn’t revolve around my business.  I’ve tortured them with one too many complaint emails that should have been written before that last glass of wine.  I’ve conducted meetings with them in a frat house dining hall before Corey’s gone around cleaning up lunch from three days ago.  It’s horrible having me as a customer and yet they keep taking my calls.  Secondly, the occasional lilliputian lettuces and scrap meat for stew beef aside, almost everything I receive is high-quality, especially the produce which I’ve been known to find such a turn-on I’ve posted pictures of it.  And finally, there’s empathy;  I have customers of my own:  64 demanding mouths to feed, so I know all about trivial, unreasonable complaints like “we ran out of tortillas for the fajita bar” and outrageous requests like “can I have some wheat bread?” when 5 loaves of white are sitting right there–like they can’t just be happy you’re working your ass off for them.  I know what it’s like to be a service provider to people who expect Jesus himself and so I stay a loyal customer to the company that will have me as one.

Guys with Class

Monday, December 8th, 2008 | daily | 4 Comments

This is Corey, one of the pledges they definitely need to initiate if anyone cares what I think.  I’ve decided he’s the new Perry–the one who sees that something needs to be done.  And does it.  I’ve been crazy about him for a while, but didn’t have a picture, so today I made him pose for me.  He’s very adorable, he will make a fabulous husband and his mom should be so proud.  And I know that if he reads this, he will be so glad that I’ve singled him out in this mortifyingly public way.  And here is Nick who cheerfully took the hint when I announced that dinner would be coming out once Corey finished doing the dishes someone else was supposed to have done.  But Nick isn’t a pledge, so he doesn’t really need a bunch of cheerleading from the cook.  He just wanted to eat.

I woke up this morning to an appreciative email from one of the guy’s moms.  She’s just discovered this blog and doesn’t want me fired as a result, which I consider a huge success.  There was also an email from Newman with a link to a little video he put together from pictures on this site:

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/JprFawSAQ7YTzPZ5exub

I can always tell it’s close to a holiday when the guys start hovering in the kitchen looking for food to squirrel away in their personal refrigerators.  Newman and Dan were doing that today, looking for leftovers from the Holiday Party.  I told them they could take all of the smoked salmon pate and the goat cheese-basil spread they wanted and they took it all.  I mean, all of it…not just a polite little nibble-sized portion.  But nice as that was, what really made me smile was when Dan returned to the kitchen to borrow my corkscrew to open–not a bottle of “grape wine” –but a really quite nice Loire valley white to accompany their snack.

Protection

Saturday, December 6th, 2008 | daily | 3 Comments

The Holiday Party is going on as I write and I’m hiding in the kitchen, with Newman and Dan making runs to the food table to replenish platters.  It’s not that I don’t want to meet the pledges’ parents, but I’m terrible at small talk and (this will astonish regular readers) I’m prone to saying outlandish things.  Yesterday, as I was prepping, two of the guys who I will not name for reasons that should be obvious, popped their heads into the kitchen to see if I needed anything from Costco.  I assumed they were gathering for the party, so I asked what they were getting.  There was a long pause before one of them said, “Uh, protection.”  Then it was my turn to pause.  “Oh, well, could you pick up some party napkins?”  The response was immediate:  “Oh, that will be gay…two guys picking up protection and party napkins.”   I didn’t get what I asked for, but they checked out with “condoms, liquor, and a Vogue coffee table book.”  I’ll leave it to others to judge how they looked with that loot.

The great thing about a cooking job is that you can think about all kinds of interesting things;  the work itself requires only a small part of your brain.  So while those two were shopping, I thought, “Costco?  For that?  What sort of pack size would that be?  Is this a group purchase, something they keep in the House Manager’s closet for general use like the First Aid Kit?  Or is one of them in need of that quantity?  Does US Foodservice sell that?  Must remember to ask Kirk.”

The Holiday Party is apparently a success.  Several parents have stopped by the kitchen to thank me and one asked if the Spicy Mango Salad is on the blog.  I promised to put it there and I will soon.

Party Prep

Friday, December 5th, 2008 | daily | 1 Comment

There are prettier pictures, I know, but the sight of these tenderloins, tied and ready for their roll in the olive oil, cognac, salt and pepper bath followed by a high heat roasting garnered the most excitement of anything in the kitchen today.  It was a day for getting ready for tomorrow’s big freshmen parent gathering:  A Holiday Buffet and Auction.  Yesterday should have been an opportunity for prep, too, but I was thwarted by another late delivery and this time, I was An Angry to the Point of Unglued Customer.  I sent this message to Kirk’s boss:

Dear Mr. H,

By the time my delivery arrived today, I had lost at least five hours, depending on what we are pretending my scheduled time was.  Unfortunately, I will not be able to tell my customers that their event will be delayed five hours because I was waiting all day, unable to do a thing.  When I asked the driver for his version of what happened, his response was “I didn’t like my routing.”  That makes two of us.

