And I'm going to be a guest blogger here. I'm supposed to offer my opnion about various matters pertaining to writing, the literary community, MFA programs, etc. etc.
BUT I do have clearance to also write about food as it pertains. Should I write about food? About the fetishization of my industry in mainstream and other media? Should I write about the trends in food blogging, in cooking by-the-cookbook or bloggers getting book deals? {snippets of a conversation in La Farine make me smirk} Or how about how what you see of my industry leaves out the queers? (and the women and the fussy pastry chefs) How we're all participating in the myth of the patriarchal kitchen when we buy into the hype.
Or should I establish my street cred as a writer first? Perhaps discuss life-after-the-MFA, my fancy-pants writers group where people comment on NPR and do readings with Steve Almond? Talk about how online publications don't segway into getting your work accepted into journals? Talk about the reductive work of much queer literature and the trend of butch girls becoming tranny bois, female spaces becoming male space, otherness becoming not-male, and the diminishing size of my dating prospects because I don't play those games? {no, wait, that was just the conversation I had}
Time to go shower and then head to work. I'm not working tonight but I'm doing the ultimate geek thing and dropping to eat some dessert. Worked all day, talked about pastries for 2 fucking hours, put some pumpkin puree in the fridge to drain for pumpkin clafouti...and I have a lot more to tell you, so much really, but I wanted to let you know about Fringe as the borders of my world crumple in on each other again.
What news/whose news can I carry forth? Where should I begin?
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
plating, deeper
Last night, we had just over fifty on the books so I made sure to have twenty at least of everything on hand...and, this is dumb, did not think to replenish the stock of defrosted chocolate goodness (that needs hours, if not overnight, to come to temperature) when I took the sheet tray of 21 to the station. Never making *that* mistake again because last night was one crazy Wednesday night.
For some reason everyone was VIP that night. From some magazine or friend of the chef or whatnot, do you need a reason? No, you don't. If they weren't VIP then it was their birthday and they needed happy birthday written on their plates and I'm still working on that skill set, so I had to go off and find a coworker who could do it with more finesse.
The window would be full of tickets, the oven a sea of bake to order desserts we were trying to get out efficiently and the chef would come over needing VIP items, so I'd drop the warm desserts for my coworker to plate, bust out the VIP items, and try to rejoin the fray. Where are we? What's been fired? What do we need? We get those in the oven yet? Meanwhile more tickets coming in, tables ordering the whole menu, the chef back sending out another special item to somebody, another birthday. The supply of chocolate desserts is trickling down. I pull some more from the freezer at some point, but it's sort of a lost cause. It should have been done the night before, or when I got to work, and we're running low on our other bake to order item, too, but the dining room is fairly empty it's jut that everyone's ordering massive amounts of dessert, and what's wrong with that? That's a victory for my kind.
All in all last night we had just over fifty percent dessert sales. All of that within about two hours. I didn't actually get on the station till 8 or so. I was in the back tinkering with things. I planned to work on my chocolate handwriting and plate things as they came in...but I got out one letter H and worked straight through the next two hours until around 10:15 the last table ordered desserts and then it was time to clean everything up. I guess it's moving in that direction of intensity...time to step things up, at least the stock of what we have on hand. Great to be so busy, definitely, but was I prepared for that kind of rush on a Wednesday? No.
There's a party tonight. Tonight is another night to try to factor the rhythm of last night into the learn as we go model. There are so many decisions to be made all the time and if you hesitate at all it's no good. Running around the restaurant in search of better handwriting than mine...I could have tried, yeah, but trying for five minutes when realistically it would not have been wonderfulness would have been a waste of time. The thing to do is practice, at home or on less busy nights. Time, the most crucial resource. If my nice warm dessert has ice cream melting away because I'm calling for a runner but no one's looking then what good is any of it? If I take the dessert out to defrost at nine, what good is it? How to manage it most effectively is what we're all looking for, how to make the right decision every time, how to have your quenelle perfectly ready to come off the spoon the first time, how to anticipate the needs you might have later. The needs of your coworker and your boss. How to remember to be nice to the servers, how to get them on your side. This is all part of the plating duty.
A couple hours sleep and go to FH and continue the discussion of the Thanksgiving pie factory...then roaming around Berkeley with much discussion of food and writing.
What I forgot to say is this: it was all really quite exhilarating. And moving toward a sense that all our hard work was bearing fruit. My team, my enormous team of coworkers...we're there all the time, giving everything we have and then some, ten hands in a pretty and well-stocked kitchen. I biked home last night and called a friend, sank onto the sofa in that muddled emotional state. happy+tired+adrenaline high+humbled by mistakes.
For some reason everyone was VIP that night. From some magazine or friend of the chef or whatnot, do you need a reason? No, you don't. If they weren't VIP then it was their birthday and they needed happy birthday written on their plates and I'm still working on that skill set, so I had to go off and find a coworker who could do it with more finesse.
The window would be full of tickets, the oven a sea of bake to order desserts we were trying to get out efficiently and the chef would come over needing VIP items, so I'd drop the warm desserts for my coworker to plate, bust out the VIP items, and try to rejoin the fray. Where are we? What's been fired? What do we need? We get those in the oven yet? Meanwhile more tickets coming in, tables ordering the whole menu, the chef back sending out another special item to somebody, another birthday. The supply of chocolate desserts is trickling down. I pull some more from the freezer at some point, but it's sort of a lost cause. It should have been done the night before, or when I got to work, and we're running low on our other bake to order item, too, but the dining room is fairly empty it's jut that everyone's ordering massive amounts of dessert, and what's wrong with that? That's a victory for my kind.
All in all last night we had just over fifty percent dessert sales. All of that within about two hours. I didn't actually get on the station till 8 or so. I was in the back tinkering with things. I planned to work on my chocolate handwriting and plate things as they came in...but I got out one letter H and worked straight through the next two hours until around 10:15 the last table ordered desserts and then it was time to clean everything up. I guess it's moving in that direction of intensity...time to step things up, at least the stock of what we have on hand. Great to be so busy, definitely, but was I prepared for that kind of rush on a Wednesday? No.
There's a party tonight. Tonight is another night to try to factor the rhythm of last night into the learn as we go model. There are so many decisions to be made all the time and if you hesitate at all it's no good. Running around the restaurant in search of better handwriting than mine...I could have tried, yeah, but trying for five minutes when realistically it would not have been wonderfulness would have been a waste of time. The thing to do is practice, at home or on less busy nights. Time, the most crucial resource. If my nice warm dessert has ice cream melting away because I'm calling for a runner but no one's looking then what good is any of it? If I take the dessert out to defrost at nine, what good is it? How to manage it most effectively is what we're all looking for, how to make the right decision every time, how to have your quenelle perfectly ready to come off the spoon the first time, how to anticipate the needs you might have later. The needs of your coworker and your boss. How to remember to be nice to the servers, how to get them on your side. This is all part of the plating duty.
A couple hours sleep and go to FH and continue the discussion of the Thanksgiving pie factory...then roaming around Berkeley with much discussion of food and writing.
What I forgot to say is this: it was all really quite exhilarating. And moving toward a sense that all our hard work was bearing fruit. My team, my enormous team of coworkers...we're there all the time, giving everything we have and then some, ten hands in a pretty and well-stocked kitchen. I biked home last night and called a friend, sank onto the sofa in that muddled emotional state. happy+tired+adrenaline high+humbled by mistakes.
Monday, October 15, 2007
eating locally, in nyc
if you live in New York City or state--or have friends, lovers, colleagues, etc, who do--perhaps you can help me help a friend of mine currently getting her Masters in New Media Journalism. She runs the Fringe blog and is super new to NYC living, and is doing her thesis project on eating locally in New York. I've put her query out to friends and colleagues and now I'm putting it out here.
Lizzie says:
Basically, we're focusing on how to get local food in NYC and may be traveling to upstate (or elsewhere in the tri-state area) to see some of the farms that supply it, as well as looking at people who farm in the city. However, it'd be fabulous if you could put me in contact with some upstate locavores/farmers...
I've clued her in to writers who are local food activists and serious food writers. I've set her on to chow, the nyc eat local people, the current issue of Gourmet and the New Yorker food issue, and I should tell her about the edible publications and Hudson Valley Table. But any other suggestions are appreciated.
The Hudson Valley...it's experiencing a food renaissance. It's got foamed cuisine now.
Is it because the Zagat children went to Vassar or because locally sourced food got trendy or the population of NYC-living second home folks reached a critical mass? I should be happy for it, right? The density of seriously cute towns up there is exploding. When I worked on the farm sometimes Robert DeNiro's helicopter would fly overhead. He owned a place in that town.
But the more the Hudson Valley becomes a plaything for New York City, the more it is never going to be affordable for people like me. Meanwhile the river's still dirty, Potown itself is...meh, I love it but I'm crazy, and the economy of the towns next to those cute towns sprinkled throughout Ulster County is still depressed.
Lizzie says:
Basically, we're focusing on how to get local food in NYC and may be traveling to upstate (or elsewhere in the tri-state area) to see some of the farms that supply it, as well as looking at people who farm in the city. However, it'd be fabulous if you could put me in contact with some upstate locavores/farmers...
I've clued her in to writers who are local food activists and serious food writers. I've set her on to chow, the nyc eat local people, the current issue of Gourmet and the New Yorker food issue, and I should tell her about the edible publications and Hudson Valley Table. But any other suggestions are appreciated.
The Hudson Valley...it's experiencing a food renaissance. It's got foamed cuisine now.
Is it because the Zagat children went to Vassar or because locally sourced food got trendy or the population of NYC-living second home folks reached a critical mass? I should be happy for it, right? The density of seriously cute towns up there is exploding. When I worked on the farm sometimes Robert DeNiro's helicopter would fly overhead. He owned a place in that town.
But the more the Hudson Valley becomes a plaything for New York City, the more it is never going to be affordable for people like me. Meanwhile the river's still dirty, Potown itself is...meh, I love it but I'm crazy, and the economy of the towns next to those cute towns sprinkled throughout Ulster County is still depressed.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
dragging myself out into the world, or trying to
Writing...which means of course *not* writing. At Philz. I'm going to work on the cut-up story.
Tonight will find me at the Sister Spit reading, deep in the Tenderloin, in a creaking and quasi literary bar. I went to the tour's last SF reading. This one should be packed with animated and angry dykes, trannies, queers of all sorts and shares, and a lion's share of writers with former drinking problems. The writers will be funny and fierce and reckless in their use of grammar. They may be published in journals you've never heard of or they may have books out. They'll make me want to be one of them. A slightly dangerous and more glamorous version of myself. Their words will be messy and juicy and breaking and I'll feel over-educated and timid and I'll want to write new stories about the world I live in.
I think the chef world needs more chronicling, but different chronicling. The voice of the pastry cook, so rarely heard. The girl in the kitchen, ditto. Queer cooks, how many do you know? What you know of my industry is Top Chef and Anthony Bourdain, but there's so much more than that. Who do you read? What do you read? What do you know of the kitchen? Why do you come here?
Like the chef, the writer is a mysterious and overly romanticized figure. The hazards of the occupation are fewer, but you will drive yourself crazy just as quickly and your quest for perfection will be misunderstood. Intense and overly analytical circles, my two worlds. Long hours toiling alone. More questions than answers. The deeper in you go, the more you realize what you don't know. You want someone to help you, to give you all the answers, but the process is far too complicated to work that way. Normal people don't understand why you do it. And you have plenty of normal relationships in your life but when you're with another writer or another chef, you talk for hours about things other people don't understand.
{talking about rice pudding last week, my boss said that If You Understand How Rice Cooks, Then You Will Understand Why You Need To Sweeten It At The End. It's the sort of koan that makes me want to not go back to work until I figure out why but then I'd never go back to work because there is always more to know about rice, and sugar. But don't you all worry I'll be at work tomorrow, claro}
I am lonely these days for a balance in my life. I cook, and then I read and think about how I should be writing. I ride my bike to and from work and think about biking around to other neighborhoods and getting to know my new city more. I used to be a balanced person before all this food stuff happened to me. I'm trying to remember that there are more things that I like to do. That I'm not just the girl in the Sox hat working the line {perhaps you are surprised that I get to wear my hat at work. I was, too. But customers talk to me all the time!}
Once upon a time I liked to read, knit, play scrabble, watch burlesque, play pool, hang out in cafes, go to all the major museum shows, ride my bicycle, play video games, go to literary readings, go thrift store shopping, grow vegetables, take my dog for really long walks, go driving around, maybe go on a date with a girl I might like. I wanted to learn to: keep bees, fish, be a better gardener/grower, make fucking sorbet which I still can't do, write a screenplay, be a cowboy, get out of debt, work with chocolate, speak spanish.
The last thing I wanted to do? Learn to work with seasonal and local produce. {&how long will it take me to learn all I should know about fruit? How many lifetimes indeed}
Writing. Happening now. I want to tell you a story about the FPFM, but I don't think I should.
Tonight will find me at the Sister Spit reading, deep in the Tenderloin, in a creaking and quasi literary bar. I went to the tour's last SF reading. This one should be packed with animated and angry dykes, trannies, queers of all sorts and shares, and a lion's share of writers with former drinking problems. The writers will be funny and fierce and reckless in their use of grammar. They may be published in journals you've never heard of or they may have books out. They'll make me want to be one of them. A slightly dangerous and more glamorous version of myself. Their words will be messy and juicy and breaking and I'll feel over-educated and timid and I'll want to write new stories about the world I live in.
I think the chef world needs more chronicling, but different chronicling. The voice of the pastry cook, so rarely heard. The girl in the kitchen, ditto. Queer cooks, how many do you know? What you know of my industry is Top Chef and Anthony Bourdain, but there's so much more than that. Who do you read? What do you read? What do you know of the kitchen? Why do you come here?
Like the chef, the writer is a mysterious and overly romanticized figure. The hazards of the occupation are fewer, but you will drive yourself crazy just as quickly and your quest for perfection will be misunderstood. Intense and overly analytical circles, my two worlds. Long hours toiling alone. More questions than answers. The deeper in you go, the more you realize what you don't know. You want someone to help you, to give you all the answers, but the process is far too complicated to work that way. Normal people don't understand why you do it. And you have plenty of normal relationships in your life but when you're with another writer or another chef, you talk for hours about things other people don't understand.
{talking about rice pudding last week, my boss said that If You Understand How Rice Cooks, Then You Will Understand Why You Need To Sweeten It At The End. It's the sort of koan that makes me want to not go back to work until I figure out why but then I'd never go back to work because there is always more to know about rice, and sugar. But don't you all worry I'll be at work tomorrow, claro}
I am lonely these days for a balance in my life. I cook, and then I read and think about how I should be writing. I ride my bike to and from work and think about biking around to other neighborhoods and getting to know my new city more. I used to be a balanced person before all this food stuff happened to me. I'm trying to remember that there are more things that I like to do. That I'm not just the girl in the Sox hat working the line {perhaps you are surprised that I get to wear my hat at work. I was, too. But customers talk to me all the time!}
Once upon a time I liked to read, knit, play scrabble, watch burlesque, play pool, hang out in cafes, go to all the major museum shows, ride my bicycle, play video games, go to literary readings, go thrift store shopping, grow vegetables, take my dog for really long walks, go driving around, maybe go on a date with a girl I might like. I wanted to learn to: keep bees, fish, be a better gardener/grower, make fucking sorbet which I still can't do, write a screenplay, be a cowboy, get out of debt, work with chocolate, speak spanish.
The last thing I wanted to do? Learn to work with seasonal and local produce. {&how long will it take me to learn all I should know about fruit? How many lifetimes indeed}
Writing. Happening now. I want to tell you a story about the FPFM, but I don't think I should.
