Fraternity Kitchen

Not Hard to Be Good

darlene — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 04:33:55 +0000

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

darlene — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:20:25 +0000

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

darlene — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:16:37 +0000

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

darlene — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:55:30 +0000

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

darlene — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:42:14 +0000

“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

darlene — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 03:36:39 +0000

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

darlene — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:30:16 +0000

“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

darlene — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:40:06 +0000

“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

darlene — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:13:39 +0000

“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

darlene — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:51:08 +0000

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.