Okay, I was on the edge when I wrote that, and I did wonder if I would be the first customer they ever fired, but it got a response, a more polite and professional response than I deserve.  My understanding is that we are now going to be known as The Fraternity Not to Be Screwed Around With.  And, the lateness notwithstanding, the beef was perfect, the salmon pristine, the mangos just ripe…the whole dinner should be fine.  

Sweet and Delicious

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 | daily | 3 Comments

Badley entered the kitchen this morning wanting to get in my way and make a huge mess scrambling eggs.  I told him no and handed him one of the boiled eggs I’d prepared in my efforts to clean out the refrigerators.  I explained that I was doing this to make room for all the food I’d be receiving for Saturday’s holiday party and that I would be very busy for the same reason.  But it didn’t seem to register because he asked if I could possibly whip up a treat for one of his classes tomorrow.  “Badley, were you one of those kids who went to his mom at 10 o’clock at night pleading for a few dozen cupcakes for school the next morning?” Sensing where this conversation was headed, he pleaded that, “It’s not just for me;  Zach and Newman are in the same class.”  I asked him what he had in mind and he said “something sweet and delicious”  and I thought about suggesting the oranges that I was also trying to clear out of the fridge.  But then a clear mental picture formed of Zach announcing “Hey everybody, look what our cook made us for the party!”  And then I’d forever be known as “the Orange Cook.”  So I thought about what I have on hand:  good chocolate, butter, sugar, almonds…just the stuff for toffee.  Not that I’m committing.

Service

Monday, December 1st, 2008 | daily | 2 Comments

Oversee and provide consistency in: product and service quality, profitability, staff development, product development, and organization. Additionally, candidate should posses an ability to be creative in product conceptualization and production.

That’s an ad for a chef.  I read food job ads for laughs, but they’re rarely as dreadful as that.  They often say more obviously hilarious things like “please love long hours for low pay and even less respect.”  I have challenges here, but nothing like that.  I wanted to post a picture of Scott by himself, but I don’t have one, and so here he is on the right.  Scott put in hours and hours today cleaning up in the dining room after the Thanksgiving break, a thing he didn’t have to do, a thing someone else was supposed to do.  I love that sort of selfless character in a person and as the cook in the center of the house, I notice these things, so I will find a way to make sure that Scott, who ”provided consistency in product service and quality” gets something more than no pay and less respect. 

It was the day for laudable examples of service.  I realized this morning that my complaints of late are not so much with my food distributor as with its meat supplier and I was going to call this post “Stockyards Sucks” but that just sounded too negative.  When I didn’t receive the specially ordered chicken thighs with my delivery today, I got on the phone.  And when Kirk suggested that “we need to find a solution,” I helpfully replied that ”I have a solution:  get someone at Stockyards to go to Costco and buy me some chicken.”  I knew something was off three hours later when Kirk showed up looking like he killed the chickens himself, but it was just that it was his birthday today and he wasn’t supposed to be working; nevertheless suit-less, tie-less and shave-less, he provided consistency in product  and service quality by hand delivering 40 pounds of fresh poultry.

Hard Work

Friday, November 28th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

The day before Thanksgiving, my husband stopped in for biscuits. His employer felt he needed an entire week off for the holiday and his job isn’t even hard: He just travels to exotic locales and has business meetings at the best restaurants in Seattle. What’s hard about that? While he was here “doing a Meaker” as we will now call it, Stephen H. yelled from the dining hall, “Darlene, you are the MOST wonderful woman in the world,” unable to see that my husband was standing there. I had to explain that it isn’t me that causes them to lose their heads, it’s bacon. Phil gets the spotlight today because he spent most of Thanksgiving on the incredibly tedious task of recovering my deleted posts and working on a more user-friendly recipe page which I hope to have up soon. Okay, he works really hard for me.

Grateful

Thursday, November 27th, 2008 | daily | 1 Comment

Thanksgiving in Louisiana

My younger brother sent me this picture and I imagine that at this moment he and my family, along with our oldest son who flew down for the week, are tucking into dinner while Phil and I are alone here in Seattle. It’s okay, though, because as a consolation I went to Whole Foods yesterday and bought fresh duck, artisanal cheeses, organic pumpkin and everything I need to make Tom Douglas’s cornbread corn pudding. So we will eat well. And it’s not that we weren’t welcome in other people’s homes; it’s that Thanksgiving is one occasion when joining in other people’s family psycodrama is just too weird. At other times, I’m all for that. Besides, I’m insufferably snobbish when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner: no marshmallows, no packaged stuffing, no green bean casserole (I know it’s downright un-American of me, but honestly, how does anyone get that stuff down?). Anyway, should we feel the need for lots of cheery company, the guys have invited us to a kegger, an invitation so out of keeping with the wholesomeness of the holiday that it’s almost appealing. But not as appealing as our simple meal of Slow-Roasted Duck, Salad Greens with Roasted Pumpkin, Walnuts, Dried Cranberries and Oregon Rogue Creamery Blue, Cornbread Corn Pudding and a very special wine: Last Spring Break, Perry, who has since graduated, returned from Napa with a gift of a 2006 Los Carneros Pinot Noir from Reynolds Family Winery. I will be enjoying that wine tonight, grateful for many things this year, but none more so than the color and light these guys add to my life.

