Fraternity Kitchen

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.