Fraternity Kitchen

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.