Kitchen Chat

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

“What the HELL!!!?” That’s how I greeted Steven this morning on my way up from a failed attempt to enter the basement. I didn’t know it was his birthday. He was the first person I saw, poor thing, and his non-response was “I don’t know, I hardly live here anymore.” It was a good answer and I told him I could see why, then added, “text Jesse that if I can’t get to my freezer, there’s no lunch.” And even after all that, Steven followed me into the kitchen with his cereal bowl to chat. For an hour. This is a milestone because we didn’t exactly bond last year when he was a pledge. It’s not a question of me not liking him, as he put it today; it’s that, next to Jeremy, who was so indolent the guys actually kicked him out of the house, Steven holds the prize for most lazy person ever. And it’s not me who says so; once last year he told me himself “I’m lazy,” like it was a disability I ought to be sensitive to. But I like anyone who sits on the stool in my kitchen and keeps me company, because the truth is I’m not one of those people who thinks cooking is relaxing; I think it’s tedious. If I could just read about food and make up the menus and have someone else do all that work.

Meaker the Chef

Monday, November 24th, 2008 | daily | 7 Comments

“That looks sort of good,” Meaker pronounced as I pulled the Braised Brisket with Roasted Garlic out of the oven. He graduated ages ago, but still drops in from time to time to harass the cook and pilfer some food. “Sort of good, Meaker? What are you having for dinner tonight?” He didn’t know (of course he did, he was going to enjoy some brisket) but he said he had some duck fat in his fridge that he gathered after reading one of my blog posts. He wanted to know what on earth to do with it and I had the answer I give everyone who wants to be a convert: Fried potatoes. But it turns out that he didn’t really need my help. When he lived in the house, the meals he would often ask me to make–meals he claimed to be an expert at preparing–sounded more like the kinds of things I remember eating at Baptist summer camp than anything I was likely to inflict on these guys. So I was stunned to hear him say that he actually had used some of that duck fat…to fry some pancetta, pear and cheese sandwiches. The news that the cheese was pepper Jack because “that’s all we had in the fridge” did nothing to diminish my astonishment and effectively softened me up for the predictable “you wouldn’t have a to-go box for some of that brisket would you?”

Johnny the Funny

Friday, November 21st, 2008 | daily | No Comments

It was an odd scene at lunch today, Newman half naked next to Johnny, inexplicably dressed for the Iditarod. The great thing about working for guys is that they tend to have very short memories about the bad stuff. Johnny once announced that “Darlene can go f*** herself!” after a dispute over access to the kitchen, an outburst I found so charming that when their advisor (who I will start calling Ted) emailed me a few minutes later to suggest some nice snacks for the boys, I replied with some suggestions of my own. But that’s ancient history and today he was sweetly eager for me to like his hat in that same funny way that one of the guys once asked me if he looked “cool enough” in his new clothes. Johnny earns points with me because he doesn’t do the kinds of things that make the cook really cranky: putting an empty bowl of guacamole back in the fridge, leaving whole gallons of milk out of the fridge. At least I don’t think he does, because when I’m around he makes a great production of NOT being the dumbass who does these things. And many times last year, he was wickedly funny with his tongue-lashings of the pledges over their inability to tell dirty from clean. This year’s pledge class has deprived us of this form of entertainment, but Johnny finds countless other ways to amuse.

As Long as You’re Happy

Thursday, November 20th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I learned this morning that Jesse K. was responsible for yesterday’s flowers. He denied it, said it was a House thing, said it was a great mystery, and then said…”as long as you’re happy.” It’s funny coming from Jesse since I almost always tell him “no,” no matter the question. In my defense, it’s because he waits until the second he wants something to ask and it’s never a quick deal…”can I have chicken instead?,” just as I’m pulling the tortilla-crusted tilapia out of the oven tonight. I wondered today if I’m too hard to please when I was reaching my bitch quota and taking it out on Alex, my driver. Is it too much to expect your green bananas to be green, your 1″ stew beef to be close to 1″, and just for once to go a whole week without a delivery three hours past your so-called window? I almost asked him who I have to sleep with to get a morning delivery, but I was afraid he might tell me, and, y’know…too much information. Before I could make that big gaffe, he stepped back, told me he doesn’t run the company, but “what can I do to make you happy?” It was shortly after that that I survived falling down the stairs, a case of canned tomatoes in my arms, and realized I might be missing a sense of proportion.