Friday, October 12, 2007
bits and pieces, the heat of the kitchen
Crying in public is freeing.
I wanna cry. I wanna cry. I wanna lay down on this rubber mat and fall asleep. Just wanna sleep.
A day of choices yesterday, and the autumn leaves in the East Bay breaking down my speech. Oh my god. Oh my god. My tiny tin heart.
I Have Something For You is the currency of the week. Sometimes it’s words of advice or concern. Lengthy emails up and down the hills. Are you still happy there? Or the cake tags on the El Cerrito-Richmond border along the expanse of industrial railroad track, the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, because even though I didn’t have time I found them. And then wound my way through those familiar roads to the ice cream store on College Ave, a scoop of persimmon and one of rosemary pine nut brittle, and another gift.
We are all of us manic to talk. Talking for hours about ice cream base. It’s always been Claudia Fleming for me, milk kissed with slight cream and an abundance of egg yolks but this time, too sweet, but to cut it down by four and halve the sugar will it be okay? Will it all be okay?
I make my choice on that corner, lingering far too long, strategizing over the noodle kugel ice cream until it’s ridiculously past the time I should’ve pushed on to Oakland, but I go to Oakland anyway and find miraculously, or not, the thousand dollars in the mailbox of my old house, where no one lives any more. The on the road and the car feels good, the air, it’s getting to be fall and I’ve got an intriguing gift riding shotgun.
We are the sum of our choices and I am half an hour late, but I know how to blend into the crowd. Fake manners, nice smile, deferent tone, yeah I know this drill. And Stanford is just like Harvard, all old men with tufts of white hair, a sea of whiteness, and I smile and pass through.
Heat in the kitchen, even in an outdoor kitchen, how it crackles. I know the currency of that fire. We trade in it all day long. This chef is long brown hair piled on top of her head, cute glasses, hoodie peeking out under her chef coat, tall and lean. And screaming. We carry her frantic actions out beyond the borders, rush back, try to be good. Some time through service I feel a pang for the way she works the service. And I owned how I felt about plating just the other day but there I am Hey Chef You’re Missing A Garnish, And I Need A Wipe. With my little eyes on their details. She reaches for trays as she tells us to grab them but my hands are there already, my fingers a shade faster than hers and she takes the measure of me. Smiles. Back to work as my feet our of chef clogs start aching, back to work and I am reminded of a former friend who got into the business.
I Just Know What To Do she said, and we her roommates scoffed. I’ve written about this business. But I can’t seem to leave it behind.
What it initiative? What does it mean to take initiative? Especially when the par is perfection. And you’re still trying to gauge that measure in every mark.
I Just Know What To Do.
Spin and turn and heft the weight you haven’t hefted since May. Nod in deference, move fast, through tight spaces, curry favors with the chef. I Just Know What To Do. Order around the others, Hey You Is This Your Station Got To Get It Looking Like THIS.
There is even someone there from my restaurant, because this is such a small industry.
Sometimes you just know what needs to be done. You see the measure of it without needing to ask what needs to get done. You find your supervisor and tell them I’m Gonna Do This Now, Unless There’s Something You’d Like First.
How to take initiative. When you are a pastry assistant the first thing you learn is that you are replaceable. It’s often taken for granted that you are only passing through but you are made to feel it in every action anyway. Not like this. Like this. You Fucked That Up, I Don’t Know How. The boss himself is always confused, irritable, moving on anyway and you sense these currents in the air, tense your muscles. What few duties you are given are stripped down, changed, what was promised you in your interview was not given, will not be given. You are a girl with no name, an underground queer, in a damp basement or leaky old kitchen, you are in the corner, you are alone in the daytime with a room of people who don’t speak your language. What is appropriate, what are the boundaries, when is it okay to pull the plug on a failed work relationship? Moving on, moving on, it’s all you do, there will be someone else to take your place if you don’t like the hours or the pay or the menu. You do what you are able but the system falls apart on you, you remember one day screaming about apples and were surprised to find that rage in you, your boss leaves for an hour or so no explanation and is always outside smoking cigarettes or worse, staring at the traffic, he’s on his way out so it’s as if you’re never really there at all and the chef skulks, is that amber colored liquid in his glass what you think it is? What are the rules in this world when you do what you can, and that gets taken from you? When your questions are met with deferrals for a promise you eventually realize means nothing to anyone but you.
You could leave this world. Right? But you don’t. You never do. You move on and out across to where you think you need to be, to learn the things you know you are weak at. You move so far because there’s no mobility on the market at home. No chance of something better. Or different. You grow passive because more of the same is what you get on every trail, every phone conversation, and you know not to believe the promises.
Before you leave you have a brief, happy experience. It doesn’t always have to be this way, but for five out of seven of your culinary class it is. You describe everything that came before as Joyless. Where has the love gone? Where is the curiosity, the generosity?
The conversation continues, circular. You are all trying to get somewhere but sometimes it feels like you are alone. Your tiny tin heart. The big wide world.
Throw yourself into work, and the conversation. Intimate. Advice is given when it’s not asked for. It’s okay if you cry and work just cry and work. I just wanna be sleeping just wanna be sleeping But How Come You’re Not Happy You’re Working With ME?
What does sixty pies look like? You try to envision it. You ask around. You think is it fair, is it fair to me, is it fair to my other job, will I get any sleep? Can I ask for more money? You think it won’t be that bad if only you know how to prepare. Mise and go forth. Your valiant battle plan.
Why Do You Always Need To Please People?
But I Don’t.
I Don’t Wanna Get In Over My Head And Let Everyone Down.
I’ve Never Felt This Way Before SF. Happy At Work. Don’t Wanna Fuck It Up. {When you are made to believe that you are replaceable, that you are impermanent, how do you take initiative? Ask for more money? Can you say no? Refuse to bake all night? Can you let everyone down? Do you have to let everyone down, why do you see it that way, why do you think you are a bad worker? Especially when all you do is work?
You, who would rather be right than happy. How do you take the measure of yourself if you are always moving?
To have faith that the structure will hold we must not be afraid to break it down.
I wanna cry. I wanna cry. I wanna lay down on this rubber mat and fall asleep. Just wanna sleep.
A day of choices yesterday, and the autumn leaves in the East Bay breaking down my speech. Oh my god. Oh my god. My tiny tin heart.
I Have Something For You is the currency of the week. Sometimes it’s words of advice or concern. Lengthy emails up and down the hills. Are you still happy there? Or the cake tags on the El Cerrito-Richmond border along the expanse of industrial railroad track, the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, because even though I didn’t have time I found them. And then wound my way through those familiar roads to the ice cream store on College Ave, a scoop of persimmon and one of rosemary pine nut brittle, and another gift.
We are all of us manic to talk. Talking for hours about ice cream base. It’s always been Claudia Fleming for me, milk kissed with slight cream and an abundance of egg yolks but this time, too sweet, but to cut it down by four and halve the sugar will it be okay? Will it all be okay?
I make my choice on that corner, lingering far too long, strategizing over the noodle kugel ice cream until it’s ridiculously past the time I should’ve pushed on to Oakland, but I go to Oakland anyway and find miraculously, or not, the thousand dollars in the mailbox of my old house, where no one lives any more. The on the road and the car feels good, the air, it’s getting to be fall and I’ve got an intriguing gift riding shotgun.
We are the sum of our choices and I am half an hour late, but I know how to blend into the crowd. Fake manners, nice smile, deferent tone, yeah I know this drill. And Stanford is just like Harvard, all old men with tufts of white hair, a sea of whiteness, and I smile and pass through.
Heat in the kitchen, even in an outdoor kitchen, how it crackles. I know the currency of that fire. We trade in it all day long. This chef is long brown hair piled on top of her head, cute glasses, hoodie peeking out under her chef coat, tall and lean. And screaming. We carry her frantic actions out beyond the borders, rush back, try to be good. Some time through service I feel a pang for the way she works the service. And I owned how I felt about plating just the other day but there I am Hey Chef You’re Missing A Garnish, And I Need A Wipe. With my little eyes on their details. She reaches for trays as she tells us to grab them but my hands are there already, my fingers a shade faster than hers and she takes the measure of me. Smiles. Back to work as my feet our of chef clogs start aching, back to work and I am reminded of a former friend who got into the business.
I Just Know What To Do she said, and we her roommates scoffed. I’ve written about this business. But I can’t seem to leave it behind.
What it initiative? What does it mean to take initiative? Especially when the par is perfection. And you’re still trying to gauge that measure in every mark.
I Just Know What To Do.
Spin and turn and heft the weight you haven’t hefted since May. Nod in deference, move fast, through tight spaces, curry favors with the chef. I Just Know What To Do. Order around the others, Hey You Is This Your Station Got To Get It Looking Like THIS.
There is even someone there from my restaurant, because this is such a small industry.
Sometimes you just know what needs to be done. You see the measure of it without needing to ask what needs to get done. You find your supervisor and tell them I’m Gonna Do This Now, Unless There’s Something You’d Like First.
How to take initiative. When you are a pastry assistant the first thing you learn is that you are replaceable. It’s often taken for granted that you are only passing through but you are made to feel it in every action anyway. Not like this. Like this. You Fucked That Up, I Don’t Know How. The boss himself is always confused, irritable, moving on anyway and you sense these currents in the air, tense your muscles. What few duties you are given are stripped down, changed, what was promised you in your interview was not given, will not be given. You are a girl with no name, an underground queer, in a damp basement or leaky old kitchen, you are in the corner, you are alone in the daytime with a room of people who don’t speak your language. What is appropriate, what are the boundaries, when is it okay to pull the plug on a failed work relationship? Moving on, moving on, it’s all you do, there will be someone else to take your place if you don’t like the hours or the pay or the menu. You do what you are able but the system falls apart on you, you remember one day screaming about apples and were surprised to find that rage in you, your boss leaves for an hour or so no explanation and is always outside smoking cigarettes or worse, staring at the traffic, he’s on his way out so it’s as if you’re never really there at all and the chef skulks, is that amber colored liquid in his glass what you think it is? What are the rules in this world when you do what you can, and that gets taken from you? When your questions are met with deferrals for a promise you eventually realize means nothing to anyone but you.
You could leave this world. Right? But you don’t. You never do. You move on and out across to where you think you need to be, to learn the things you know you are weak at. You move so far because there’s no mobility on the market at home. No chance of something better. Or different. You grow passive because more of the same is what you get on every trail, every phone conversation, and you know not to believe the promises.
Before you leave you have a brief, happy experience. It doesn’t always have to be this way, but for five out of seven of your culinary class it is. You describe everything that came before as Joyless. Where has the love gone? Where is the curiosity, the generosity?
The conversation continues, circular. You are all trying to get somewhere but sometimes it feels like you are alone. Your tiny tin heart. The big wide world.
Throw yourself into work, and the conversation. Intimate. Advice is given when it’s not asked for. It’s okay if you cry and work just cry and work. I just wanna be sleeping just wanna be sleeping But How Come You’re Not Happy You’re Working With ME?
What does sixty pies look like? You try to envision it. You ask around. You think is it fair, is it fair to me, is it fair to my other job, will I get any sleep? Can I ask for more money? You think it won’t be that bad if only you know how to prepare. Mise and go forth. Your valiant battle plan.
Why Do You Always Need To Please People?
But I Don’t.
I Don’t Wanna Get In Over My Head And Let Everyone Down.
I’ve Never Felt This Way Before SF. Happy At Work. Don’t Wanna Fuck It Up. {When you are made to believe that you are replaceable, that you are impermanent, how do you take initiative? Ask for more money? Can you say no? Refuse to bake all night? Can you let everyone down? Do you have to let everyone down, why do you see it that way, why do you think you are a bad worker? Especially when all you do is work?
You, who would rather be right than happy. How do you take the measure of yourself if you are always moving?
To have faith that the structure will hold we must not be afraid to break it down.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
plating versus production...?
Worked lunch today and toward the end of my shift as I was cleaning the station my sous chef came out to ask me if I wanted to make the sweat-inducing chiboust. If I Don't Do That Then What? I asked, cause if the alternative was something I'd been exposed to less I'd take that one. Or Clean, she said. So I took the chiboust.
I was Asking You Cause You Seemed To Really Like Doing It, she said.
Oh Yeah. I Do. Then I paused to clarify. It wasn't that I loved preparing this particular menu item. I'm So Much Happier Doing Production, I said. I Much Prefer It To Service. I Know I Have A Lot To Learn From Doing Service And I'm Down With That But It Doesn't Make My Heart Sing.
So I whisked frantically for some time and then we super cleaned the kitchen to Le Tigre, silently singing along cause neither of us can sing. I really like my sous chef and feel like we've kind of bonded. It could have started out as just a dyke thing but I tell her what I want, pester her to show me things I haven't gotten to do yet. While we were scrubbing everything down today I told her she was doing a really good job. Not That It Means That Much Coming From Me, I prefaced the compliment.
No, It Does, she said. Surprised. And now hours later I want to tell my coworker who is new to the industry that she's really brave. And I just emailed my boss some things that had been on my mind like how I love my job, because I think it's fairly obvious but it might not be. Is it a good idea or is it a bad idea to email things like that to your boss, I don't know, but it's honest. This post has me rethinking all communication lately, not just fictitious.
I called a cook friend on my way home and we fell into talking about work. Plating. I'd Rather Be In The Back And Mise Ingredients For YOU To Make A Cake Than Plate Desserts I said. Production calms me. Even if I am only punching out cookies on a sheet pan it makes me happy.
I know that plating desserts is important. I also really like my chef's style of plating. It makes sense to me, aesthetically. At Sonsie I was always befuddled by the choices my boss made in terms of plate components and in terms of plate design. We'd do a piece of mousse cake atop a giant peanut meringue, with a tiny line of chocolate sauce like a moat around the meringue. The meringue made sense because it was crunchy and added a texture but who wanted to eat an enormous meringue with really rich mousse cake and who wanted only a dabble of sauce? No, this job is not like that. The plates are lovely and there is a certain pride to it. Each time I draw the glassy, glistening caramel down the edge of the plate in a clean line and don't mess up the edges, I'm totally happy. Placing the fig garnish in a neat line makes me smile. I am even getting into the rhythm of plating again, after nine months without restaurant positions. Lunch is actually a lot faster than dinner and having the tickets pile up while I was still trying to unmold shy panna cottas from their ramekins didn't make me nervous.
So it isn't that I don't like plating. I just don't love it. I understand that it is necessary and I understand why. Production I love. Even when it's boring. Though I'll admit I loved it a little less at the cupcakery, because nothing ever changes.
But my friend made me see it a little differently. You Will Learn So Much About The Products, he said. Each Time You Handle That Cake You'll Understand It Better In A Way You Never Would Only By Baking It, he said. And it's true that I know how each piece feels day in and day out. That a component has different value to me when I see it as a tool.
I Think You'll Get To Like It Better, my friend said.
Will I not truly understand a panna cotta until I can unmold it efficiently? Because...and this is funny...my arms are aching, actually. So all you do is warm the outside of the ramekin in a bain, loosen the top edges of the custard, and then invert it onto a flat plate and shake the plate (with your thumbs on top supporting the ramekin) vigorously. Ridiculous sounding, yeah? My sous chef actually laughed at me when I told her my arms were sore.
Do I prefer production because I see myself as less good at plating? With all of its fussy precision. Do I prefer production because it's somehow, and this is ridiculous too, more butch to heft large Hobart bowls someone my size really shouldn't be lifting anyway, to bust out all the bread the restaurant requires for the day? I'm Getting In Touch With My Femme Side, I told my sous chef after I rearranged our flowers into two tiny vials of the ones that were still alive, keeping the prettier one for the pastry side of the pass. Between that and the handwriting.
