Archive for April, 2010

Tyranny

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

danielDaniel came to me today to ask what position he should apply for at a new restaurant.  I resisted my first inclination, which was to say, “None,” and instead reassured him that his lack of experience was irrelevant.  “Looking like that, they’ll hire you on the spot,” I correctly predicted.  “Most people in food service are unkempt, unreliable substance abusers.”  I was feeling sort of average about how my day was going until the health inspector, new on the job and full of By the Book enthusiasm, single-handedly turned me into one of those anti-government nutcases for the rest of the afternoon.  Of the 80,850 meals I’ve prepared in this house, not one has made anyone sick, so it’s not that I’m anti-food safety.  I’m just anti dumb.  So when he handed me a “How To Wash Your Hands” sign and insisted I post it by the sink, in what is essentially a private home, I didn’t say it, but I’m sure my face spelled out “Are you f***ing kidding?”  Anyone who has the slightest familiarity with college age men knows that a sign like that has a life expectancy of about 5 minutes.  He had a great many other rules and regulations for me, all duly noted.  And I did put up his little hand washing diagram.  With my own notation under it that read, “Do not remove or deface this stupid sign.”

The Good with the Bad

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

little-richard“You’ll miss that,” my sales guy John told me as he listened to me banter with one of the guys the other day.  I know that leaving this job will deprive me of that fun, but I haven’t figured out how to get paid to just stand around all day entertaining myself talking shit and creating interesting frat menus that I don’t actually have to cook.  Like every job, this one has it’s soul-killing moments like finding a gallon of  homemade soup left out of refrigeration overnight to fully develop that extreme diarrhea-inducing bacteria.  And then by contrast there are the Little Dicks.  I’m referring to the smallest of the Richards in the house who is so utterly adorable that it took me a long time to accept that he was a real person.  He brought me a present last week, a bottle of salad dressing made by a friend of his mother and the first thing I did (I couldn’t help myself) was to examine the label.  “No weird crap!” I exclaimed, my way of thanking him.  I promised to put him on the blog as a better thank you, but I’m only now getting to it.  I’d grown tired of the whole thing until this morning when Zach made it sound like I was selfishly depriving my audience.  But really it was just that I hadn’t updated the menu and for that reason he missed last night’s well-received Rhubarb Crisp with Vanilla Ice Cream.

Retro Kitchen

Saturday, April 17th, 2010 | daily | 3 Comments

1961-cookbookI came across this gem (and I say this without a bit of sarcasm) while going through a box of cookbooks and handwritten recipes from my grandmother, who turns 100 this year.  My mother, who no doubt had her own copy, would have been 22 at the 1961 publication date, when she might have contemplated, if not actually executed, such fare as Clam Dip and Eggs a la Goldenrod.  In my ghastly foodie phase, I mocked these old books, but recently I’ve been thinking about how wonderfully and richly I ate as a child in suburban New Orleans in the sixties, and in the rural homes of my grandparents, who were neither well-travelled nor wealthy.  And it occured to me that if I went back to recipes written before the TV Dinner era, the convenience and fast food revolution, I might find exactly the kind of simple, real food I’ve been promoting in this blog.  And while some of the recipes my grandmother wrote on little bits of paper sound so shockingly horrible that I can’t wait to try them (a package of lemon jello mixed with mustard and poured over chicken before baking–yes, lemon jello…I had to read it back 3 times), most are just basic instructions using real ingredients from a time before everything came in a box or a can.  And so I’ve decided that in my new blog I will prepare such things as Hallelujah White Cake with Amen Frosting and Spaghetti Pie and Creole Pork Roast–the kinds of things you will never see on Top Chef or in Food and Wine Magazine, but that I suspect most of us would choose to eat–and could afford to eat–over Sous Vide Veal Breast with Pommegranate Gastrique and Truffle Foam.