Battle of the Blog

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

What’s amusing to me about this is imagining the conversation behind it. I picture them trying to decide what to do for me before settling on flowers. “I know, let’s keep the unisex bathroom clean for a week.” “No, I have a better one, let’s pledge to not put one item through the dishwasher fifty times a day.” “Wait, what about this.,..let’s clean the microwave for the first time ever!” I could go on for a while, but I don’t think any such conversation took place. In fact, I don’t think the guys are responsible for the gorgeous flowers and the sentiment in the card, even if they agree with it. I suspect their adult advisor, who will not be pleased to learn the subject of today’s entry. To say he’s opposed to the blog doesn’t capture the tension that has been building around here for months. But yesterday, we finally had The Talk. I knew it was coming when he asked me if I could spare a few minutes…in the solarium. I was going to say it was like being called to the principal’s office, but it was more like receiving a letter from the IRS. The principal might be giving you the Student of the Month award. When someone who recoils at conflict decides to have The Talk with you, it’s way worse than it is with someone who likes a good fight. It’s like the parent who says they’re so disappointed with you when you’d rather just get a good old-fashioned spanking. But in the end, we reached detente: I will keep blogging, he will keep hating it, but the cold war is over.

On the food front, lunch today was French Dip and I just don’t understand the raves this gets. Bread and meat. I should be happy that this crowd pleaser frees me up to make my own chicken enchiladas, including a homemade sauce, for dinner and to reject Kirk’s dismissive “you know we sell those.” I should be happy, but…I just slice the baguettes and warm up the roast beef. Where’s the love?

Everyone in the Kitchen

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I was about to bring out the spaghetti sauce tonight when Badley (on the left) piped up with “is there stuff in this sauce?” As anyone who’s been following this blog for, oh, the past three days, knows, this probably isn’t a great time to mess with me. But leave it to Badley. “Stuff?” I prodded. “Yeah, y’know, mushrooms and onions and crap like that…I just want meat and tomatoes. So I said, “Badley, was your mom the type who browned up some ground beef, tossed in a can of cream of tomato soup and called it dinner?” It was so disturbing to see his eyes just light up at that, although he seemed disappointed that, no, his mom never thought of that. I was late with dinner tonight because the so-called smart clock on my wall had gone through another bout of racing through time, trying to find the appropriate hour until I had enough and yanked it off the wall. Jeff M. was sent out to buy me a new one and I told him to make sure he got me a dumb clock. And so Brian was busy assembling that while Badley tormented me with his hyper pickyness, Patrick just laughed and others crowded into the mayhem of the kitchen at something after five o’clock. And all the while, no one wanted dinner on time more than me because I had a date crashing a Microsoft business dinner at Zoe with my husband. Grown-up conversation. Someone else doing the cooking. As days go, it was a very good one and there was some truly extraordinary food to be had today at lunch when I presented a plate of antelope summer sausage that Daniel had included with the raw game. I put it out on a large platter and asked the clearly rhetorical question “how many frats have that for lunch today?”

Reset

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 | daily | 3 Comments

Every now and then I decide to quit my job. Most people in foodservice probably feel that way, but most don’t cook at a frat house. It’s everything you might imagine, only more so. I had reached the quitting point a couple of days ago after a week of difficult customers, health inspectors, failing equipment and the realization that the only people I talk to all day are 20 year old guys. So I deleted all my posts, removed my blog from the web and started composing my gracious exit letter. And then yesterday, about ten guys in a row demanded to know why my blog was down, like they’d failed to get their morning paper. But that’s not what changed my mind. It was Daniel walking into the kitchen to announce he’d brought armloads of wild game. Deer and antelope. His father hunts and fishes and he had once brought me tuna, which I poached in olive oil. It’s pictured here because raw game isn’t such a pretty sight. I’ve never tasted, much less prepared, antelope…”it might as well be kangaroo,” I told my meat expert from US Foodservice. But I want to, and so I will have to wait at least until it thaws and I’ve decided what to do with it before I quit. And then I’ll be over it. Besides, it will be almost time for Thanksgiving break.

Bad Week

Friday, November 14th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

This is what I was supposed to accept as a head of lettuce. It’s sitting next to a 1.5 ounce bag of chips. There were six of them like that in my order for two consecutive deliveries and I put my foot down; I told my driver “I’m not paying for that…would you pay for that?” and he took it off my bill. I sent this picture to Kirk, my patient sales guy, and titled it “Lilliputian Lettuces.” I will say this for US Foodservice…they take my antics very seriously and always make it right. But it was one of a series of things that made this a trying week. Yesterday we had our first visit of this year from the health inspector who gave us numerous points (a bad thing, I had to tell one of the guys) because “this house is falling apart.” Like that was a revelation. “It’s old,” I said, ”and anyway, write whatever you want on there, I don’t have any control over the creeky, falling-down house.” He didn’t like my attitude, but I could have been worse; I could have reminded him that the last time he visited and gave me a perfect score, the house was in the same piece of crap condition. I think he’s feeling some resentment at being assigned to the U-District, a definite demotion from downtown. To cap off my week, the freezer is operating at a potentially unsafe 10 degrees, but help is on the way. I was referred to a company called “Wild Men Refrigeration,” a name so blush-inducing, I will have to get a picture when they come on Monday.

