don't make me stick a strawberry up your nose

to anyone who is planning, thinking of planning, or might ever in the next twenty years plan a catered event, if you make me plate up this strawberry monstrosity i will guarantee that you will never want to see another strawberry for the rest of your life.


please excuse the drawing, i wasn't exactly in the mood to take photographs the last time this asshole dessert and i were together. it might look all sweet and refined on the outside, but really, it's just that mean bitch you knew growing up who thrived on taunting you ceaselessly.

maybe a dessert can't call you dumb, but it sure as hell can make you look dumb when you have exactly twelve minutes to assemble a few hundred plates and ole strawberry shit decides to have ten million components.

enough with all the specific timing bullshit too, you dumbass dessert. the mousse has to temper but not too long or the ice cream will melt, the panna cotta has to be chilled so that the soup can be poured over it warm, mint oil last so it doesn't bleed into the sauce....AAAHHH!!

ok. i feel better now. sometimes i just need to let it all out.

even though this pain in the ass is on the menu for my shift at work tonight, i'm also working with hook-up chef. actually, i think he's officially slutty chef now that he's moved on to hitting on barely legal waitresses in front of the whole kitchen. regardless, he's sure to provide some form of disturbing yet engrossing display of inappropriate behavior to make me forget all about strawberry shit, for a little while anyway.

on that note, i hope everyone has a fantastic holiday weekend! i know i will, labor day means octoberfest is right around the corner!

ps. i'm still working on my blogtastic giveaway, but i haven't forgotten. i'll have info and pics soon!

things are not always what they seem

this is the view from the park down the street from my house, it's right on the river:


this morning we went early and there was not much of a breeze to speak of and very few boats out. with the exception of the brownish tinge to the water, the river looked so peaceful, so serene. the soft lapping sounds made me think of the rhythm of an old rocking chair, subtle yet constant.


the water rippled just enough to produce a broken reflection of the sun.


there were even some guys fishing and crabbing and enjoying the view.


i hope their view included this:


can you read that part there at the top? no? ok, i'll write out the boldface part:

women of childbearing age and children under 15 should not consume any fish from the hudson river.

now, i've lived by this river my whole life and it pretty much goes without saying that you never, ever even want to swim in that water, let alone eat anything that comes out of it. but for those of you who might be assuming that rivers are freshwater and it can't be that bad, i offer the following:

-for decades new york city garbage has been barged and dumped upriver because of the lack of landfill space in the five boroughs.
-indian point is a nuclear power plant that is situated right on the banks of the river
and lastly,
-for over thirty years general electric dumped over a million pounds of pcbs into the river from it's plants. those pcbs are still found in the sediment and algae.

growing up with this knowledge has made me wary of fish and shellfish in general. i can fillet a three foot striped bass in about ten minutes, which is not fast and not slow, but you will rarely find me eating the day's catch.

i could never seem to get my mind past the part about thinking where the fish came from, what it ate to survive, and what kind of water filled its gills. paranoid much? maybe, but it's too late for me to change now. i will forever be leery of neptune's minions.

i should have been born by the ocean.

i know a guy who actually says 'make that paper' when he means 'go to work'

sometimes it seems that having a potty mouth can bite you in the ass.

there are many times at work that i find myself fantasizing about how nice it would feel to tell the customers what i really think. for example, come on people, you're not allergic to parsley, just say you don't like it. the chef will be slightly less annoyed with you if you're honest and don't try to make up a bullshit allergy.

but our customers never see the inside of the kitchen or get to look the chef in the face. perhaps that enables them to be more demanding. and we never see them so maybe it's easier for us to assume they're being difficult because they have nothing better to do. i can't say for sure, but i do know that not one night at work goes by without at least a few customers submitting some absurd requests, followed by a healthy bitch-fest by a chef.

then i heard about the wiener circle in chicago. their unique flavor of customer service, while amusing to many, was actually developed out of need. the customer base is largely drunk white people leaving the bars. the mostly black employees shout gems like 'how many motherfucking cheese fries do you want?!'

for many at this particular food establishment, it's how they support their families, even if that means taking insults from drunks calling them all kinds of degrading racial slurs.

i found this video of the trash talkers in action, it's taken from a tv program so it's a bit long. right around the 2:25 minute mark you meet poochie, the manager, who seems to be great at what she does. around the 5:00 minute mark, she talks about some of the customers who get a little too carried away with the shit talking.



i'm not exactly sure how long i'd be able to put up with that kind of talk at my job. or maybe i just don't like drunk people. or then again, maybe it'd be different because even the jew slurs don't bother me, and i can't imagine anything someone could say that's not specific to me personally that would upset me.

what do you think? would you last at the wiener circle, or would you prefer to do your shit talking behind closed doors?

you wish you were here

welcome to hell on earth. or just my house. whichever you want to call it.

mr. c invited himself over for a gawker's gander at my surroundings, and because we're practically neighbors (live in the same state) i couldn't possibly refuse him a tour. so come on in, if you want, no pressure. oh, and don't mind that smell, monster's ass sometimes emits a fishy odor when he gets nervous.