Maybe...maybe it's not a versus thing. I'm willing to consider that it will teach me not just about precision, consistency and efficiency of movement but about the raw materials I'm working with.
I was Asking You Cause You Seemed To Really Like Doing It, she said.
Oh Yeah. I Do. Then I paused to clarify. It wasn't that I loved preparing this particular menu item. I'm So Much Happier Doing Production, I said. I Much Prefer It To Service. I Know I Have A Lot To Learn From Doing Service And I'm Down With That But It Doesn't Make My Heart Sing.
So I whisked frantically for some time and then we super cleaned the kitchen to Le Tigre, silently singing along cause neither of us can sing. I really like my sous chef and feel like we've kind of bonded. It could have started out as just a dyke thing but I tell her what I want, pester her to show me things I haven't gotten to do yet. While we were scrubbing everything down today I told her she was doing a really good job. Not That It Means That Much Coming From Me, I prefaced the compliment.
No, It Does, she said. Surprised. And now hours later I want to tell my coworker who is new to the industry that she's really brave. And I just emailed my boss some things that had been on my mind like how I love my job, because I think it's fairly obvious but it might not be. Is it a good idea or is it a bad idea to email things like that to your boss, I don't know, but it's honest. This post has me rethinking all communication lately, not just fictitious.
I called a cook friend on my way home and we fell into talking about work. Plating. I'd Rather Be In The Back And Mise Ingredients For YOU To Make A Cake Than Plate Desserts I said. Production calms me. Even if I am only punching out cookies on a sheet pan it makes me happy.
I know that plating desserts is important. I also really like my chef's style of plating. It makes sense to me, aesthetically. At Sonsie I was always befuddled by the choices my boss made in terms of plate components and in terms of plate design. We'd do a piece of mousse cake atop a giant peanut meringue, with a tiny line of chocolate sauce like a moat around the meringue. The meringue made sense because it was crunchy and added a texture but who wanted to eat an enormous meringue with really rich mousse cake and who wanted only a dabble of sauce? No, this job is not like that. The plates are lovely and there is a certain pride to it. Each time I draw the glassy, glistening caramel down the edge of the plate in a clean line and don't mess up the edges, I'm totally happy. Placing the fig garnish in a neat line makes me smile. I am even getting into the rhythm of plating again, after nine months without restaurant positions. Lunch is actually a lot faster than dinner and having the tickets pile up while I was still trying to unmold shy panna cottas from their ramekins didn't make me nervous.
So it isn't that I don't like plating. I just don't love it. I understand that it is necessary and I understand why. Production I love. Even when it's boring. Though I'll admit I loved it a little less at the cupcakery, because nothing ever changes.
But my friend made me see it a little differently. You Will Learn So Much About The Products, he said. Each Time You Handle That Cake You'll Understand It Better In A Way You Never Would Only By Baking It, he said. And it's true that I know how each piece feels day in and day out. That a component has different value to me when I see it as a tool.
I Think You'll Get To Like It Better, my friend said.
Will I not truly understand a panna cotta until I can unmold it efficiently? Because...and this is funny...my arms are aching, actually. So all you do is warm the outside of the ramekin in a bain, loosen the top edges of the custard, and then invert it onto a flat plate and shake the plate (with your thumbs on top supporting the ramekin) vigorously. Ridiculous sounding, yeah? My sous chef actually laughed at me when I told her my arms were sore.
Do I prefer production because I see myself as less good at plating? With all of its fussy precision. Do I prefer production because it's somehow, and this is ridiculous too, more butch to heft large Hobart bowls someone my size really shouldn't be lifting anyway, to bust out all the bread the restaurant requires for the day? I'm Getting In Touch With My Femme Side, I told my sous chef after I rearranged our flowers into two tiny vials of the ones that were still alive, keeping the prettier one for the pastry side of the pass. Between that and the handwriting.
Maybe...maybe it's not a versus thing. I'm willing to consider that it will teach me not just about precision, consistency and efficiency of movement but about the raw materials I'm working with.
I miss fall. So far it seems to be the only season in San Francisco that slightly mirrors the places I've left behind. The leaves turn brown show through with green, they crumple, their veins oddly vibrant. I pick some up off the Embarcadero on the way to work and hold them in my mittened hands, delighted. The air has the same weight and smells similarly and it makes me want to be home, on the other side of the country.
The apples are gorgeous, heroic in their variety. But even the tightness of their flesh reminds me of the East. It's October baseball and the Sox are in the playoffs (and the Yankees suck). Watching baseball makes me miss the shy and awkward enthusiasm of Bostonians.
I've got something really heavy and difficult in my life right now, and it requires me to act like a calm and rational adult all the time, and that is hard to do. Yesterday the situation got, oh, five percent better, which is something.
Last night after work I walked my bike home from the 24th St. BART in the rain and ran into my coworker from FH at his other job. You know you're home in a city when you run into your Mexican coworkers in distant parts of town and have conversations half English, half Spanish. I am here now, but this visceral longing unsettles me.
I've got Earl Grey ice cream base in the fridge, and orange shortbread cookies to make ice cream sandwiches, but what I don't have is the silky hot fudge sauce from work to drown it in. Tomorrow I am maybe, hopefully, eating persimmon ice cream and/or quince sorbet. Oh, and the noodle kugel ice cream is coming along. We have a plan. It is going to be fantastic.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
leave it hanging: more revision(ist) strategies
By the time I leave for work this afternoon the carousel story will be cut and hanging on my walls. More like an art exhibit that a written piece. This is the best strategy I learned in school, but you should only do it when a piece is almost there.
Cut the story up at its transition points. When do you flash forward or go into backstory, when do you jump space or time? Tape your components together. Hang them up sequentially. You'll see then how you have a three page backstory in the middle of a fiften page story, or how the information you know needs to be at the beginning of the story is buried on page 6. You'll find the holes. You will understand what's missing, what you have failed to say, how you have tried to address the problem with the father in three places, but are they all necessary?
At the end of a story, fiction is a ruthless enterprise. What deserves to stay on the page?
Who controls the content? Why do we trust that the frame will hold?
Cut the story up at its transition points. When do you flash forward or go into backstory, when do you jump space or time? Tape your components together. Hang them up sequentially. You'll see then how you have a three page backstory in the middle of a fiften page story, or how the information you know needs to be at the beginning of the story is buried on page 6. You'll find the holes. You will understand what's missing, what you have failed to say, how you have tried to address the problem with the father in three places, but are they all necessary?
At the end of a story, fiction is a ruthless enterprise. What deserves to stay on the page?
Who controls the content? Why do we trust that the frame will hold?
Sunday, October 07, 2007
edge city: revisionist strategies
Saturday night I took my bike down Folsom to Embarcadero, then down all the way past the Fisherman's Wharf crowd and out to Aquatic Park, then home via Polk to Van Ness with a stop for doughnut sampling at Bob's {I'm serious bout these doughnuts, man}. I meant to stop at Aquatic Park and walk out along the pier but it was blocked off for Flight Week. Some time ago I wrote a story and a pivotal scene ended up happening on that pier (only I didn't know it then, and the logistics of coordinating a story three thousand miles away that I didn't know was messy at best, but it was the only way to try to be here). It's a great place to see the city because you've got the tackiness of Ghirardelli Square at your back, Alcatraz Island lurking in the depths in front of you, and you can look toward the Golden Gate and open ocean beyond. I had some questions I needed to work out, and I needed to put myself in my characters' frame of mind for the stories that get edited once this carousel story is finished. Back to the chef cycle: the line cook, and the sous chef.
All of these pieces and the carousel too are so similar in sentiment. A professor I had once said that there are two plots for stories: A Stranger Comes To Town, and the other one whose name I forget. And all of these pieces are variations on that theme. Sometimes you meet someone so wonderful and you know that the sum of all you have isn't enough for that person but it's all you can give so you stand before them with your hands outstretched, knowing it's futile, knowing you have to. Because you are lovesick, or your mother is ill. Because you love another (you do, right?) but you are compelled. Because you are not enough alone. Because you want to believe in love. Because you are young. Because of her smile. His stutter, his red cheeks. The Stranger Comes To Town, and you are not so ill-prepared.
I needed to feel that painful emptiness and how the city melts around you as you move through it. How the water laps at the shore. How small it makes you feel. How you try to find messages in the street lamps and shards of conversation you overhear. Because at present there is no one that I can act so recklessly for.
I think for one I understand the line cook's story better now (though it is far from being good and will inevitably pose its own problems as I continue), and the carousel story will be easy to complete, but it's the sous chef's story that stumps me because its potential for betrayal is so total.
There is another short piece in the works about the inability to accept love when it's given.
These thoughts all beg another question: how do you know when it's right? How can you take it on faith that you will love something?
When I first found Claudia Fleming's cookbook in the library I loved it. I read it hushed and awed on the T, wanting to understand the ideas behind each choice, looking to decode its clues. I wouldn't return it to the library. I kept renewing it. When it had to go back, I'd wait and then check it out again. It was one of the last items I returned before I moved to Oakland and I'm pretty sure at the time it had late fines. But I only made one recipe from it during all that time. Having recently made a couple others I was confused and saddened when one resulted in an overly sweet confection. And I'm down with sweet things, but this was just wrong.
I don't *love* things frequently, least of all food, my own or anyone's. But I just missed my chance at the Saturday market to tell Mourad Lahlou how exquisitely perfect everything we ate at Aziza was, and how for two full days after every pause in conversation was a return to shared sighs. I made a list of the food I can say I've loved and it came down to six Bay Area chefs and three in Boston (three!) Recently I told someone I loved her food...or, rather I knew I'd love your food before I tasted any of it, and I do. How do you know when it's right when it's just an idea? How can you take it on faith? Why have I only had roast chicken that is PERFECT twice in my life?
And maybe that is what the story is missing. The faith that to heal the structure we first need to break it. Break it down. The guts to go all the way to the problem. Which is probably why I love that first piece so much {the one that takes place on the pier, in part}. It's a devastating scream from someone who has always been in utter control. It's the bid to keep the Stranger even as she's skipping town. It's the recognition that you are not enough, in all your failed grace, that you will not change, that your promises will not be kept.
All of these pieces and the carousel too are so similar in sentiment. A professor I had once said that there are two plots for stories: A Stranger Comes To Town, and the other one whose name I forget. And all of these pieces are variations on that theme. Sometimes you meet someone so wonderful and you know that the sum of all you have isn't enough for that person but it's all you can give so you stand before them with your hands outstretched, knowing it's futile, knowing you have to. Because you are lovesick, or your mother is ill. Because you love another (you do, right?) but you are compelled. Because you are not enough alone. Because you want to believe in love. Because you are young. Because of her smile. His stutter, his red cheeks. The Stranger Comes To Town, and you are not so ill-prepared.
I needed to feel that painful emptiness and how the city melts around you as you move through it. How the water laps at the shore. How small it makes you feel. How you try to find messages in the street lamps and shards of conversation you overhear. Because at present there is no one that I can act so recklessly for.
I think for one I understand the line cook's story better now (though it is far from being good and will inevitably pose its own problems as I continue), and the carousel story will be easy to complete, but it's the sous chef's story that stumps me because its potential for betrayal is so total.
There is another short piece in the works about the inability to accept love when it's given.
These thoughts all beg another question: how do you know when it's right? How can you take it on faith that you will love something?
When I first found Claudia Fleming's cookbook in the library I loved it. I read it hushed and awed on the T, wanting to understand the ideas behind each choice, looking to decode its clues. I wouldn't return it to the library. I kept renewing it. When it had to go back, I'd wait and then check it out again. It was one of the last items I returned before I moved to Oakland and I'm pretty sure at the time it had late fines. But I only made one recipe from it during all that time. Having recently made a couple others I was confused and saddened when one resulted in an overly sweet confection. And I'm down with sweet things, but this was just wrong.
I don't *love* things frequently, least of all food, my own or anyone's. But I just missed my chance at the Saturday market to tell Mourad Lahlou how exquisitely perfect everything we ate at Aziza was, and how for two full days after every pause in conversation was a return to shared sighs. I made a list of the food I can say I've loved and it came down to six Bay Area chefs and three in Boston (three!) Recently I told someone I loved her food...or, rather I knew I'd love your food before I tasted any of it, and I do. How do you know when it's right when it's just an idea? How can you take it on faith? Why have I only had roast chicken that is PERFECT twice in my life?
And maybe that is what the story is missing. The faith that to heal the structure we first need to break it. Break it down. The guts to go all the way to the problem. Which is probably why I love that first piece so much {the one that takes place on the pier, in part}. It's a devastating scream from someone who has always been in utter control. It's the bid to keep the Stranger even as she's skipping town. It's the recognition that you are not enough, in all your failed grace, that you will not change, that your promises will not be kept.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
new york, day two
Thank you to all New Yorkers and ex-New Yorkers for your wonderful suggestions.
So I said the pretzel croissant was all right. I forgot to mention the part where on day two I woke up and I had a breakfast destintion all planned out but really...I just kinda wanted another pretzel croissant. It's like how I felt about zaatar the morning after. Sometimes things just take a day to be brilliant to you. I *almost* bought another more than once that day...but I ended up with something even more instructionally interesting.
From the beginning, however: I woke up in my friend's dorm room at a too-early hour and due to my not having coffee hopped on a Brooklyn bound train. Figured out somewhere around Schermerhorn Street things were not quite right. My farmer was waiting for me, all dolled up in a pretty dress, by the time I got to West 4th, and we got the last available table in Patisserie Claude. Croissant for me, roll of cake for my friend. My croissant is buttery and flaky, and the coffee is good although I am initially skeptical, and we sit in the too-hot bakery amidst the other people who have no work obligations, maybe because it is Rosh Hashanah and the whole city seems to be free, and we tell each other the big news. I haven't seen her since February. She's one of those people I love so fiercely that we can't stop hugging, we find little excuses to touch one another, and as we walk down Christopher Street afterward I stop and take her hands in mind. I Have To Tell You Something. I tell her all about how I Love New York Again.
We both know what this means, and we get there, as I take a look at my notebook full of pastry suggestions and decide that if we walk down Spring Street we will hit three of my selections. The Hudson Valley House, one day...in whatever town I can afford. I've been making calculations based upon this house for years now. Maybe I'll Be Bi-Coastal, I say, a sigh, San Francisco a kink in all my well laid plans. But not even San Francisco can take that upstate house from me. It's in my blood, or something {and I do have relatives buried in the cemetery in Wappingers Falls}.
On the bakery tour, I fall in love with Balthazar, which is so adorably European and otherwordly, but we're too stuffed from breakfast so instead we muscle past the hostess and stare at the pastries and I decide to save it for next time. Just a little further down the street is button-cute Ceci Cela, with the most luscious looking glazed puff pastry and pear tartlets I have seen Ever. Jewelboxes glinting in the sun. But I'm still too full for something so large, so settle for a financier, which is smaller in size. Almondy and brown buttery and fine, but as we walk around the corner arguing about which way is uptown I'm longing for the puff pastry.
My farmer demands real food and she kind of wants French, so when we stumble upon Cafe Gitane it's great. I'm wearing my Harlem shirt and when the cute server comments I mumble about how I used to live in Brooklyn. My farmer orders a lentil-cranberry-walnut and smoked trout salad, which she succeeds in making me try. And like, despite my mistrust of cold foods and suspicion of smoked fish. Seriously good. I was more than happy with my cucumber mint yogurt salad dusted with rose petals, topped with a mound of hummus and perfectly toasted warm pita points that were faint echoes of Aziza's wonderfulness. I *did* kind of want a lil sumac on my salad, and a dash more rose, but it seemed outside the lit of reasonable requests.