Day Off

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I’m off today and good thing. It’s my first vacation day since September 1 and my driver Alex could probably tell I needed it yesterday when he was five hours past my usual delivery time. “Late and Incomplete,” I declared as I signed the paperwork. He said something about failing my class and even winked at Perry, like it wasn’t a serious matter. When your delivery is five hours late, it’s not as if you can declare dinner at midnight; you just have to get it done, which has the upside that when you’re finished, you really are done, free to spend your day off…catching up on food reading and working on a menu for the annual Holiday Party (which Bob insists on calling a Christmas party, Jews and Muslims in the House notwithstanding). I am torn between the conventional and the radically unexpected. Like my well-travelled mom, who has been known to serve lamb tajine and couscous for Thanksgiving dinner, charmingly and without apology.

The Day After

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

It’s not our House and it’s not the home of the ultimate undecided voter. It’s a tradition here to flood this sorortiy with stolen signs the day after. 90% of our guys were elated and even some of the rest spent last night whooping it up in Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Any excuse for a party. Brian let me know that I could serve the “Election Night Chicken” once a week forever. The recipe for the rub is posted.

At Least the Food Will Be Good

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

 Badley checks the blog daily to see if he’s on it and today I gave in, but only after he gave me a cute little campaign t-shirt. It’s election day and the tv room, directly across from my kitchen, is packed with guys in various moods awaiting the first results. We have early voting in Washington state and, just as you’d expect of college guys, most turned in their ballots before the very last second. It helps that it was a take-home test and I assured them I was happy to assist with a perfect score. As well as the obvious, we’re voting on the controversial “when I’m ready to go, I’m goin” ballot initiative (as Jeff L. put it). But whatever the results, the house smells gloriously of smoky roast chicken and bacon-topped baked beans. Homemade potato salad, corn muffins and garden salad with Ranch dressing rounds out a thoroughly ecumenical meal.

Elephants and Donkeys

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I’m working on next week’s menu and I want to do something notable for election day. I did consider “elephant” stew and “donkey” ribs, but I was not one of those moms who call the broccoli “trees” and make airplane-shaped meatloaf, and I am not about to start now. We could have the Easy to Chew Menu and the Elitist Menu if we wanted to take cheap shots, but there are two problems with that idea: taste on the one hand and budget on the other. So, no creamed corn and no prosciutto-wrapped gorgonzola-stuffed fresh fig and arugula salad. I did ask the guys for suggestions, but Jake was the only one who piped up with “what about elephant and donkey shaped cookies?” Like I have time for that. The house is politically mixed and so, while I’m fairly certain there are more D’s than R’s here, and I know there’s at least one L, I want a menu that will unite us, not divide us, but other than a bottomless bowl of Halloween candy, I’m not sure what that is.

Salting My Game

Saturday, October 25th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

 On Friday, Zach rushed into the kitchen to tell me that I just had to come outside and take a picture for the blog. “We’re changing a tire!” he told me, like that was supposed to explain the food connection.

Earlier he told me a funny little unprintable story about his previous evening and he used the phrase “salting my game,” which I learned is not about deer. Or salt. When I took this job, I was slightly terrified at the prospect of working with dozens of college-aged guys. And at first, they would stop talking when I entered the dining hall or the tv room. But they soon grew weary of that and now they teach me all kinds of things. Joey, for one, has decided I need some new material for my Zune.Subsequent visitors to the kitchen have seen this list and asked me who the hell wrote that? So I now have a white board full of contrary advice. One thing they all agree on is that English Muffins with Scrambled Eggs, Canadian Bacon and Cheese (”They are NOT Egg Mc Muffins!”) are a very good thing for Friday lunch.

Hard-core cooking

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 | daily | No Comments

 The whole house smelled amazing today. I know because everyone told me, not because I ventured upstairs to their living space (god forbid). When realtors tell you to bake cookies to sell your house, ignore them. Make poultry stock. Yesterday it was turkey and today it was duck. I roasted the ducks yesterday to make gumbo tomorrow, but really I just wanted some duck fat to take home. Some women want shoes; I open my fridge and see a quart of duck fat and a happy warm feeling washes over me. Besides all the stock and the roasting of meat, I also made meatballs and marinara for lunch today. I never put a lot of work into lunch, but I couldn’t bear the idea of purchased frozen meatballs and sickly sweet canned sauce and so I found myself rolling twenty-five pounds of them yesterday. My idea of purgatory is either endless meatball-making or endless potato peeling. And yet I can’t help myself.

Angels

Monday, October 20th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

 Today, more so even than most Mondays, was a big deal because we had outside guests for dinner. Lawyers. Knowing this, I was careful to make sure they got not just the prettiest pieces of roast turkey, but the for sure done to 165′ F pieces. My delivery was very late today and I was pretty agitated until I saw who my driver was. I love Alex. He’s probably not every customer’s favorite, but he sure is mine. We share a cranky sense of humor, so I was calmed by seeing him coming through the door and even cool with him helping himself to a barbecue chicken sandwich in the lunch line while he waited for me to check over the order. There were other “angels” in my day…like Dan, who looks like one when he’s asleep.

