Fraternity Kitchen

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