Sometimes you can sit in silence with people and it's better than talking. Sometimes it's okay that someone is three thousand miles from you because they love what they're doing and they worked so hard to get there, and since you love them you know it's for the best, even if your heart is jealous.
After lunch we walk to one more bakery, the Build A Green Bakery/Birdhouse endeavor. I almost buy another pretzel croissant, which, it's worth noting, is fifty cents cheaper at the 1st Ave./13th St. Green outpost than the actual City Bakery. I also almost buy a giant cookie, but instead go for the miso plum cake and stash it in my bag for the long bus ride home. My farmer catches a cab uptown and we try to say goodbye. Too many hugs. Kisses. Promises. I shuffle off to my old place of employment to use the Zagat guide and get directions.
I walked up to Kalustyan's and almost bought so many things. Reminisced about my friends' old Murray Hill apartment and nights spent wanting so many things. I'd walked so far that I was trying to remember the quickest way back to a subway without walking the ten or so more blocks uptown to Grand Central but couldn't recall and ended up in Herald Square catching the F to Canal, where it was just two exactly and I was going to have to wait an hour for the bus.
But at Canal you can catch the JMZ, and if you go one or two stops you're back on the Lower East Side which is not all that far from Doughnut Plant and though I've already got a pastry in my bag for the bus I think some sugar and caffeine will get me out of the so-tired-I'm-going-to-pass-out and back into happy. Doughnut Plant is smaller than I expected, at least the retail side. I inspect the doughnuts and ask the man: peach or blueberry jelly? There's a note that explains they've started making their own jams and jellies. Blueberry, he says, then grabs a fresh rack from the back room and turns out he's been a baker, too, so we discuss the life. Kitchens. I take a bunch of photos and leave, tearing into my doughnut on the walk toward Chinatown. Square doughnut. Blueberry Jelly. Vanilla Bean Glaze. I'm not expecting the way the glaze flakes apart onto my hands as I eat. I've never actually *liked* a jelly doughnut before, certainly not the Dunkies version, but the blueberry jelly is wonderful and falling all over my hands. I've got no napkin so I'm licking it up and continuing to eat and stumbling closer to Chinatown. I'm revived. I'm in love again. I can't wait to come back.
Lest you forget I still had the miso plum cake to eat. If there had been more plums...mountains of plums! As it was, the cake alone was kind of crumbly-dry and hard to eat, but when eaten with the juicy plums it was heaven. I sort of resisted eating it for a few hours because I had that doughnut aftertaste in my mouth and didn't want to ruin it. But the cake was so intriguing, and the whole time I kept eating it I couldn't stop thinking about my upside down cake dilemma. What else was the miso cake but another form of that (well, I'm sure it wasn't baked upside down, but what is the seed behind the idea? what shape does the form take?)? I didn't have to make something I didn't like. Even if it was Chez Panisse. Even if it always sold well.
After all that, I went home and ate BBQ and was then convinced into going for ice cream to JP Licks. I got my favorite choice from there: oatmeal cookie yogurt with caramel sauce. But I also asked to try a new flavor: noodle kugel. It was amazing. I'm going to have to figure out how they did it from the tiny tasting spoon bite I had. Milky, cinnamony, tiny shards of noodles.
What's Kugel? my friends all asked.
It's A Jewish Food...I said.
So I said the pretzel croissant was all right. I forgot to mention the part where on day two I woke up and I had a breakfast destintion all planned out but really...I just kinda wanted another pretzel croissant. It's like how I felt about zaatar the morning after. Sometimes things just take a day to be brilliant to you. I *almost* bought another more than once that day...but I ended up with something even more instructionally interesting.
From the beginning, however: I woke up in my friend's dorm room at a too-early hour and due to my not having coffee hopped on a Brooklyn bound train. Figured out somewhere around Schermerhorn Street things were not quite right. My farmer was waiting for me, all dolled up in a pretty dress, by the time I got to West 4th, and we got the last available table in Patisserie Claude. Croissant for me, roll of cake for my friend. My croissant is buttery and flaky, and the coffee is good although I am initially skeptical, and we sit in the too-hot bakery amidst the other people who have no work obligations, maybe because it is Rosh Hashanah and the whole city seems to be free, and we tell each other the big news. I haven't seen her since February. She's one of those people I love so fiercely that we can't stop hugging, we find little excuses to touch one another, and as we walk down Christopher Street afterward I stop and take her hands in mind. I Have To Tell You Something. I tell her all about how I Love New York Again.
We both know what this means, and we get there, as I take a look at my notebook full of pastry suggestions and decide that if we walk down Spring Street we will hit three of my selections. The Hudson Valley House, one day...in whatever town I can afford. I've been making calculations based upon this house for years now. Maybe I'll Be Bi-Coastal, I say, a sigh, San Francisco a kink in all my well laid plans. But not even San Francisco can take that upstate house from me. It's in my blood, or something {and I do have relatives buried in the cemetery in Wappingers Falls}.
On the bakery tour, I fall in love with Balthazar, which is so adorably European and otherwordly, but we're too stuffed from breakfast so instead we muscle past the hostess and stare at the pastries and I decide to save it for next time. Just a little further down the street is button-cute Ceci Cela, with the most luscious looking glazed puff pastry and pear tartlets I have seen Ever. Jewelboxes glinting in the sun. But I'm still too full for something so large, so settle for a financier, which is smaller in size. Almondy and brown buttery and fine, but as we walk around the corner arguing about which way is uptown I'm longing for the puff pastry.
My farmer demands real food and she kind of wants French, so when we stumble upon Cafe Gitane it's great. I'm wearing my Harlem shirt and when the cute server comments I mumble about how I used to live in Brooklyn. My farmer orders a lentil-cranberry-walnut and smoked trout salad, which she succeeds in making me try. And like, despite my mistrust of cold foods and suspicion of smoked fish. Seriously good. I was more than happy with my cucumber mint yogurt salad dusted with rose petals, topped with a mound of hummus and perfectly toasted warm pita points that were faint echoes of Aziza's wonderfulness. I *did* kind of want a lil sumac on my salad, and a dash more rose, but it seemed outside the lit of reasonable requests.
Sometimes you can sit in silence with people and it's better than talking. Sometimes it's okay that someone is three thousand miles from you because they love what they're doing and they worked so hard to get there, and since you love them you know it's for the best, even if your heart is jealous.
After lunch we walk to one more bakery, the Build A Green Bakery/Birdhouse endeavor. I almost buy another pretzel croissant, which, it's worth noting, is fifty cents cheaper at the 1st Ave./13th St. Green outpost than the actual City Bakery. I also almost buy a giant cookie, but instead go for the miso plum cake and stash it in my bag for the long bus ride home. My farmer catches a cab uptown and we try to say goodbye. Too many hugs. Kisses. Promises. I shuffle off to my old place of employment to use the Zagat guide and get directions.
I walked up to Kalustyan's and almost bought so many things. Reminisced about my friends' old Murray Hill apartment and nights spent wanting so many things. I'd walked so far that I was trying to remember the quickest way back to a subway without walking the ten or so more blocks uptown to Grand Central but couldn't recall and ended up in Herald Square catching the F to Canal, where it was just two exactly and I was going to have to wait an hour for the bus.
But at Canal you can catch the JMZ, and if you go one or two stops you're back on the Lower East Side which is not all that far from Doughnut Plant and though I've already got a pastry in my bag for the bus I think some sugar and caffeine will get me out of the so-tired-I'm-going-to-pass-out and back into happy. Doughnut Plant is smaller than I expected, at least the retail side. I inspect the doughnuts and ask the man: peach or blueberry jelly? There's a note that explains they've started making their own jams and jellies. Blueberry, he says, then grabs a fresh rack from the back room and turns out he's been a baker, too, so we discuss the life. Kitchens. I take a bunch of photos and leave, tearing into my doughnut on the walk toward Chinatown. Square doughnut. Blueberry Jelly. Vanilla Bean Glaze. I'm not expecting the way the glaze flakes apart onto my hands as I eat. I've never actually *liked* a jelly doughnut before, certainly not the Dunkies version, but the blueberry jelly is wonderful and falling all over my hands. I've got no napkin so I'm licking it up and continuing to eat and stumbling closer to Chinatown. I'm revived. I'm in love again. I can't wait to come back.
Lest you forget I still had the miso plum cake to eat. If there had been more plums...mountains of plums! As it was, the cake alone was kind of crumbly-dry and hard to eat, but when eaten with the juicy plums it was heaven. I sort of resisted eating it for a few hours because I had that doughnut aftertaste in my mouth and didn't want to ruin it. But the cake was so intriguing, and the whole time I kept eating it I couldn't stop thinking about my upside down cake dilemma. What else was the miso cake but another form of that (well, I'm sure it wasn't baked upside down, but what is the seed behind the idea? what shape does the form take?)? I didn't have to make something I didn't like. Even if it was Chez Panisse. Even if it always sold well.
After all that, I went home and ate BBQ and was then convinced into going for ice cream to JP Licks. I got my favorite choice from there: oatmeal cookie yogurt with caramel sauce. But I also asked to try a new flavor: noodle kugel. It was amazing. I'm going to have to figure out how they did it from the tiny tasting spoon bite I had. Milky, cinnamony, tiny shards of noodles.
What's Kugel? my friends all asked.
It's A Jewish Food...I said.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
the girls do it better than the boys
Bread, that is. Some lonely like cook wandered into our kitchen a couple days ago to use the big mixer, and I'm not sure what he did (or didn't do, more appropriately), but all of a sudden he was shoved aside and my boss was coddling his bread dough.
There was no salt, for one. So while she explained to him about the importance of salt, what salt's role is in dough, she finessed the right amounts of water and flour. He left. He didn't come back for a while, so she continued, taking the dough out of the mixer, kneading it into a bowl, whispering sweet nothings into its yeasty lil ear. One of the sous chefs came by and was like We're Supposed To Get It Like A Windowpane, Huh? That's What You're Doing?
Short answer, yeah.
As I was hastening to get my second pot of goodness on the stove, I saw how the sous chef was shaping the bread. I stopped. I've got about nine months of day to day bread experience-rolls, focaccia, cornbread, crackers, light wheat, potato bread, biscuits, pizza dough-on my resume. And he was treating the bread like he was a kid playing bouncy ball by himself and he had all day to shape those out-in-the-air lil rounds as if they weren't gonna get crusty. I planted myself next to the prep table, picked up a round of dough. Spun it in one hand, feeling the contours of the dough ride up against my fingers and tighten. Like A Baby's Bottom, my old boss used to say. It's a body memory.
Like This, I said. Feel This. Now Feel Yours. His were flabby. We loved this dough into existence for him and I was not gonna let him do the next step without giving him something to aim for. I barely had time for a mini explanation before my arms were overloaded with dairy and I was back to work.
There's this chiboust I've been making every day at the new job. Ostensibly it begins as a pastry cream, but all the body memories of pastry cream are stripped form it and the project's turned inside out. Yolks and flours, flavorings are whisked into hot milk and the entire thing is cooked on the stove, on extremely low heat.
But mostly it's being whisked like you're Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman is after you. Did You Break A Sweat? my boss asked the first time I made it. Well You're Not Whisking Hard Enough.
if you can talk you're not whisking hard enough
if you breath in-out you're not whisking hard enough
if you can think you're not whisking hard enough
if your muscles aren't straining burning, if your hands aren't calloused
you're not doing it right
One of the guys said if he had to make this every day he'd hate his job but I just shook my head and bent over my task. Each time I come to it I notice something new. Each fresh batch is a chance to whisk it better, to see how it reacts each time some level of starch or dairy is cooked out and the mixture thickens. To take it less seriously is to risk ruining it. I was trying to explain to a friend while biking home last night why it needed this level of care. That's Crazy was all he said. I've got boys shirking at the thought of whisking something with all your might for the better part of half an hour, but you know? You figure out what the purpose of movement is, what it really means to whisk something, what you bring to the kitchen and what kind of compromiser you are.
Each time you try to do it with all your heart.
Oh, and per the bread: there is no jest here. It's the sort of thing where if someone told you that you'd be in a kitchen where talented chefs were doing amazing things, and coaxing every molecule of yeast into its full potential, and everyone around you would be all flushed and happy and you couldn't wait to get to work every day, you'd laugh because you wouldn't think it could ever be true that you oculd be handed such gifts.
There was no salt, for one. So while she explained to him about the importance of salt, what salt's role is in dough, she finessed the right amounts of water and flour. He left. He didn't come back for a while, so she continued, taking the dough out of the mixer, kneading it into a bowl, whispering sweet nothings into its yeasty lil ear. One of the sous chefs came by and was like We're Supposed To Get It Like A Windowpane, Huh? That's What You're Doing?
Short answer, yeah.
As I was hastening to get my second pot of goodness on the stove, I saw how the sous chef was shaping the bread. I stopped. I've got about nine months of day to day bread experience-rolls, focaccia, cornbread, crackers, light wheat, potato bread, biscuits, pizza dough-on my resume. And he was treating the bread like he was a kid playing bouncy ball by himself and he had all day to shape those out-in-the-air lil rounds as if they weren't gonna get crusty. I planted myself next to the prep table, picked up a round of dough. Spun it in one hand, feeling the contours of the dough ride up against my fingers and tighten. Like A Baby's Bottom, my old boss used to say. It's a body memory.
Like This, I said. Feel This. Now Feel Yours. His were flabby. We loved this dough into existence for him and I was not gonna let him do the next step without giving him something to aim for. I barely had time for a mini explanation before my arms were overloaded with dairy and I was back to work.
There's this chiboust I've been making every day at the new job. Ostensibly it begins as a pastry cream, but all the body memories of pastry cream are stripped form it and the project's turned inside out. Yolks and flours, flavorings are whisked into hot milk and the entire thing is cooked on the stove, on extremely low heat.
But mostly it's being whisked like you're Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman is after you. Did You Break A Sweat? my boss asked the first time I made it. Well You're Not Whisking Hard Enough.
if you can talk you're not whisking hard enough
if you breath in-out you're not whisking hard enough
if you can think you're not whisking hard enough
if your muscles aren't straining burning, if your hands aren't calloused
you're not doing it right
One of the guys said if he had to make this every day he'd hate his job but I just shook my head and bent over my task. Each time I come to it I notice something new. Each fresh batch is a chance to whisk it better, to see how it reacts each time some level of starch or dairy is cooked out and the mixture thickens. To take it less seriously is to risk ruining it. I was trying to explain to a friend while biking home last night why it needed this level of care. That's Crazy was all he said. I've got boys shirking at the thought of whisking something with all your might for the better part of half an hour, but you know? You figure out what the purpose of movement is, what it really means to whisk something, what you bring to the kitchen and what kind of compromiser you are.
Each time you try to do it with all your heart.
Oh, and per the bread: there is no jest here. It's the sort of thing where if someone told you that you'd be in a kitchen where talented chefs were doing amazing things, and coaxing every molecule of yeast into its full potential, and everyone around you would be all flushed and happy and you couldn't wait to get to work every day, you'd laugh because you wouldn't think it could ever be true that you oculd be handed such gifts.
Monday, October 01, 2007
CUESA Sunday Supper: the pear tasting
I was in a room in the top of the Ferry Building last night and everybody else was there, too. Well, almost everybody. The first and last course were prepping in the same room and the main course chefs were somewhere else. Fifty plates per team. I had no idea what my new boss was doing, but I met her by the FH shop, and ran into my old boss on the way. She was dropping off cupcakes, and acted quite happy to see me, but she must have gotten her table partners to plate them up for her because she never returned.