It was the morning after his 21st birthday celebration. I told him “Dan, I took a picture of you on the couch and you looked so sweet there sucking your thumb…can I put it in the blog?” And without even looking at it, or reacting to my little tease, he gave his permission. Such a good sport. Then later, one of the freshmen asked if we have any Comet with bleach. Not just comet, mind you, but with bleach. I’ve been asked for a lot of things by these guys and after two years here, I don’t even react…balloons, duct tape, nitroglycerine. But Comet With Bleach! When I handed him the shaker I keep in my kitchen, I was so astonished I had to be nosy enough to watch what he did with it. And he spent a good bit of time shaking it all over the dish room, scrubbing out the sinks. Imagine that. I can’t name him for fear of branding him a…clean frat guy…, but you know who you are and you are one of the people who made my Monday less horrible than it usually is.
I have a picture of my guys from early in my time here. I called it Angels on Alki (Alki being a beach here in Seattle) and it was meant to be ironic. But sometimes, really quite often, they really are.

Freshmen

Thursday, October 16th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

A few weeks ago, Badley suggested that it might be great if I whipped up some hors d’oeuvres for a Homecoming reception on October 17. Great for him. My contract lists my title as Executive Chef, which sounds just awesome until you know that I’m also the only cook in the kitchen, meaning I not only get to have Very Important Meetings and wield fearsome power, but I also get to do all the menial work like sweeping up the occasional (dead) mouse. So, I’m crazy busy and when Badley put out the call for a few nibbles for a hundred people on a Friday when I’m already making lunches and dinners, I told him to get me some freshmen. Derek and Devin put in some time today skewering shrimp. Freshmen are not hazed, harassed or otherwise humiliated in this House, but I did recently learn that one Brother has made me a great big impediment to their achieving acceptance into the fraternity: he has told them they have to be nice to the cook. When I learned this, I declared that I do not want abuse of power in my name. And anyway, I’m crazy about this whole group of pledges…they’re thoughtful, they’re helpful…they are ruining my reputation for hilarious profanity-laced rants.

Monday Blues

Monday, October 13th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

When I’m feeling blue, I ask the guys to sit down and tell me about their day to make me feel better. Being 20ish, broke and overloaded with course work is predictably way worse than being me. Jake filled the role today. He looks happy here because I used an old picture instead of being insensitive enough to take a picture of his sad self today. Mondays are formal dinner night, and delivery day, so exhausting for the cook. I was wrestling with a dozen legs of lamb at 7AM when my driver arrived with 60 cases of product. He stopped to comment on my menu choice and he was so intense, I halfway expected him to roll up his sleaves and help me tie those babies up.

US Foodservice must pay their drivers exceptionally well because they always have insightful things to say about any given subject. With the lamb, I served peas pureed with butter and cream. When Jace asked, clearly amused, if I’d EVER served peas to them before (I have not), I announced that they are “Puree des Pois!” It’s October, okay. Our vegetable options are limited and I will not serve asparagus in the fall.

Not Like Me

Saturday, October 11th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I’m working on next week’s menu and I want Jesse E. to know that there will be no pig! Last week was very porky. It’s fall and certain menu items pop in my head as seasonally appropriate. But when I pulled the garlic-herb roasted pork loin out of the oven on Thursday, Nick casually inquired as to why I was serving that on Yom Kippur. I wrote a post about this and then deleted it when I read later that Yom Kippur is one of the most serious of the Jewish holidays. Not something to joke about when you claim to be a diverstiy-loving Unitarian.

This is a diverse House in every way. There is at least one fraternity house at the UW that appears to be exclusively for, well, let’s just put it out there…rich white guys. And I hear their chef is awesome, but you couldn’t pay me enough to work there. Not that I have anything against rich white guys…we have some of those here, too! But I enthusiastically surround myself with people who are decidedly not like me. The two pictured are examples: Kyle, who supports the wrong political party and Eliab, who is not my color and argues with me about every petty thing that crosses his mind. At one point in my time here, one of the guys was leaving because he told me he didn’t fit in, but honestly, you’d have to have horns and a tail not to fit in with this bunch.

Late Plates

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 | daily | 1 Comment

This is Carlos, one of my dinner servers, too busy preparing late plates to smile for me. In this house, those who will not be here for the evening meal sign up to have their food put into an environmentally-friendly coffin so that they can cremate it later in the microwave. There are a growing number of people signing up for this and the house is divided; there are those who think showing up for dinner promotes brotherhood and community and that the food tastes better freshly-prepared. And then there are those who place a greater priority on little things like jobs, class, and sports. It all reached a fever pitch last night after someone wrote “Only 7 late plates from now on. Show Darlene some love“ on the ”late plate” white board. Now, I did not write that. I would have given the approved number as zero and I would never be so desperate as to ask for some lovin’. But so much venom was spewed at me today over this that I finally had to cry out “I don’t make the rules here…talk to your leaders!” Because of course if I did make the rules, things would be perfect.