i guess the best place to start would be my bookshelves, a.k.a. toy storage.


here you can see we have our dear doggie's bed nestled in between the two bookshelves. this is precisely where he will remain for the duration of your visit, as he has a tendency to rip houseguests to shreds for the mere offense of walking through the front door. oh, and the painting above his bed might look a little familiar. it's an original oil piece done by my nana of myself and my brother. there's a freaky anecdote that goes with it, if you're interested.

mr. c is curious about my favorite bookshelf and what books it holds. it's so hard to choose only one favorite shelf when you can find any number of randomly interesting things. for example:



a: the toga iced tea bottle that my friend got for me from the dollar store when we were in eleventh grade (k do you still have yours? i don't think t does.)

b: my servsafe manual that proves i really do know how to make food without transmitting any parasites or bacteria

c: baby touch and feel animals

the technical analysis of financial markets is b's book.

mr. c also wants to know about what dvds are on my favorite shelf. i think i might only own about a dozen dvds so this one won't be too hard to answer. i find that most movies or shows i like are on one of the 800 or so tv channels we get, and if not, can be easily ordered through the cable box. as a result, the dvds that we do own are from at least six years ago and were dated even then. but here are some samples:



moving right along, the next stop on the tour is my favorite cookbooks. which again, i'm going to half answer because although i'm a professional chef, and have a jewish grandmother to unload her cookbook stash on me one piece at a time, i pretty much never use cookbooks. my favorite food books are more reference type. you can see them here:



the herb bible and herbs and spices are both excellent resource guides for almost every herb or spice you can think of. i usually don't have the patience to follow a recipe and often will read cookbooks like you would skim a boring magazine article, just enough to get the idea. although, this method frequently bites me in the ass when i make something i love and then try to make it again and have forgotten whatever it was that i did to make myself love it in the first place.

what's that, all that cookbook talk has made you hungry? well, if you're expecting me to cook dinner you have another thing coming. i usually don't like to cook big meals at home for a couple of reasons. one of them is named modesto, or something else similar, and his absence in my house pretty much means that either we're going out to eat or ordering in. we can go to the lovely mexican spot overlooking the river with killer burritos, or if you're daring, i could order one of those naked chicks to come over and let us eat sushi off her body:



on second thought, maybe that's not such a good idea.

ok, so maybe i can throw a few things together. i've been wanting to recreate this seafood ragout that i've seen at work. it's basically some shrimp, scallops, and mussels cooked with rosemary, thyme, white beans, and a saffron tomato broth.

but i'm also a huge fan of duck. so if i were planning a special 'i'm only cooking to impress you' dinner, i'd probably include some duck breasts with a pomegranate sauce.

or maybe a lamb roast with a mint and papaya slaw.

or i could make osso bucco served stew-like style over rice. i can buy the shanks with the bone marrow still inside for an extra treat.

or i could stop rambling already.

yeah, i need a beer too after all that mess.

lucky for you b and i drink beer like it's our job. i tend to prefer an ipa or lager, middle of the road i guess. nothing dark dark like a stout, but not light like that crap that comes in a can that changes color just so the morons who drink it can tell if it's ice-fucking-cold so that their taste buds will be numbed and not notice the obscene lack of flavor.

b's going to pick up a sixer tonight on his way home from work. the beer store down the road keeps dogfish head cold so that's definitely a favorite.

i hope you enjoyed my tour, or at least didn't hate it. and if you did hate it, maybe i'll send my monster after you to convince you how warm and welcoming my home can be.

there's no segue good enough for this mess

i'm back blog, did you miss me?! whatever, not like i have anything earth shattering to talk about, just a few random stories of weirdness. but before i get started, i have to send a huge thanks to kristine for hooking me up with a funny and nostalgic post and reminding me that my shoulders used to be real bony. and also a hello and thanks for stopping by(!) to the new readers that she may have lured over here with promises of who knows what.

after my much needed mini vaca to cape cod, i returned home to jump right back into my routine of work and more work. saturday night i was catering a wedding for about 300 people. the decor looked strikingly similar to the wedding scene in beetleguese, but the blood red calla lilies and black lamps on the tables wasn't the weird part. what struck me as being a little over the top, not to mention an unnecessary mixing of genres, was the troupe of midgets dressed up as oompa loompas.

those little guys were lingering in the kitchen, watching us plate up 300 pain-in-the-ass tiny little plates of a dessert sampler, in full costume. when i first saw them i almost giggled and clapped, but then i realized just how out of place they were. they didn't talk much. in fact, they all looked extremely bored and put out. maybe that was their defense against the question we were all dying to ask, 'what exactly are you guys going to be doing here?'

i never found out. by the time my boss said 'aqui, chula, take some chickens for your husband' their act had yet to start.

maybe that's for the better anyway, those fuckers always scared the shit out of me in the movie.