How's Your New Job Going? my boss asked. Your Chef Is Kind Of A Minimalist.
Really? I wrinkled my nose, reflecting on it. I wouldn't have picked that word.
Upstairs, as we unpack the coolers and I see the extent of what we've got to plate, I laugh and say I Understand Why You Think She's A Minimalist. We served the following eight components:
Vanilla-Tokaji poached Warren pears with pear sorbet, plum-raspberry sauce, raspberries, gingersnap cookies, candied fruit (lemon and orange), FH figs and frozen muscat grapes. The figs and grapes were FH; the berries were Ella Bella.
We lent some figs to the Slow Club boys who were prepping a salad. I watched Mourad Lahlou slather cheese with tomato jam and Elizabeth Faulkner work the room. Dessert got pushed back. The CUESA volunteers and assorted chefs kept stopping by to pop frozen grapes into their mouths. They were so sensual and a blessing in that hot room. My boss got all tense. I started plating. I've done enough banquet FOH stuff that they don't really make me all that nervous...I was more nervous-excited to be elbow to elbow with all these wonderful chefs.
When my boss oohed over the Aziza plates and said how she wanted to go I told her she needed to. And Go Somewhere Else For Desserts, I said, after explaining the loveliness of the food.
You've Been To Aziza? How Have You Been To Aziza? she asked, slight frown.
When the apps went out, we reclaimed the table and got to work laying down plates, taking the grapes off the stems. Apparently my boss put the recipe in the Bay Guardian and she was telling me about her process. Very funny how they wanted that recipe because it was basically: 1. wash grapes, 2. freeze them. I said she should have lied about a fabulous technique. But they were good. Really good. Reminiscent of those Alfieri grapes I got for about a month, the ones that were my reason for living.
The plates went from crowded but orderly to fairly cluttered what with the addition of more sauce, more grapes. The dessert time got pushed back and then pushed up. Clusters of assistants trailed behind chefs quenelling frantically. I tossed grapes. We lured the Slow Club boys into helping us because when someone tells you you've got twenty minutes and they says you've got five, well, what do you do? Sauce, wipe, grapes.
Afterward when the chefs went out to greet the public, the CUESA volunteers, the expediting chef and I conducted a dessert tasting. Almost everyone turned to pears. Elizabeth Faulkner's were poached and then bruleed with a sexy sugar crust. There were some tasteless components and then a nice, surprisingly salty pistachio pesto. Someone else's pears were poached and set on insanely dry cake. It just exuded moisturelessness {yeah, not a word}. Downtown Bakery had poached them and set them in a lattice crust but there was something unsatisfying about the texture of the pear, and something salty and not sweet enough about the overall dish. The Ritz placed apple compote in tidy squares on cake, the covered the whole thing with a pink peppercorn meringue {they used a foam cannister and I missed it}, huckleberry compote and a dried apple chip. Gorgeous but the flavors didn't mesh. Rubicon had large quenelles of mousse? pudding? chocolatey goodness, with the smallest eights of pears poached in honey syrup and orange peel.
The cupcakery, plain old chocolate cupcakes with a mint leaf garnish. It made me sad and it surprised me--because my friend had been telling me they were going to do an apple cupcake and they'd been testing it all month--but not entirely. They talk a good game on using sustainable ingredients and locally sourced everything. It's what attracted me to the job. But in the end it's a decision between which is more expensive, or expedient, or whatever. They were supposed to make the apple, but they got the apples too late and it got lost in the shuffle or a normal day. The Sunday Supper was a celebration of harvests, food, farmers. We didn't just all do pear desserts because we love them. We did them in the spirit of the event. The chefs at the Supper didn't need the publicity. They're already the top game in this town. Will the cupcake shop move slowly toward seasonality and using farm-fresh goodies? I don't know. But it's time to let go of them. Good things this new job is taking all of my time.
Sometimes you put what you want out there in the universe and it comes back to you in all kinds of ways. Saturday night there were fresh doughnuts, warm and adorable and redolent of my doughnut plant love.
How's Your New Job Going? my boss asked. Your Chef Is Kind Of A Minimalist.
Really? I wrinkled my nose, reflecting on it. I wouldn't have picked that word.
Upstairs, as we unpack the coolers and I see the extent of what we've got to plate, I laugh and say I Understand Why You Think She's A Minimalist. We served the following eight components:
Vanilla-Tokaji poached Warren pears with pear sorbet, plum-raspberry sauce, raspberries, gingersnap cookies, candied fruit (lemon and orange), FH figs and frozen muscat grapes. The figs and grapes were FH; the berries were Ella Bella.
We lent some figs to the Slow Club boys who were prepping a salad. I watched Mourad Lahlou slather cheese with tomato jam and Elizabeth Faulkner work the room. Dessert got pushed back. The CUESA volunteers and assorted chefs kept stopping by to pop frozen grapes into their mouths. They were so sensual and a blessing in that hot room. My boss got all tense. I started plating. I've done enough banquet FOH stuff that they don't really make me all that nervous...I was more nervous-excited to be elbow to elbow with all these wonderful chefs.
When my boss oohed over the Aziza plates and said how she wanted to go I told her she needed to. And Go Somewhere Else For Desserts, I said, after explaining the loveliness of the food.
You've Been To Aziza? How Have You Been To Aziza? she asked, slight frown.
When the apps went out, we reclaimed the table and got to work laying down plates, taking the grapes off the stems. Apparently my boss put the recipe in the Bay Guardian and she was telling me about her process. Very funny how they wanted that recipe because it was basically: 1. wash grapes, 2. freeze them. I said she should have lied about a fabulous technique. But they were good. Really good. Reminiscent of those Alfieri grapes I got for about a month, the ones that were my reason for living.
The plates went from crowded but orderly to fairly cluttered what with the addition of more sauce, more grapes. The dessert time got pushed back and then pushed up. Clusters of assistants trailed behind chefs quenelling frantically. I tossed grapes. We lured the Slow Club boys into helping us because when someone tells you you've got twenty minutes and they says you've got five, well, what do you do? Sauce, wipe, grapes.
Afterward when the chefs went out to greet the public, the CUESA volunteers, the expediting chef and I conducted a dessert tasting. Almost everyone turned to pears. Elizabeth Faulkner's were poached and then bruleed with a sexy sugar crust. There were some tasteless components and then a nice, surprisingly salty pistachio pesto. Someone else's pears were poached and set on insanely dry cake. It just exuded moisturelessness {yeah, not a word}. Downtown Bakery had poached them and set them in a lattice crust but there was something unsatisfying about the texture of the pear, and something salty and not sweet enough about the overall dish. The Ritz placed apple compote in tidy squares on cake, the covered the whole thing with a pink peppercorn meringue {they used a foam cannister and I missed it}, huckleberry compote and a dried apple chip. Gorgeous but the flavors didn't mesh. Rubicon had large quenelles of mousse? pudding? chocolatey goodness, with the smallest eights of pears poached in honey syrup and orange peel.
The cupcakery, plain old chocolate cupcakes with a mint leaf garnish. It made me sad and it surprised me--because my friend had been telling me they were going to do an apple cupcake and they'd been testing it all month--but not entirely. They talk a good game on using sustainable ingredients and locally sourced everything. It's what attracted me to the job. But in the end it's a decision between which is more expensive, or expedient, or whatever. They were supposed to make the apple, but they got the apples too late and it got lost in the shuffle or a normal day. The Sunday Supper was a celebration of harvests, food, farmers. We didn't just all do pear desserts because we love them. We did them in the spirit of the event. The chefs at the Supper didn't need the publicity. They're already the top game in this town. Will the cupcake shop move slowly toward seasonality and using farm-fresh goodies? I don't know. But it's time to let go of them. Good things this new job is taking all of my time.
Sometimes you put what you want out there in the universe and it comes back to you in all kinds of ways. Saturday night there were fresh doughnuts, warm and adorable and redolent of my doughnut plant love.
Friday, September 28, 2007
kitchen humor
I may not be the best assistant. But I do try. And I am careful to know what I have on hand. So last night when service was almost over and we were waiting for the last table to finish up, one of the sous chefs was practicing his quenelles, and leaning over to rinse the spoon in the sink between each try. I was cleaning my station and lent him my bain of piping hit water. With the Spoons in it.
The Silver Spoons. The You-Are-Good-As-Dead-If-These-Disappear Silver Spoons. I put the spoons in there before service and I knew there were four of them, amidst an assortment of plain spoons and paring knives. He tries to joke with me about losing them and I tell him it's all him. Who would my boss believe, me or him? The bain makes it back to me a short time later and I'm inspecting it and suddenly there are only two spoons. I ask the sous Where Are My Spoons? Where Did They Go?
He feigns innocence. I Need Those Spoons, I say. Otherwise You're Replacing Them. One is stashed in his chef coat and he gives that up easily enough, but then there are three spoons. He tells me I lost one, or that my coworker took one back to the station. There Were Four When I Gave It To You, I am insistent.
I am about to jump on him. Pummel, bite, try to wrestle six feet of man to the ground. But we're in an open kitchen and there are diners about. Still I know there's fury written all over my face.
I clean and wrap my stock. What am I going to say if the spoon doesn't turn up? Am I a hundred percent sure my coworker did not take the spoon? No, but I can't leave the station.
The last desserts are fired, and when I am cleaning up my station I see there are once again four Silver Spoons in the bain. I am saved.
It's only on the way home that I remember what Anthony Bourdain has to say about situations like this...too late, but I need to remember it for next time, how to react to the special brand of kitchen humor.
Work today was like banging my head against a wall. My electricity kept shorting, so I'd be whipping whites and then...no power. Trying to boil milk for pastry cream and it would short out twice. Everything took about three times as long as it should have. My manager sent my coworker to buy a new power strip, but the cord was too short and of course, no extension cord. But it all got done, if ever so slowly. My manager wants me to do a rice pudding, which is just one more thing to go on the burner amidst the pastry cream, poaching Hosui and Warren pears, making custard base...
you know, I don't think I've actually ever *eaten* rice pudding before {aside from the risotto tart filling}. Nevermind made any.
The Silver Spoons. The You-Are-Good-As-Dead-If-These-Disappear Silver Spoons. I put the spoons in there before service and I knew there were four of them, amidst an assortment of plain spoons and paring knives. He tries to joke with me about losing them and I tell him it's all him. Who would my boss believe, me or him? The bain makes it back to me a short time later and I'm inspecting it and suddenly there are only two spoons. I ask the sous Where Are My Spoons? Where Did They Go?
He feigns innocence. I Need Those Spoons, I say. Otherwise You're Replacing Them. One is stashed in his chef coat and he gives that up easily enough, but then there are three spoons. He tells me I lost one, or that my coworker took one back to the station. There Were Four When I Gave It To You, I am insistent.
I am about to jump on him. Pummel, bite, try to wrestle six feet of man to the ground. But we're in an open kitchen and there are diners about. Still I know there's fury written all over my face.
I clean and wrap my stock. What am I going to say if the spoon doesn't turn up? Am I a hundred percent sure my coworker did not take the spoon? No, but I can't leave the station.
The last desserts are fired, and when I am cleaning up my station I see there are once again four Silver Spoons in the bain. I am saved.
It's only on the way home that I remember what Anthony Bourdain has to say about situations like this...too late, but I need to remember it for next time, how to react to the special brand of kitchen humor.
Work today was like banging my head against a wall. My electricity kept shorting, so I'd be whipping whites and then...no power. Trying to boil milk for pastry cream and it would short out twice. Everything took about three times as long as it should have. My manager sent my coworker to buy a new power strip, but the cord was too short and of course, no extension cord. But it all got done, if ever so slowly. My manager wants me to do a rice pudding, which is just one more thing to go on the burner amidst the pastry cream, poaching Hosui and Warren pears, making custard base...
you know, I don't think I've actually ever *eaten* rice pudding before {aside from the risotto tart filling}. Nevermind made any.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
envy, that old flame
It's so much worse to feel disappointed in yourself than to have someone thundering about screaming at you. or giving you the disappointed-father-routine. I let myself down last night. And then dreamt about cooking all night long.
No rest for the weary, I suppose?
There is one female line cook at the new job and I kept watching her last night, in the quiet moments. She didn't once seem flustered. Just kept flipping pans.
My coworker and I both got burned from the same droopy oven door. Some mistakes, you make once and then you learn. Today I'm gonna learn to do something I've never been able to do. It will happen.
No rest for the weary, I suppose?
There is one female line cook at the new job and I kept watching her last night, in the quiet moments. She didn't once seem flustered. Just kept flipping pans.
My coworker and I both got burned from the same droopy oven door. Some mistakes, you make once and then you learn. Today I'm gonna learn to do something I've never been able to do. It will happen.
Monday, September 24, 2007
doughnut plant, i miss you so
don't don't don't let's start
i got a weak heart
&i don't get around how you get around
I tried out Eagle Donuts today, on Mission 2-3 blocks after Cesar Chavez. It didn't get much press on Chowhound, but it was one of what, two, places in SF proper. I went with a maple old fashioned, which was lighter than the one from All Star. I should have gotten a yeast doughnut also for comparison's sake, but they didn't look so good.
I've been craving doughnuts. Ever since I finally found Doughnut Plant. I checked and of course they don't ship doughnuts...which means that there's just no way to get them and they're little pieces of heaven. And the only way to get close to them, of course, unless this Bob's place delivers that kind of insane goodness, is to learn how to make my own doughnuts.
Doughnuts. Malted vanilla ice cream. Sometimes you just can't stop thinking about something that is completely inaccessible to you. How can I get them? Where can I get them?
In all my free time, hah. NYC report...almost ready.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
how i got my new job and other stories
It's all starting to come full circle. It rained today in San Francisco. At FH, we've still got the gamut of summer pastries but the winter staples are starting to trickle in...pear frangipane instead of peach. Get your stone fruit while you can. Today at the market I bought quince from Farmer Dan with the two apple trees, Black Missions figs from Knoll and dry-farmed tomatoes from Ella Bella, and was given an onion by my coworker. The last two are getting turned into tomato sauce tonight. The quince, I'm not sure yet and the figs are just for eating out of hand.
Last night I went to Chow, where the waiters are just all so cute. It helped that we were starved after a day of eating only desserts, but my wood-oven spinach and cheese lasagna was yummy, and then I polished off my friend's mashed potatoes as well. We split and analyzed dessert: a ginger cake with whipped cream and pumpkin ice cream. The ice cream was appealingly orange but not properly pumpkin, the cake was dry, the caramel made it slightly better.
I have such an uneasy relationship with writing and cooking. One is always being done at the expense of the other. I told my friend last night that the day I opened up my secret shop would be the day I was never going to write a book. It Doesn't Need To Be That Way, he told me. Sure, I'm getting lifetimes of great material and I've already used some of it. Sure, I'll one day be too old to cook. I Would Love To Go On Book Tour In Like, Three Months, I told him (an impossibility for sure). Y'Know, Just Take A Break From Work.
Would You Give Up Cooking In Three Months? he asked. And Never Go Back To It?
I sighed. I pouted. His question was an impossibility it seemed. Something laughable and off the map. No, I said.
You know you're in it when you come home from working your sixth day in a row and cook dinner and make sorbet. You know you're in it when you read cookbooks for fun, and when you order more than one dessert after dinner. When you get up before dawn and everyone asks you how you do it, and you don't know how you do it, but you don't even complain about it anymore really. It is what it is. When you let kitchen words seep into everyday life and suddenly you want to yell Behind at all those slow walkers. When another burn on your arm is just that: another. When you agree to spend your one day off helping your boss plate desserts. When the farmers at the market know your name, give you the good stuff, when you know their names.