Live-Outs

Monday, October 6th, 2008 | daily | 1 Comment

Kyle delivered on his promise of Bosc pears and I roasted them with vanilla bean, sugar, lemon juice and butter and served them with salad greens and optional blue cheese, along with the grilled NY Strip steaks. (Monday nights are formal, so I spend more on those dinners.) Roasted pears are so easy and yet seem like such work that the guys feel special…not that I’m saying they aren’t. Earlier in the day, Scott stopped by;

the seniors or recent grads who live nearby are called “live-outs” and he is one of those. It must be a shocker to discover no freshmen to clean up after them and no kitchen slave. He’s been following my blog and using the recipes when he has friends over, so I suggested a whole new page…Entertaining Recipes for Debt-Ridden Students Facing the Impending Depression. The news has been so unremittingly dark lately that it’s been hard to be as mean as I need to be around here…the world is mean enough without my help.

more emotional blackmail

Food Obsessed

Sunday, October 5th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I usually don’t write on the weekend; who wants to read about me and my perfect life in Queen Anne–it’s all about the guys (I’m pretty sure there are a few readers who are not looking for recipes or pictures of books here). But The Flavor Bible is too interesting not to share, so the non-food-obsessed can just skip this one. It’s not a cookbook at all, but more of a creativity catalyst. You look up an ingredient, say, “eggplant,” and find a list of flavors that marry well with that ingredient, combinations you might not have thought of, chefs’ tips on using it, lucsious menu descriptions… I just discovered the book this weekend and I’m addicted. I’ll put it down, walk away, and then think “coconut milk” or “persimmon” and have to stop everything to go see what Karen and Andrew say about that. For the guys who wonder what sort of out of control weekend behavior I get up to, this is it.

Comfort Food

Friday, October 3rd, 2008 | daily | No Comments

This is Mike S. inadvertently spilling his Beef Barley Soup. I was walking by the lunch line yesterday and I heard “is that barley?” and then, with even more excitement, “is that okra!?” as if he’d just won a trip to Whistler. With soup, you have the real chance that they’ll like the whole without necessarily liking any of the actual ingredients. But to hear someone sing out barley!, okra!…I just had to get a picture of that person. The day before, Steven asked me to make chicken soup because “half the house is sick.” He was nervous asking me and at first I told him that my menus are planned out a week in advance. But he looked so pitiful that I thought maybe I should be nicer when they’re sick. Or even ”sick.” I didn’t commit, but the next morning I bought 2 birds at Safeway at my own expense and made some homey, very peppery chicken soup for them to have this weekend.

Thursday nights are party time, so on Fridays I usually make either a hearty breakfast or something really greasy that offends me. Today it was Philly Cheesesteaks and I cook those to order so that they have to come in to the kitchen and confess individually. Of the stories I’m allowed to repeat, Badley was bitten in the face by a girl. It’s always the girls’ fault.

Parents and Grown-ups

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I learned today that my readership includes some of the guys’ parents. And I admit that this was mortifying to me at first because I’m trying to be so truthful.

So this is probably a good time to point out that some things are off limits:

• Things that I know about and shouldn’t. This covers a lot of ground.
• Things I don’t know about, but can infer from evidence.
• Anything they tell me followed by the phrase “don’t put that in the blog.”
• Legally actionable material.
• Joey’s love life.
• Mean stuff. Jokes about Brian’s food tastes don’t count.

I don’t want the guys to know this, but I do love them and I am aware of my own imperfections. But this is my blog so I get to tell it my way. When they object, I say “go write your own blog!” Today’s picture captures a Very Important Meeting I had with some folks at US Foodservice. Once in a while, I like to have these VIM’s right there in the dining hall so that the guys understand that I am not just the kitchen wench. But these meetings are a little uncomfortable for me…I have to watch my language, I have to check my sarcasm, I have to wear a clean shirt.

Fall

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

It’s a food porn thing, I know. I opened the boxes of butternut squash and parsnips today and I thought they were beautiful. I roasted them with brown sugar, cinnamon and cayenne and I didn’t tell the guys it was “squash and parsnips.” They wouldn’t understand. But they kept coming into the kitchen to ask what smelled so good. Later, Kyle told me that his dad is going to send some bosc pears from their farm. Bosc pears. I was entranced as he added “there are a lot of great salads you could do. And maybe some special cheeses…” It’s so cute when these guys talk food.

