Fraternity Kitchen

Badley Goes to Washington

Monday, June 28th, 2010 | daily | 2 Comments

Badley made it to Washington to begin his internship in the bowels of bureaucratic hell.  I know this because I received a text from him today with a link to the blog he’s started in which he excoriates me for my lack of recent postings, ignoring the fact that I don’t work for him anymore.  But he was on my mind recently when I read a well-researched book on the wretched state of the federal school lunch program.  I’m no tea party nutter, but my takeaway from that is that the government needs to get the hell out of food matters.  My second takeaway was that I am so lucky to have a job that allows me to serve a delicious Vietnamese salad without a USDA official poking at it to see if it has exactly the right number of nutrients.  It’s hard to pick out a single “holy shit are you kidding me?” nugget from this study, but the line that some school food directors feel they have to serve processed, paper-wrapped finger food because second graders don’t know how to use a fork is right up at the top.  When I read that, I thought about how I’d react if one of my guys told me he’s fork-impaired.  It all left me grateful for the freedom I have to just cook good, real food, sourced not from USDA commodities and mega factories, but from Steven the rancher and Bob the local farmer.  And left me, too, a little concerned for the soul of Badley.

 http://web.me.com/alexanderbadley/www.fromdcwithlove.com/From_DC_with_Love/Entries/2010/6/28_My_Arrival.html

Free For All, Fixing School Food in America, by Janet Poppendieck

Logical Consequences

Thursday, June 10th, 2010 | daily | 4 Comments

The only thing that would have been more deliciously satisfying than watching this car on the left be towed from blocking access to my parking spot for two weeks would have been watching the owner’s frantic, freaked out reaction.  I know what he’d be like because I’d already witnessed his misplaced profanity-laced rage a few days ago after discovering ticket number two.  I mean, what sort of moron keeps parking in an illegal spot after two warnings?  So when I saw the Seattle PD parking enforcer giving someone a ticket for a stupid reason today, I asked her if she’d give that jerk over there a kick in the ass.  She smiled and told me she’d take care of it.  Trust a woman to get things done.  I felt about that car the way I felt about the person who was supposed to do dinner dishes last night.  I came into work, ready to put everything into storage for summer and found a mountain of food-encrusted pots.  So I put a note up for everyone:  “I’m washing dinner dishes instead of making lunch.”  After a whole year of not enforcing rules, I just sort of had enough today.  Every year ends this way in a sort of mix of sadness, joy, exhaustion and anti-climax.  It’s over.  I’m going home to spend the summer working on a cookbook and guide.  To teach others how to do what is, despite all the drama, the very best food job around.

Change

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 | daily | 3 Comments

Late yesterday, Carlos decided to wind me up.  “I saw the delivery guy walking into another house with tater tots.  Can we get those?”  It says something about how far we’ve come that this was widely understood to be a joke amongst the guys in hearing range, whereas when I started this job, the question would have ignited a real debate.  It’s not that there aren’t a few guys who would just as soon dig into a Stouffers lasagna as the Red Wine-Braised Oregon Brisket accompanied by Gruyere Potato Gratin with Sauteed Zucchini that served as tonight’s dinner.  It’s just that more often I hear exclamations of approval over the Thyme and Red Pepper-Marinated Goat Cheese, followed by a request for Triscuits, a cracker with this Zen-like ingredient list:  Wheat.  Oil. Salt. In the past few weeks, I’ve heard from a number of sorority and fraternity members complaining of “bad tasting and bruised fruits and vegetables,” and “chicken with the consistency of a rice cake.”  And what makes me more angry than accounts like that are the cooks I hear who say it’s not possible to do any better than serve up meat that is “poor quality, tough, bland and unhealthy.”  “Some cooks just don’t want to change,” John told me when I suggested some of his customers are not hearing their customers.  “Well maybe they need to be helped along,” I responded, “because change is a-coming!”