I have a new job. This means I'm now working six days a week, since I still have the old job. Details? Not tonight. Tonight I want to tell you about how my job offer came to me.
Last month I was in Marin working as a prep cook. I was at George Lucas's ranch. I was dealing with meat and cutting up vegetables and pretending I knew how to make sauce. I worked with these two guys who started campaigning for me to get a job there. The head chef was filling in until the current pastry chef could find a replacement for her position and move across the hill to the other ranch. Maybe I said on day one. On day two I started getting the specifics: when would I work, what would I do. It was tempting to work making muffins in the middle of Marin County for Mister Star Wars and his people. Even though I *still* have not seen Star Wars. It would have been Monday through Friday but I would have had to get up every day at 430, and quit FH. We were still all just talking--which is usually nowhere near getting a kitchen job--when I got the phone call. Let Me Think About It. I'm Working Right Now is what I said. The rest of the afternoon I floated around plating food, breaking down the barbecue, busting out dishes, having the guys urge me again to please apply, thinking all the while about the new thing that had come my way.
When I got back to the city I called back, said yes, and quit my job the next day. I'm still in that post-relationship phase with the cupcakery. I miss certain of my coworkers. Occasionally I miss the cupcakes. I don't miss the screaming, the tension, the back and forth, the one who lied. I sort of want to visit but only at certain times. I want to hear the news. I wish them all well, certainly, and I didn't really get to say goodbye since my boss basically gave me most of my last week off. The weight of it all is still on me. While I worked there sometimes I'd wake up in the morning and my hands would be frozen. Clenched open. I'd force them to move and think about what I was doing to my body with all the piping and with only eating cupcakes and perhaps a carrot during an eight hour shift (and I didn't even pipe that much).
The new job is new and exciting. I get the feeling it's all ready to burst right open. It's giving me all this writing energy.
But I got sidetracked and what I wanted to say was how it's nice to have people to talk to. Especially when you can't stop talking--and you get going on a half hour digression from the original question so that by the time you think you might be done you're still so far away form the original point so you've got to talk your way back. So you walk around some, eat a horrid cookie, resist telling the cookie-seller that you know it's underbaked because you're a pair of bakers, dammit. Then you've walked everywhere and you're still not done talking so you go up to Bernal Heights. You point out the landmarks in the city below, map its geography. You stay up past the hour when you should reasonably be in bed and then you get up in cold darkness, bike to work, stand in the rain and buy quince and tomatoes and muscle through the exhaustion because what else is there to do.
My flash fiction is up here. The editor says "the piece sure does have atmosphere." Tell me what you think about the ending.
Oh, & hell yeah. Baseball. Postseason. Do you know what I"m talking about?
Last night I went to Chow, where the waiters are just all so cute. It helped that we were starved after a day of eating only desserts, but my wood-oven spinach and cheese lasagna was yummy, and then I polished off my friend's mashed potatoes as well. We split and analyzed dessert: a ginger cake with whipped cream and pumpkin ice cream. The ice cream was appealingly orange but not properly pumpkin, the cake was dry, the caramel made it slightly better.
I have such an uneasy relationship with writing and cooking. One is always being done at the expense of the other. I told my friend last night that the day I opened up my secret shop would be the day I was never going to write a book. It Doesn't Need To Be That Way, he told me. Sure, I'm getting lifetimes of great material and I've already used some of it. Sure, I'll one day be too old to cook. I Would Love To Go On Book Tour In Like, Three Months, I told him (an impossibility for sure). Y'Know, Just Take A Break From Work.
Would You Give Up Cooking In Three Months? he asked. And Never Go Back To It?
I sighed. I pouted. His question was an impossibility it seemed. Something laughable and off the map. No, I said.
You know you're in it when you come home from working your sixth day in a row and cook dinner and make sorbet. You know you're in it when you read cookbooks for fun, and when you order more than one dessert after dinner. When you get up before dawn and everyone asks you how you do it, and you don't know how you do it, but you don't even complain about it anymore really. It is what it is. When you let kitchen words seep into everyday life and suddenly you want to yell Behind at all those slow walkers. When another burn on your arm is just that: another. When you agree to spend your one day off helping your boss plate desserts. When the farmers at the market know your name, give you the good stuff, when you know their names.
I have a new job. This means I'm now working six days a week, since I still have the old job. Details? Not tonight. Tonight I want to tell you about how my job offer came to me.
Last month I was in Marin working as a prep cook. I was at George Lucas's ranch. I was dealing with meat and cutting up vegetables and pretending I knew how to make sauce. I worked with these two guys who started campaigning for me to get a job there. The head chef was filling in until the current pastry chef could find a replacement for her position and move across the hill to the other ranch. Maybe I said on day one. On day two I started getting the specifics: when would I work, what would I do. It was tempting to work making muffins in the middle of Marin County for Mister Star Wars and his people. Even though I *still* have not seen Star Wars. It would have been Monday through Friday but I would have had to get up every day at 430, and quit FH. We were still all just talking--which is usually nowhere near getting a kitchen job--when I got the phone call. Let Me Think About It. I'm Working Right Now is what I said. The rest of the afternoon I floated around plating food, breaking down the barbecue, busting out dishes, having the guys urge me again to please apply, thinking all the while about the new thing that had come my way.
When I got back to the city I called back, said yes, and quit my job the next day. I'm still in that post-relationship phase with the cupcakery. I miss certain of my coworkers. Occasionally I miss the cupcakes. I don't miss the screaming, the tension, the back and forth, the one who lied. I sort of want to visit but only at certain times. I want to hear the news. I wish them all well, certainly, and I didn't really get to say goodbye since my boss basically gave me most of my last week off. The weight of it all is still on me. While I worked there sometimes I'd wake up in the morning and my hands would be frozen. Clenched open. I'd force them to move and think about what I was doing to my body with all the piping and with only eating cupcakes and perhaps a carrot during an eight hour shift (and I didn't even pipe that much).
The new job is new and exciting. I get the feeling it's all ready to burst right open. It's giving me all this writing energy.
But I got sidetracked and what I wanted to say was how it's nice to have people to talk to. Especially when you can't stop talking--and you get going on a half hour digression from the original question so that by the time you think you might be done you're still so far away form the original point so you've got to talk your way back. So you walk around some, eat a horrid cookie, resist telling the cookie-seller that you know it's underbaked because you're a pair of bakers, dammit. Then you've walked everywhere and you're still not done talking so you go up to Bernal Heights. You point out the landmarks in the city below, map its geography. You stay up past the hour when you should reasonably be in bed and then you get up in cold darkness, bike to work, stand in the rain and buy quince and tomatoes and muscle through the exhaustion because what else is there to do.
My flash fiction is up here. The editor says "the piece sure does have atmosphere." Tell me what you think about the ending.
Oh, & hell yeah. Baseball. Postseason. Do you know what I"m talking about?
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
queer(ing) food
Tonight I’m thinking about food, ancestry, homelands and food knowledge. How do we come to know what we know about food and how do we pass it on?
I got home from working today un-hungry (for once) and with a pile of FPFM veggies in the fridge and some open tofu and leftover brown rice. So I walked to the store to get myself some supplies to make a giant pot of Indian-style curry. I hadn’t made the dish in…I want to say, since I lived in New York but that might not be correct. Although I don’t recall making it in the Somerville house, or since coming west. I started sautéing a potato with the pot lid on to get it moist, and after ten minutes or so I added broccoli, then a lil later some peppers and zucchini, and somewhere along the way a liberal dose of curry powder. At some point when everything is fairly cooked, put a few dollops of yogurt in, check the seasonings and let it come together for a while on the stove. I added more+ curry powder, some chili substance, hot pepper flakes, apple cider vinegar and salt and ended up with a tangy, spicy-but-not-overly-hot yogurty pile. I had to change skillets because it outgrew the 9" cast iron pan. There’s currently a big baggie in the freezer and 1-2 servings in the fridge.
The smell took me back to college. Our school cafeteria had this area called The Vegan Station, where you could create your own stir fry with an array of vegetables, noodles/rice, spices, although for sauce you were pretty much limited to soy and a couple of oils. The more hardcore indie-rock-vegan kids got fairly adept at creating little vials of orange-teriyaki or peanut sauce while they waited in line. When I moved into senior housing, we were cooking a lot of Indian and I think I started making this dish then, with some jar of curry paste I’d gotten at Pearl River or something {back in its Canal Street days, before it got all Soho-chic}. I used to make it all the time with an assortment of veggies, plus chickpeas, almonds and raisins. Tonight I missed the chickpeas.
My roommate asked what I was doing and if I was going by any sort of recipe. Not Really, I told her. But I Used To. And the winging-it factor, though informed by my career of course, was more a matter of having made the dish so many times, and in so many places. I have a vivid memory of my friend cooking it for us and her then-boyfriend-now-husband in their Manhattan apartment. Nothing Needs To Be Made With Heavy Cream, she told me as she dolloped in nonfat yogurt. I pouted in protest.
It’s all the Claudia Roden article that’s got me thinking, really. In the excellent New Yorker profile, they discuss her work, her personal history, and how she filters time though recipes, through food. Try to find Claudia Roden’s Istanbul, Jerusaelm, Damascus. It’s historical, emotional, art as much as artifact. Her treatment of cultures is part meditation, part documentation. The article made me want to go out and request all of her books from the library. But that’s be a lot to bike ride home with.
In the spirit of food as passageway, food as memoir, food as sign and signifier, is there such a thing as queer food? Can food be queered and if so what would that look like? To think of queering food as a transgression or a coupling of inappropriate items, well, so much of cuisine is exactly that anyway. If that were the case it seems like fusion food would be queer food. The heterosexuals can have classical cuisine and the homos can have the rest.
We have ways of dressing. Ways of acting. We read each other in all kinds of settings. We negotiate various codes of silence or appropriateness. Sometimes we pass for straight. Sometimes we’re mistakenly addressed as Sir or Ma’am or assumed to be dating someone who’s really just a friend or offered to be fixed up with a nice boy and sometimes we make these same assumptions about our own. Sometimes we say one thing and then at other times we can’t speak those same words. We love, we fight, we fuck, we surrender, we work, we worry about if we will get beaten up, we worry if we can get health care/marriage/babies/tax breaks, we go to pride events or not, we read the rights books, we someone and slowly learn all of these codes. I Can Just Tell I’ve told my mother how many times about men or women that are queer. We read; we’re read. How strange and wonderful it would be if we had a cuisine for all of that too, but who would be its cookbook author and what would we serve? Our community, such as it is, is far flung and divisive. International. Multilingual. Representative of every gender variation. If we can’t queer food, and surely some theoretician more dedicated than me will prove we can do this, then can we prepare queer food?
I got home from working today un-hungry (for once) and with a pile of FPFM veggies in the fridge and some open tofu and leftover brown rice. So I walked to the store to get myself some supplies to make a giant pot of Indian-style curry. I hadn’t made the dish in…I want to say, since I lived in New York but that might not be correct. Although I don’t recall making it in the Somerville house, or since coming west. I started sautéing a potato with the pot lid on to get it moist, and after ten minutes or so I added broccoli, then a lil later some peppers and zucchini, and somewhere along the way a liberal dose of curry powder. At some point when everything is fairly cooked, put a few dollops of yogurt in, check the seasonings and let it come together for a while on the stove. I added more+ curry powder, some chili substance, hot pepper flakes, apple cider vinegar and salt and ended up with a tangy, spicy-but-not-overly-hot yogurty pile. I had to change skillets because it outgrew the 9" cast iron pan. There’s currently a big baggie in the freezer and 1-2 servings in the fridge.
The smell took me back to college. Our school cafeteria had this area called The Vegan Station, where you could create your own stir fry with an array of vegetables, noodles/rice, spices, although for sauce you were pretty much limited to soy and a couple of oils. The more hardcore indie-rock-vegan kids got fairly adept at creating little vials of orange-teriyaki or peanut sauce while they waited in line. When I moved into senior housing, we were cooking a lot of Indian and I think I started making this dish then, with some jar of curry paste I’d gotten at Pearl River or something {back in its Canal Street days, before it got all Soho-chic}. I used to make it all the time with an assortment of veggies, plus chickpeas, almonds and raisins. Tonight I missed the chickpeas.
My roommate asked what I was doing and if I was going by any sort of recipe. Not Really, I told her. But I Used To. And the winging-it factor, though informed by my career of course, was more a matter of having made the dish so many times, and in so many places. I have a vivid memory of my friend cooking it for us and her then-boyfriend-now-husband in their Manhattan apartment. Nothing Needs To Be Made With Heavy Cream, she told me as she dolloped in nonfat yogurt. I pouted in protest.
It’s all the Claudia Roden article that’s got me thinking, really. In the excellent New Yorker profile, they discuss her work, her personal history, and how she filters time though recipes, through food. Try to find Claudia Roden’s Istanbul, Jerusaelm, Damascus. It’s historical, emotional, art as much as artifact. Her treatment of cultures is part meditation, part documentation. The article made me want to go out and request all of her books from the library. But that’s be a lot to bike ride home with.
In the spirit of food as passageway, food as memoir, food as sign and signifier, is there such a thing as queer food? Can food be queered and if so what would that look like? To think of queering food as a transgression or a coupling of inappropriate items, well, so much of cuisine is exactly that anyway. If that were the case it seems like fusion food would be queer food. The heterosexuals can have classical cuisine and the homos can have the rest.
We have ways of dressing. Ways of acting. We read each other in all kinds of settings. We negotiate various codes of silence or appropriateness. Sometimes we pass for straight. Sometimes we’re mistakenly addressed as Sir or Ma’am or assumed to be dating someone who’s really just a friend or offered to be fixed up with a nice boy and sometimes we make these same assumptions about our own. Sometimes we say one thing and then at other times we can’t speak those same words. We love, we fight, we fuck, we surrender, we work, we worry about if we will get beaten up, we worry if we can get health care/marriage/babies/tax breaks, we go to pride events or not, we read the rights books, we someone and slowly learn all of these codes. I Can Just Tell I’ve told my mother how many times about men or women that are queer. We read; we’re read. How strange and wonderful it would be if we had a cuisine for all of that too, but who would be its cookbook author and what would we serve? Our community, such as it is, is far flung and divisive. International. Multilingual. Representative of every gender variation. If we can’t queer food, and surely some theoretician more dedicated than me will prove we can do this, then can we prepare queer food?
Sunday, September 16, 2007
new york: day one
Day 1: Momofuku Ssam, Greenmarket, City Bakery, Il Laboratorio del Gelato, Gravy, White Horse Tavern.
Momofuku Ssam: Very polished and quiet. Hard to imagine the place bustling with foodie types and chefs, but then they do a lot more at dinner than they seem to do at lunch. I really wanted to go here because of all the foodie buzz, the Beard nomination, etc etc...and because of all the places I wanted to check out in New York it was the only slightly affordable one. I got a ssam with chicken, white kimchi, pickled shitakes, edamame and whatever else it came with. My friend got the pork rice bowl. My ssam was super messy. and kind of huge. and fairly fun. The shitakes were really good. The kimchi kind of made me nervous. The Tablehopper has a way better review of Momofuku Ssam, but then she had a giant pork feast.
We walked over to Union Square where I demanded we see the Greenmarket even though Dale, my adventure buddy for the afternoon, was quick to point out the SF farm markets were probably better. Apples and pears, same as here, but better apples and adorable Seckel pears. He got apple cider, which was a lil tangy and not very complex. Then he declared me an Honorary Jew, even though I met only half of his criteria, it being Rosh Hashana and all.