Artisanal

Monday, April 12th, 2010 | daily | 6 Comments

zachs-bed-headZach has no part in today’s story.  This is just some gratuitous exposure of the worst case of bed head I’d ever seen.  I have to have a picture, so Zach gets to be IT.  Last week was so horrendous in such a boring way that I fell asleep describing it to my sweet husband as he tried to neck-massage the horribleness away.  So I was determined to approach this Monday with a hopeful and positive demeanor when, first thing in the morning, my driver Alex quipped, “hope you weren’t planning on chicken for dinner.”  He was the first to know that I’d been shorted on my fresh local chickens,which were indeed destined for the ovens tonight.  So I wasn’t in the greatest frame of mind when I received an email from Rod with a list of items and the subject heading, “Stuff you should buy this month!”  “Stuff you’re trying to unload but want me to think is really amazing,” was my response.  “No,” he volleyed right back, “I have a different list of that–this is stuff we need to sell to win a trip to Monterey.”  Because I like to laugh even more than I love to bitch, this softened me and made up for the fact that John brought me the chickens personally, but too late for Chapter Dinner.  “YOU BETTER CALL HER!” John had warned his boss, and so when he did, he asked me what I had done about dinner.  “Well, I looked at what I had available to me:  ground beef, noodles, sour cream, green onions, cheddar cheese, and the meal revealed itself like a vision:  Artisanal Hamburger Helper.”

Girl Talk

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

sal-and-brendanSal came to me this afternoon for nutrition advice, but it turned into girl advice. He was wondering if he could be hot and buff without resorting to the sort of obsessive weight lifting (which the guys ridiculously call “working out”) that leads to spending time in the gym instead of enjoying my home cooking.  “I CAN’T be here for dinner,” they’ll tell me, “I HAVE to work out.”  As someone who hauls her ass out of bed at 5AM every morning to hit the gym, I appreciate the benefits of exercise.  But I also know that sitting down to a civilized plate of real, fresh food and conversation is going to do a hell of a lot more for your health than “energy drinks” and powdered protein and copious quantities of dreary boneless, skinless chicken breast and undressed tuna.  But none of that was getting through.  What got through was when I stopped tossing tonight’s Caesar Salad and offered the observation that, “y’know, I have never heard a woman say ‘wow, look at those muscles!’”  “What a women wants,” I went on, “is a guy who can carry on a decent conversation.  And who’s majoring in something other than getting high and playing video games.”

Fish Love

Monday, April 5th, 2010 | daily | 5 Comments

chili-coconut-halibutI rarely post food pictures and there’s a reason for that.  At the risk of offending the millions of food bloggers who aren’t my readers anyway, I hate most of the food blogs I’ve come across which I consider porn in the truest sense of the word…lust without love, raw pleasure without human connection.  But tonight’s halibut received the kind of ecstatic reception that you just don’t anticipate from a bunch of young guys over…fish.  And so I want everyone on the west coast to go out and buy fresh halibut while you can and do this:  take an 8oz. fillet, salt it lightly, top with a mixture of grated coconut, chopped thai chilies, cilantro and fresh lime juice, wrap in a square of foil–seal it firmly around the fish, you want it to steam in it’s own juices–and bake at 400′F for 15-20 minutes.  Do not overcook!  I think you could do this with catfish or cod, too, and that would be nice because this halibut, beautiful as it was, is going to require some creative budget menu planning for the next eight weeks.

Only The Best Will Do

Friday, April 2nd, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

brianWe have 5 spring pledges and they have only experienced the post-spring break Darlene, the one who made granola this morning as an afterthought, because it would make the Good Friday brunch buffet that much more lavish.  “I think the Buddhism rubbed off a little,” I told my sales guy John yesterday, referring to my week in Vietnam.  “have you noticed?”  At which point he began to list all the ways that I am not and have never been a Difficult Customer.  “When I drive up to the house, I don’t get out of my car dreading the visit”… “when I get a text from you, I don’t groan.”…”When I get a call and I see it’s from you,’ I don’t think, ‘oh shit, what now?’”  He went on like this for some time while I stared at him wondering if this is what they teach in customer relations seminars.  When someone finds 20 ways to illustrate that you’re not a Difficult Customer, you stop believing them after about #5.  And then he put a cherry on top with number 21, “when I talk to Rod about your account, I don’t ever call you a bitch.”  I was doing really well with this new post-vacation serenity all the way until today, Friday, when I called him to ask why the order form lists wild halibut (newly in season in the Pacific Northwest) as “imported and USA.”    “Which is it, John?,” and I could clearly hear Rod in the background advising,  “it’s imported from Alaska.”   “Tell your boss he’s full of shit,” I responded, and very soon thereafter received confirmation from the buyer that our budget-busting Monday night dinner will be the prisitne, fresh, quality product to please even a Difficult Customer.

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