Real Food

Saturday, September 27th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

Last Wednesday I received emails from people who have found my blog. One was from “John,” a fraternity chef at MIT who cooks dinner-only for two houses. No lunch distraction and no whining about “sandwiches again!?” for him. His email was entitled “I like your web page” which thrilled me because of the source…he’s a real chef from only one of the most prestigious schools in the country. He had previously been the Executive Chef at a university cooking for 8,000 students, so I’m sure he’s come across a few horrible mass-quantity creations. Just for kicks, I sometimes search “institutional recipes” to remind myself of why I’m doing this. Recipes like “Day Before Casserole” (less nauseating I suppose than “Day After Casserole”) make me wonder how much canned spaghetti sauce and processed cheese one can take before exploding from the salt content. I will admit that I prepare a couple of dishes containing cream of mushroom soup (I know, embarassing) but for the most part I try to use natural ingredients. When my guys say “I love your food,” what they’re really saying is “I love that you aren’t serving us ‘industrial food-like substances.’”And the truth is, the simplest stuff gets the most praise. In his email, John referred to creativity and a passion for cooking, so I’m hoping he and others out there like him will keep me honest because sometimes it is so tempting to just put frozen lasagna in the oven and go get a massage.

Official Visitors

Thursday, September 25th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

We had a visit from the fire department today, but it wasn’t like the visits they make to elementary schools where Fireman Friendly shows off his big shiny truck. Johnny gave me the news that “the fire department is here and they’re pissed.” Apparently some of the guys had smelled gas and one of them had called 911, then headed off to class leaving the cook to talk to the officials. Now, I suppose calling 911 and splitting wasn’t prudent, but their hearts were in the right place and really it’s not as if college boys would ever engage in prankster behavior. I didn’t know who exactly had made the call and I felt a little like the Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe as I swore to the officer that I just didn’t know who they needed to talk to …”I have so many children I don’t know what to do, I’ll give them some broth without any bread and I’ll whip them all soundly and send them to bed.” Joey takes the cover boy spot today, not because he had anything to do with today’s events, but because he’s been lobbying hard for the role and I didn’t want to push my luck with the firemen by pulling out my camera.

Dinner tonight was Chicken with Sundried Tomato Garlic Crust, a favorite here that I adapted from a Bon Appetit recipe. The first step in the cooking process is to brown the skin-on breasts and when you do 80 of those, it fills the House with the smell of fried chicken. Then while they bake, there’s the heady aroma of rosemary, garlic and chicken-juice soaked breadcrumbs Like pot roast, it’s one of those “can’t go wrong” choices. For the cooks who read my blog (and I learned last night that there really are some), I will post the recipe.

Party Time

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I know it may surprise those who know me as an intelligent and interesting person, but this picture represents the most exciting part of my day. This fabulous new cabinet arrived to replace the crappy little table that used to hold the cereal containers and that used to regularly go missing for “party games” in the basement. This would happen not only with the cereal table but the food line tables as well (and they are next in line for the cabinet treatment). This missing table thing has been a major tantrum trigger and the 300 lb cabinet is the answer, after finding that even tying heavy duty chains with padlocks around the tables wasn’t enough to stop the theivery. I am reminded of my posting about advice for new fraternity cooks…you can’t change their behavior, so work around it. After giving up on trying to lock my freezer in the basement, I just posted this friendly reminder:

Writing this blog has helped me to keep these things in perspective. One has a choice about how one deals with the little stresses in life like finding a six-pack in the freezer exploded all over the interior when one barely has time to put food in the freezer let alone clean stuff out. One can decide that it’s all just great blog material.

Perry

Monday, September 22nd, 2008 | daily | No Comments

This is my favorite of several pictures I took of Derek, one of the new pledges. I love the way it just proves that frat boys are a bunch of irresponsible, beer swilling morons.
Perry came to see me today. Before he graduated in June, he had been the VP of the House, a job he once described as “keeping Darlene happy.” I’ve noticed that subsequent candidates for the position pause…they want the title on their resume, the nicer room, the parking spot, but…that dealing with the Kitchen Bitch part. Hmmm. Perry majored in business and is finally realizing that bussing tables at Ivar’s is not a career, so he’s suiting up and submitting to serious interviews. With the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression engulfing us all this week, jobs for business majors should be plentiful. But then what do I know–an English major cooking in a fraterntiy house.

Meat

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

I imagine some of the guys were expecting a picture I took today of them shirtless and buff in the basement to be the cover photo accompanying this post, but no, it’s not that kind of blog. At the end of last year, Rod from US Foodservice showed me a pie chart of our expenditures by food type, and, oh, my imagine that…110% of the budget went to meat. There is nothing (that I know of) that will get these guys smiling more than the smell of searing flesh. When meat hits the flat-top, the scent fills the entire House and they become like my little zombie children. I can do a lot of wrong, but then I can pull out the “meat card” and I’m safe. Tonight I made ginger-soy flank steak (which I once had to explain is soy like the sauce, not like the milk). You know that a hunk of beef is going to be good when you pull it out of the fridge, raw in it’s marinade, and it smells and looks good enough to dive into right there and then without bothering with the cooking part.

Bad Day

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 | daily | No Comments

Today was one of those days that make me question my sanity cooki