How is it that I never went to the City Bakery while I worked in Union Square? Was it not there? Or was I just too busy selling books? Either way I suppose it's a good thing, because the place would have been dangerous to my wallet. Not really feeling all that hungry after the ssam I went for the classic: pretzel croissant. A slightly pretzel-shaped croissant with toasty sesame seeds and a liberal sprinkling of salt on top...born to confuse the eater (is it breakfast or snack?) and infuriate the french. My friend snitched a piece and pronounced it all right. The general consensus was good croissant, curious about all the hype. I think I might have even passed the judgment of "it's all right" before we slid back onto 18th and took a lil walk upon my insistence to someplace I really wanted to go.
Yes, we went and just looked at Gramercy Tavern. Mostly so I could see if they were open for lunch and how costly such a thing might be, but...yeah...it was fairly geeky and I'll be the first to admit it.
From there we hopped a train to Delancey Street for some gelato. I'm quite glad I went to Il Laboratorio del Gelato, but the counter help was a dick! They had some kind of ice cream made with mastic, and I wanted to know what was in it. It's all gone, we just sold the last of it, was his response, even though that wasn't my question. I tried to explain again how I was just curious, but when he still appeared to be functioning not quite up to speed I figured it was either give up or reach across the counter and shake him by his dishwasher's coat. I mean, how many people know what mastic is in the first place? Sheesh.
Ice cream weirdness aside, we shared a cup of honeydew sorbet, strawberry gelato and honey-lavender gelato. The strawberry was surprisingly good. Likewise on the taste factor of the sorbet, though it was a lil icy and needed a fresh spin. I always feel totally awkward in that situation...I want to tell them, and it is true, but I know I'd be rolling my eyes if it were me behind the counter. Anyway...the honey lavender was decent. I'm just really picky about the flavor. The entire experience was revolutionary in that, here in SF, I've had gelato a couple times recently and been very disappointed...and those times aside I don't think I've had it since Italy maybe years ago. So it's not that I don't like gelato, per se...it's just I haven't had the right kind.
While meandering toward the subway we even saw a cake tag! {yes, I've got pictures} Stuffed to the gills we retired to Carroll Gardens for some sitting around the giant kitchen, talking about crushes, and watching my friend's grad school videos. Brooklyn felt low and small, familiar enough with its landscape and people. My friend tried to convince me that if I'd lived in South Brooklyn rather than North, I would have stayed.
Perhaps this is the point in the post where I explain briefly that my entire life I wanted nothing more to live in New York and be a famous writer. I wanted to be the Diane Keaton character in Manhattan; I wanted to be Dorothy Parker and co. at the Algonquin; I wanted to be Allen Ginsberg. I grew up going to New York a couple times a year for shopping and whatnot, saw all the major art shows all through college. When my New Yorky Vassar friends would tell me I didn't really know New York I'd get all confused...
Life for me in New York most closely resembled The 6ths song "I've Got New York." At first it was intense and hard and exciting and then it slowly ground down at absolutely everything I thought I wanted was slowly taken from me. For a couple of years I went back, barely, through grit teeth and tensed muscles. My friends were still there. Every neighborhood held bad memories or false hopes. Then finally I went back (in October of last year and February of this year) and it was neutral. How nice to be free of all those experiences...that said, I still won't go to Times Square...
Finally {and is it being 3000 miles away, or having a whole other career, or growing older, or being unable to take it for granted} it's over. It's official. I Love New York (Again). All of my memories are open now. The horrible, hard times are there but so are the times from my youth, from college, from when I lived there. So many of the people I love most are New York people and I knew they'd be happy to hear this.
When I took her hand the next morning and looked into her eyes, told her I had big news she needed to hear, my farmer did something special: Now You Can Love It Like A Real New Yorker, she said. You Know What It Means. You've Seen The Best And The Worst.
Oodles of awesome food, sweet and savory. Key epiphanies about my life. Becoming an Honorary Jew and a Real New Yorker...could it get any better? Well, I only walk myself into blood sugar oblivion and am saved Simpsons-style by doughnuts, but that's the next day...
Momofuku Ssam: Very polished and quiet. Hard to imagine the place bustling with foodie types and chefs, but then they do a lot more at dinner than they seem to do at lunch. I really wanted to go here because of all the foodie buzz, the Beard nomination, etc etc...and because of all the places I wanted to check out in New York it was the only slightly affordable one. I got a ssam with chicken, white kimchi, pickled shitakes, edamame and whatever else it came with. My friend got the pork rice bowl. My ssam was super messy. and kind of huge. and fairly fun. The shitakes were really good. The kimchi kind of made me nervous. The Tablehopper has a way better review of Momofuku Ssam, but then she had a giant pork feast.
We walked over to Union Square where I demanded we see the Greenmarket even though Dale, my adventure buddy for the afternoon, was quick to point out the SF farm markets were probably better. Apples and pears, same as here, but better apples and adorable Seckel pears. He got apple cider, which was a lil tangy and not very complex. Then he declared me an Honorary Jew, even though I met only half of his criteria, it being Rosh Hashana and all.
How is it that I never went to the City Bakery while I worked in Union Square? Was it not there? Or was I just too busy selling books? Either way I suppose it's a good thing, because the place would have been dangerous to my wallet. Not really feeling all that hungry after the ssam I went for the classic: pretzel croissant. A slightly pretzel-shaped croissant with toasty sesame seeds and a liberal sprinkling of salt on top...born to confuse the eater (is it breakfast or snack?) and infuriate the french. My friend snitched a piece and pronounced it all right. The general consensus was good croissant, curious about all the hype. I think I might have even passed the judgment of "it's all right" before we slid back onto 18th and took a lil walk upon my insistence to someplace I really wanted to go.
Yes, we went and just looked at Gramercy Tavern. Mostly so I could see if they were open for lunch and how costly such a thing might be, but...yeah...it was fairly geeky and I'll be the first to admit it.
From there we hopped a train to Delancey Street for some gelato. I'm quite glad I went to Il Laboratorio del Gelato, but the counter help was a dick! They had some kind of ice cream made with mastic, and I wanted to know what was in it. It's all gone, we just sold the last of it, was his response, even though that wasn't my question. I tried to explain again how I was just curious, but when he still appeared to be functioning not quite up to speed I figured it was either give up or reach across the counter and shake him by his dishwasher's coat. I mean, how many people know what mastic is in the first place? Sheesh.
Ice cream weirdness aside, we shared a cup of honeydew sorbet, strawberry gelato and honey-lavender gelato. The strawberry was surprisingly good. Likewise on the taste factor of the sorbet, though it was a lil icy and needed a fresh spin. I always feel totally awkward in that situation...I want to tell them, and it is true, but I know I'd be rolling my eyes if it were me behind the counter. Anyway...the honey lavender was decent. I'm just really picky about the flavor. The entire experience was revolutionary in that, here in SF, I've had gelato a couple times recently and been very disappointed...and those times aside I don't think I've had it since Italy maybe years ago. So it's not that I don't like gelato, per se...it's just I haven't had the right kind.
While meandering toward the subway we even saw a cake tag! {yes, I've got pictures} Stuffed to the gills we retired to Carroll Gardens for some sitting around the giant kitchen, talking about crushes, and watching my friend's grad school videos. Brooklyn felt low and small, familiar enough with its landscape and people. My friend tried to convince me that if I'd lived in South Brooklyn rather than North, I would have stayed.
Perhaps this is the point in the post where I explain briefly that my entire life I wanted nothing more to live in New York and be a famous writer. I wanted to be the Diane Keaton character in Manhattan; I wanted to be Dorothy Parker and co. at the Algonquin; I wanted to be Allen Ginsberg. I grew up going to New York a couple times a year for shopping and whatnot, saw all the major art shows all through college. When my New Yorky Vassar friends would tell me I didn't really know New York I'd get all confused...
Life for me in New York most closely resembled The 6ths song "I've Got New York." At first it was intense and hard and exciting and then it slowly ground down at absolutely everything I thought I wanted was slowly taken from me. For a couple of years I went back, barely, through grit teeth and tensed muscles. My friends were still there. Every neighborhood held bad memories or false hopes. Then finally I went back (in October of last year and February of this year) and it was neutral. How nice to be free of all those experiences...that said, I still won't go to Times Square...
Finally {and is it being 3000 miles away, or having a whole other career, or growing older, or being unable to take it for granted} it's over. It's official. I Love New York (Again). All of my memories are open now. The horrible, hard times are there but so are the times from my youth, from college, from when I lived there. So many of the people I love most are New York people and I knew they'd be happy to hear this.
When I took her hand the next morning and looked into her eyes, told her I had big news she needed to hear, my farmer did something special: Now You Can Love It Like A Real New Yorker, she said. You Know What It Means. You've Seen The Best And The Worst.
Oodles of awesome food, sweet and savory. Key epiphanies about my life. Becoming an Honorary Jew and a Real New Yorker...could it get any better? Well, I only walk myself into blood sugar oblivion and am saved Simpsons-style by doughnuts, but that's the next day...
Philz Coffee, 24th + Folsom
Thank heavens for my caffeine addiction and my mother's desire to take a walking tour of the Mission back in July...otherwise I might never have found Philz. The location's all screaming bright awnings, Mission murals, people hanging on the streets. Outside there's an assortment of mismatched chairs and plants. Inside is coffee for serious types. Twenty blends of coffee, store-bought Arabic pastries (I keep thinking I'll offer to make them some homemade kunefe, baklava and muhallabeya), muffins, cookies.
Philz is packed right now with hipster kids, scrabble players, queer couples, writers. I've seen ambulance crews and cops pile in for a shift rush. Once, a boy in a dress swept the sidewalk and watered the plants, and he didn't even work there. It's so writerly, Philz. Everywhere there are outlets, cords, things to trip on or bump into. You walk up to the counter and pick your blend, then pay at the register. My first time there we waited a good five minutes wondering why we weren't getting any coffee before Phil explained the system to us. Today I asked what a blend called New Manhattan tasted like, and was told that Phil said "it tastes like new downtown San Francisco." According to the wall chart, that meant a medium roast with lots of busy flavors and bright aromas. So I went with the Philtered Soul, a medium dark blend with chocolate notes that is seriously close to heaven.
And today is the perfect day for writing, baking, and knitting. I'm working on the New York update and a new piece of flash fiction.
Philz is packed right now with hipster kids, scrabble players, queer couples, writers. I've seen ambulance crews and cops pile in for a shift rush. Once, a boy in a dress swept the sidewalk and watered the plants, and he didn't even work there. It's so writerly, Philz. Everywhere there are outlets, cords, things to trip on or bump into. You walk up to the counter and pick your blend, then pay at the register. My first time there we waited a good five minutes wondering why we weren't getting any coffee before Phil explained the system to us. Today I asked what a blend called New Manhattan tasted like, and was told that Phil said "it tastes like new downtown San Francisco." According to the wall chart, that meant a medium roast with lots of busy flavors and bright aromas. So I went with the Philtered Soul, a medium dark blend with chocolate notes that is seriously close to heaven.
And today is the perfect day for writing, baking, and knitting. I'm working on the New York update and a new piece of flash fiction.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
back, and back to work
I'm back...writing from work.
San Francisco is doing her best flirting with me now...it's sunny and I just bought prickly pears from Yerena. I got a ride from a friend last night and seeing the FH people wandering in at six thirty this morning was like getting back to my kitchen family.
But what I wanted to say is this: I love New York. Again.
{I never thought that I would. I'll tell you why, and what I ate, later.}
San Francisco is doing her best flirting with me now...it's sunny and I just bought prickly pears from Yerena. I got a ride from a friend last night and seeing the FH people wandering in at six thirty this morning was like getting back to my kitchen family.
But what I wanted to say is this: I love New York. Again.
{I never thought that I would. I'll tell you why, and what I ate, later.}
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Beehive, Sibling Rivalry + Picco: a South End report
{When I was just a kid, the South End...which is not the same as South Boston, yo...was the up and coming gay neighborhood and, coincidentally or no, the place where food-with-a-capital-F came to town. Since gentrification of course, the gays moved away and the neighborhood has seen many restaurants come and go}
The Beehive was something I found out about right before I moved to SF and it's finally open. Housed inside the old Cyclorama, it's got a bar, live music, a funky downstairs dining space...and lots of noise. Too much noise for my mom and I to actually stay and enjoy a meal, not that the menu was anything we'd especially want to stay for. I really wanted to poke around--the Cyclorama's a gorgeous and interesting space, and I'd worked a couple banquet gigs there and wanted to see how they'd transformed the space--but we went for the food and it appeared to be one of the last considerations. The restaurant had a good management team with a strong background. The chef was ex-Via Matta/Michael Schlow. What could be bad? Evidently you need to have your priorities straight in opening a restaurant and the Beehive team seemed to be focused on getting young straight people drunk in a stylish setting.
We left and walked a few doors down to Sibling Rivalry, which is run by Chef brothers David and Bob Kinkead. The brothers split the menu between them, each developing a dish around a key ingredient: shellfish, tomatoes, bacon. Then you choose whose food you eat. Gimmicky if it weren't so well executed. This time we shared a ravioli appetizer with fresh pasta and the lightest, creamiest filling, a side of zucchini fries that tasted too fishy from the deep fryer, and a vietnamese style crispy squid salad which I agreed to try because my mother told me squid tasted like onion rings. I've actually never seen *her* eat it before but she swore she liked it. Sibling Rivalry used to have an awesome pastry chef who has since left, and the dessert menu only really tempted with orange blossom crepes with cheese and poached pears, so we headed down a few more doors to
Picco, an ice cream and pizza joint. My mother got peach, which was a mild vanilla base with some peach pieces. I got coconut and caramel peanut swirl...the coconut was delicious. It was smoothly textured and looked to have a vanilla bean in it (or what else would make it flecked?), but every now and then I'd get a mouthful of coconut flakes. The peanuts had me skeptical but they were nice (salty), if the caramel was a tad sweet.
Home for baseball-and-knitting. Challenging to remain calm when the Yankees are coming to town on Friday, even if we're five games up and tonight we were losing {to the Devil Rays, which is just pathetic} right from the start. I'd furiously knit in between batters and stop when the count reached 3-2 or if anyone hit anything. I make so many mistakes when I knit while watching baseball, but it's one of the only things that keeps me even tempered. Cooking while listening to a ball game...yeah, I'll let the timers beep and the milk bubble over if we're in a tight spot. Heh.
I love the people here. Get to know your local New Englander, if you don't already. I love how they talk. I love the Yankee-hating. I love the way we can never be optimistic especially when baseball is concerned. I love how humble people are here, how the greatest enthusiasm is tempered through all kinds of filters and registers only to the observer as casual interest. I love the way culture is underground, food culture especially. It's very different in SF. This is a town you need to know how to navigate. You need to know the rules. Even if you have lived here always.
That all said I just told someone I was ready to get back to SF, and it's true. I've seen or will see everyone. I'm ready to be in the kitchen again...my postage stamp, hot plate, FPFM-madness kitchen and the insanity of the Saturday market. see you there?
The Beehive was something I found out about right before I moved to SF and it's finally open. Housed inside the old Cyclorama, it's got a bar, live music, a funky downstairs dining space...and lots of noise. Too much noise for my mom and I to actually stay and enjoy a meal, not that the menu was anything we'd especially want to stay for. I really wanted to poke around--the Cyclorama's a gorgeous and interesting space, and I'd worked a couple banquet gigs there and wanted to see how they'd transformed the space--but we went for the food and it appeared to be one of the last considerations. The restaurant had a good management team with a strong background. The chef was ex-Via Matta/Michael Schlow. What could be bad? Evidently you need to have your priorities straight in opening a restaurant and the Beehive team seemed to be focused on getting young straight people drunk in a stylish setting.
