Fraternity Kitchen

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.