We left and walked a few doors down to Sibling Rivalry, which is run by Chef brothers David and Bob Kinkead. The brothers split the menu between them, each developing a dish around a key ingredient: shellfish, tomatoes, bacon. Then you choose whose food you eat. Gimmicky if it weren't so well executed. This time we shared a ravioli appetizer with fresh pasta and the lightest, creamiest filling, a side of zucchini fries that tasted too fishy from the deep fryer, and a vietnamese style crispy squid salad which I agreed to try because my mother told me squid tasted like onion rings. I've actually never seen *her* eat it before but she swore she liked it. Sibling Rivalry used to have an awesome pastry chef who has since left, and the dessert menu only really tempted with orange blossom crepes with cheese and poached pears, so we headed down a few more doors to
Picco, an ice cream and pizza joint. My mother got peach, which was a mild vanilla base with some peach pieces. I got coconut and caramel peanut swirl...the coconut was delicious. It was smoothly textured and looked to have a vanilla bean in it (or what else would make it flecked?), but every now and then I'd get a mouthful of coconut flakes. The peanuts had me skeptical but they were nice (salty), if the caramel was a tad sweet.
Home for baseball-and-knitting. Challenging to remain calm when the Yankees are coming to town on Friday, even if we're five games up and tonight we were losing {to the Devil Rays, which is just pathetic} right from the start. I'd furiously knit in between batters and stop when the count reached 3-2 or if anyone hit anything. I make so many mistakes when I knit while watching baseball, but it's one of the only things that keeps me even tempered. Cooking while listening to a ball game...yeah, I'll let the timers beep and the milk bubble over if we're in a tight spot. Heh.
I love the people here. Get to know your local New Englander, if you don't already. I love how they talk. I love the Yankee-hating. I love the way we can never be optimistic especially when baseball is concerned. I love how humble people are here, how the greatest enthusiasm is tempered through all kinds of filters and registers only to the observer as casual interest. I love the way culture is underground, food culture especially. It's very different in SF. This is a town you need to know how to navigate. You need to know the rules. Even if you have lived here always.
That all said I just told someone I was ready to get back to SF, and it's true. I've seen or will see everyone. I'm ready to be in the kitchen again...my postage stamp, hot plate, FPFM-madness kitchen and the insanity of the Saturday market. see you there?
Monday, September 10, 2007
bakery list/local chocolates
My list of New York options is growing out of bounds of what one girl can possibly eat, but here it is, as the Chowhouds add and amend. Any comments? Anything I should see or do in the city I love to hate, other that the trip to my favorites the Strand + Dean and Deluca?
Balthazar Bakery
Buttercup
Chelsea Market/Amy's Bread
City Bakery
Doughnut Plant
Il Laboratorio del Gelato
Kee's Chocolates
Kyotofu
Madeleine Patisserie
Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery (LES)
Birdbath/Build a Green Bakery (West Village, East Village)
Black Hound (East Village)
Ceci-Cela (Soho)
Levain (UWS)
Bouchon Bakery (UWS)
Dinner hopefully at either p*ong or Momofuku Ssam.
And would I pass up the chance to visit a Somerville chocolatier in his chocolate workshop and stalk the elusive orchid root here?
The Beehive is tonight. I have been waiting at least nine months for this restaurant to open and I'm so very glad I get to go. !!
Balthazar Bakery
Buttercup
Chelsea Market/Amy's Bread
City Bakery
Doughnut Plant
Il Laboratorio del Gelato
Kee's Chocolates
Kyotofu
Madeleine Patisserie
Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery (LES)
Birdbath/Build a Green Bakery (West Village, East Village)
Black Hound (East Village)
Ceci-Cela (Soho)
Levain (UWS)
Bouchon Bakery (UWS)
Dinner hopefully at either p*ong or Momofuku Ssam.
And would I pass up the chance to visit a Somerville chocolatier in his chocolate workshop and stalk the elusive orchid root here?
The Beehive is tonight. I have been waiting at least nine months for this restaurant to open and I'm so very glad I get to go. !!
Sunday, September 09, 2007
it's midnight and my. stomach. hurts
Tonight I found out a piece of my food writing is going to be published online in a few weeks. The journal had been really interested back in April or thereabouts and dropped the ball. While there are a lot of things I like within the piece it's sort of a negative piece in a lot of ways--definitely not a favorite with the writing group--if an important piece for me. It's strange to publish something I don't feel like I LOVE...although I do feel it's important, at least personally (though that is not a great reason)...it speaks to a lot of things I feel about this industry, and it's very of a certain time in my life, and it's perhaps challenging to think of it out of that time.
Nervousness and listmaking. My vacation is almost half over and there is so much left to do. It's so wonderful to see each person I get to see, but it's also an obligation:
do not leave anyone out.
So people want to see me again or have coffee or go driving but there's no time.
To go to New York or not. I will want to have gone by the time I'm back in California. It's just a lot to plan. Right now I'm researching bakeries and whatnot I want to hit up and I still don't really have dinner plans {which I should just make, right} and it's like...this is my vacation...like, relax already. The list so far:
il laboratorio del gelato
buttercup cakery
city bakery
doughnut plant
kee's chocolates
amy's bread/chelsea market
balthazar
kyotofu
Boys night out on the town Saturday to check out the new club, but it was all posturing and bored girls, me included. Been spending lots of time lately with people who remind me of myself too much and it's strange to see my reaction mirrored in someone else's face.
You can accuse me of being too intense, and you'd probably be right
I went to Oleana tonight. There are a lot of things I want to say about Oleana...and Aziza as well while we're discussing Turkish-North African cuisine...
{and I've tried to write already about Aziza a couple of times but it doesn't come out in a way that satisfies me as being accurate, and then there's sort of a lil rant I'm not sure if I should get into even though it really bothered me and it still bothers me a week later}
so for now there is only the things we ate at Oleana:
padron peppers with fleur de sel, yogurt
warm buttered humus with basturma, olives
zaatar focaccia
fideos with chickpeas and chard
spinach falafel with greens, beets, tahini
crispy zaatar-lemon chicken with turkish cheese pancake, greens
swordfish with eggplant-macaroni timbale
goat's milk ice cream (made with sahleb!!) with blueberry jellies, blueberry sauce, rose petal jam
umm ali with peaches and peach jam, honey pot de creme
and Aziza:
grilled flatbreads with mediterannean spreads
giant lima beans with roasted tomatoes, feta, fresh zaatar
chicken basteeya
There were so many familiar taste memories in those desserts. Not surprising-many of the components I'd tasted before, or at least variations on a theme.
I'm nervous about everything that happens when I get back to San Francisco, but that is another list to be made. It's easy to be here and it's easy to slip into things.Being back here is so emotional. Every street corner in Somerville is the scene of secrets, fights, attraction, breakups, longing. It's so marked in so many ways that diminish the abstractions I seek in SF. I moved away for food? I start to think...and it all seems so trite.
Nervousness and listmaking. My vacation is almost half over and there is so much left to do. It's so wonderful to see each person I get to see, but it's also an obligation:
do not leave anyone out.
So people want to see me again or have coffee or go driving but there's no time.
To go to New York or not. I will want to have gone by the time I'm back in California. It's just a lot to plan. Right now I'm researching bakeries and whatnot I want to hit up and I still don't really have dinner plans {which I should just make, right} and it's like...this is my vacation...like, relax already. The list so far:
il laboratorio del gelato
buttercup cakery
city bakery
doughnut plant
kee's chocolates
amy's bread/chelsea market
balthazar
kyotofu
Boys night out on the town Saturday to check out the new club, but it was all posturing and bored girls, me included. Been spending lots of time lately with people who remind me of myself too much and it's strange to see my reaction mirrored in someone else's face.
You can accuse me of being too intense, and you'd probably be right
I went to Oleana tonight. There are a lot of things I want to say about Oleana...and Aziza as well while we're discussing Turkish-North African cuisine...
{and I've tried to write already about Aziza a couple of times but it doesn't come out in a way that satisfies me as being accurate, and then there's sort of a lil rant I'm not sure if I should get into even though it really bothered me and it still bothers me a week later}
so for now there is only the things we ate at Oleana:
padron peppers with fleur de sel, yogurt
warm buttered humus with basturma, olives
zaatar focaccia
fideos with chickpeas and chard
spinach falafel with greens, beets, tahini
crispy zaatar-lemon chicken with turkish cheese pancake, greens
swordfish with eggplant-macaroni timbale
goat's milk ice cream (made with sahleb!!) with blueberry jellies, blueberry sauce, rose petal jam
umm ali with peaches and peach jam, honey pot de creme
and Aziza:
grilled flatbreads with mediterannean spreads
giant lima beans with roasted tomatoes, feta, fresh zaatar
chicken basteeya
There were so many familiar taste memories in those desserts. Not surprising-many of the components I'd tasted before, or at least variations on a theme.
I'm nervous about everything that happens when I get back to San Francisco, but that is another list to be made. It's easy to be here and it's easy to slip into things.Being back here is so emotional. Every street corner in Somerville is the scene of secrets, fights, attraction, breakups, longing. It's so marked in so many ways that diminish the abstractions I seek in SF. I moved away for food? I start to think...and it all seems so trite.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Boston update, to be continued
It is hot here. Heat something I left behind. Getting used to old houses, windows, air conditionless places.
I have eaten lots so far. I'm trying to take you to my favorite places. Or at least take me back to them. I forgot my camera last night at the BarBQ that I love so much. Where I went last night for corn fritters and a Brooklyn Brown. Where I have watched so many Sox games, gone on so many dates, had birthday parties and met friends' new lovers and taken most people I love, had so many writing conversations and food conversations and last night saw people I knew (but not really knew). Sitting in the worn leather seats I thought I had my answer to Ruhlman's perfect bar and wondered why I was out on SF.
Sure, they have biker-beer bar places...but they don't serve BBQ and have bicycle valet parking or, more importantly, history.
We went apple picking. The first rite of fall. I'm trying to teach my mother how to make pie dough:
and we had some wild Maine blueberries...
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
yarr, the writing life
It seems two of my favorite food bloggers are focused right now on the economy and sociological history of farm markets. In general, and in particular, they seem to be something of great emotional attachment. I'm still thinking over the Ruhlman-Parsons debate and it will be in my head as I bike down to the FB and sell people coffee and fruit.
{Cause, y'know, when you tell your boss you're going on vacation abruptly and that if your next kitchen job, when you find it, be too demanding you might need to cut back, but you're not quitting, and you know they're in desperate need of barista-types, you end up offering to spend your last free days before vacation working}
Which might explain why I'm going to be lugging half a box of Frog Hollow peaches first on my bicycle this afternoon and then on my cross country flight to Boston. Why I'm going to be biking to the Bi Rite market and, probably the Miette candy store {shocking, I know} to look for local sweets.
How I'm going to protect my peaches on the plane I'm not really sure. Under the seat? In the overhead? Neither seems right. But I want the people I love to taste the bourbony-vanilla Hosui and Al's sweet peaches in the hopes that they can in tasting understand why I am here. To be honest it doesn't hurt that I may as well buy Al's peaches as any other, since I get a great discount.
Crazy FB gossip right now. Dios mio, how food drives us.
I'm still thinking about Ruhlman's prior post, too, in which he says:
It is, literally if you will, the make or break fact of the aspiring writer’s life: you either have or do not have the capacity to maintain a daily writing routine—same time, for the same amount of time, producing roughly the same quantity of words.
I've been slacking lately, what with the job hunting, the working extra shifts, the vacationing with friends in town. I wrote last night and it was hard; it's always hard. It doesn't feel good to write, most of the time, but it feels worse not too and I get a little crazy anyway. All melodramatic and apocalyptic. I'm so jealous of the people in my writer's group who get published with so much more regularity than I do, and I'm still trying to finish up stories from March. I need to write, even if I'm spending all my time in kitchens. And I don't want to be the persons who comes this far and makes as many sacrifices as I've made to get this far, and gives it up to ponder peaches. Nor do I want to give up peaches.
{Cause, y'know, when you tell your boss you're going on vacation abruptly and that if your next kitchen job, when you find it, be too demanding you might need to cut back, but you're not quitting, and you know they're in desperate need of barista-types, you end up offering to spend your last free days before vacation working}
Which might explain why I'm going to be lugging half a box of Frog Hollow peaches first on my bicycle this afternoon and then on my cross country flight to Boston. Why I'm going to be biking to the Bi Rite market and, probably the Miette candy store {shocking, I know} to look for local sweets.
How I'm going to protect my peaches on the plane I'm not really sure. Under the seat? In the overhead? Neither seems right. But I want the people I love to taste the bourbony-vanilla Hosui and Al's sweet peaches in the hopes that they can in tasting understand why I am here. To be honest it doesn't hurt that I may as well buy Al's peaches as any other, since I get a great discount.
Crazy FB gossip right now. Dios mio, how food drives us.
I'm still thinking about Ruhlman's prior post, too, in which he says:
It is, literally if you will, the make or break fact of the aspiring writer’s life: you either have or do not have the capacity to maintain a daily writing routine—same time, for the same amount of time, producing roughly the same quantity of words.
I've been slacking lately, what with the job hunting, the working extra shifts, the vacationing with friends in town. I wrote last night and it was hard; it's always hard. It doesn't feel good to write, most of the time, but it feels worse not too and I get a little crazy anyway. All melodramatic and apocalyptic. I'm so jealous of the people in my writer's group who get published with so much more regularity than I do, and I'm still trying to finish up stories from March. I need to write, even if I'm spending all my time in kitchens. And I don't want to be the persons who comes this far and makes as many sacrifices as I've made to get this far, and gives it up to ponder peaches. Nor do I want to give up peaches.
Monday, September 03, 2007
this one's for aaron
Two nights ago I had the most amazing dream.
I dreamed that the Claudia Fleming cookbook was back in print. In paperback actually. I spied it atop some woman's pile and stole it, and started making my way through the bookstore's aisles so she couldn't find me. Then I realized it was actually a remaindered copy, and only cost 18.99. So I set off to try to find the large stack of Claudia Fleming cookbooks that probably were there, because I knew someone who would exactly appreciate having a copy of that cookbook. Or five.
if only.
More about dinner at Aziza soon, when I can focus enough to write it.
I dreamed that the Claudia Fleming cookbook was back in print. In paperback actually. I spied it atop some woman's pile and stole it, and started making my way through the bookstore's aisles so she couldn't find me. Then I realized it was actually a remaindered copy, and only cost 18.99. So I set off to try to find the large stack of Claudia Fleming cookbooks that probably were there, because I knew someone who would exactly appreciate having a copy of that cookbook. Or five.
if only.
More about dinner at Aziza soon, when I can focus enough to write it.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
frolicking
Running around the town. Chez Panisse last night, Aziza tonight followed by an Ocean Beach bonfire and home to peach crisp that's currently baking. Frog Hollow Summerset peaches with some Woodleaf Blue Diamond plums tossed in for good measure. Running through the streets of Berkeley with a battered takeout box carrying the rest of my perfect eggplant pizza from CP, getting hit on by drunken boys (boys!) on BART, falling asleep standing up with my head resting on burned-up arms, trying to make it to Ici twice in one day, not being able to get there, eating gelato instead which just isn't the same as ice cream, even if it's violet flavored, cuddling the cutie pie, making BBQ plans for next week, having brunch and hanging out with normal people because it's the weekend and I'm not working for once, getting an open invitation to play with an ice cream machine(!!), spying on someone else's new ice cream machine(?!?), staying up until mid morning and being very un-bakerly, and of course, gossiping, for the last time perhaps, with the cupcake makers, about why the boss was surprised to hear I was leaving...I mean, really, surprised...and what I'm going to do next.
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