as i related the story of my night to b, he reminded me about another uncomfortable food-related situation. it must have been last summer, because i was in that 'i'm so pregnant my baby might come out if i fart too loudly' condition, and also because we were at the hospital for the baby classes. being unable to waddle too far, we ate lunch at the hospital cafeteria. b ordered two hot dogs, thinking that that was a reasonable request.

what he got looked like this:



i know that's a piss poor job of photoshopping two hot dogs into one bun, but it really was the best i could find. no, what b got was actually worse. it was two sorry looking naked dogs nestled into one bun, but they gave him two. so on his plate were two buns and four dogs. the chick behind the counter looked at him like he had three heads when he asked for two more buns.

the real humor was the fact that he ate the weird dogs out of desperate hunger.

he felt so dirty afterwards, like as if someone had made him watch a bad porn or something else comparably naughty.

he made me promise not to tell anyone that he really ate the weird dogs.

sorry b.

even more bizarre than the double dog incident was the first time i met bill murray.



bill is a good friend of the restaurateur i used to work for. he was in and out of the different kitchens of the restaurants my former boss owned, and he even showed up to our summer picnic one year and played on our softball team.

as you can imagine, he's a total wacko in person. not only does he look about thirty years older than he really is, but he dresses in those old polyester blazers and shirts that look like the stereotypical garb an old, bumbling geezer would wear. i don't know if it's a deliberate effort or not, but it only adds to his oddball persona that he's developed over the years.

so the first time i met him i was working at my station, getting ready for dinner service. i was so intent on chopping scallions or whatever the fuck it was that i didn't even see him until he was about four inches from my face on the other side of the pass line (the shelf where you put plates for pick up). my boss introduced me to him and he mumbled something indiscernible and stuck two fingers at me through the pass, at about chin height.

two fingers for me to shake in some weird alternate version of a handshake.

i didn't even want to touch him, i almost yelled out loud 'what the fuck?!'

but i saw my boss nod subtly at the fingers and i just took a deep breath and did it. i shook his fingers and said some 'nice to meet you' crap, all the while wondering if this was something he did with everyone, or did he think that i couldn't handle exposure to all five digits on his right hand.

not that i dislike the man, but come on. two fingers?!

i still feel like scowling and shifting my weight uncomfortably when i think about it.

and now, some cuteness for a little balance:



little miss was way too annoyed about not being able to crawl after the dead jellyfish washed up on the beach to co-operate for a nice photo shoot. but these two in their tankinis was worth me stepping on a little dirty jelly and slimey seaweed.


of course, getting trapped by a rapidly rising tide with a stroller laden like a packing mule might have been a little too much. thanks miss, for at least not protesting to being carted over an acre of beach rocks while mommy scrambled for saftey.

fried = fancy

what do four culinary school graduates do for fun in their spare time? curious you should ask, i was just about to tell you anyway.

what we definitely don't do is go to trendy restaurants and analyze the various components and techniques used in our meals. instead we get together at places like this where it's ok to throw your peanut shells on the floor and the house specialty is fried pickles.

oh yes. you heard that right, fried pickles, and they're fucking fantastic.

sometimes it's the ease of junk food that lets people enjoy themselves more than the expectation of culinary wonders ever could.

you can have your fancy dressing-up and sterling flatware and countless courses of tiny things. i'll always prefer foods that can be eaten with one hand allowing me to hold a beer in the other.

i think that's what the marketing suits had in mind behind this gem:


the 'big az chicken' can be found in corner stores all over this great land of ours. its simplicity lends a hand in its success. sometimes, people just want a big ass chicken sandwich.

how could you argue with that logic?

and now, if you'll excuse me, i'm off to work where i will prepare thousands of hor d'ourves for people all dressed up in uncomfortable clothes.

karma IS a bitch

alright, here it is. this is my 'i need some balance post'. talking shit about my creepy neighbors, no matter how much they might deserve it, has left a nasty taste in my mouth. so i'm back to send a little positive energy out and feel a little more at ease.

fuss and i had a nice afternoon out visiting friends and i'd like to share some randoms that made me smile:

1. i have officially renewed my crush on the shuffle feature on my ipod.

2. little miss is the best kid ever for not letting my blasting the shit out of whatever song shuffle picked for me stop her from having a little car nap.

3. i love that the trees have actual leaves on them again.

4. i want to write a cookbook on how to incorporate herbs into everyday cooking because i love herbs and i think they make everything taste better (NOT referring to that other herb, but i do have an amazing rosemary hot nuts recipe if anyone's interested).

5. i love how my gay guy friends always say how much they can't stand kids and then shower the fuss with the sweetest affection every time they see her.


ok, i feel a little better now. not to be all spiritual or whatever, but i've always felt that you get what you give, and that applies to your mindset as well as your actions. hope you all enjoy the rest of your day as much as i will mine.

safety first

the moon has moved about half-way through it's cycle, so that must mean it's time for me to prepare myself for the task before me. yes, i'm talking about going into to work today, that strange place where i move in slow motion (slower than usual) and it takes every ounce of my being concentrating on not getting hurt every second that i'm there.

professional kitchens are set up for disasters. add one hapless klutz like me to the big, scary equipment, knives a-plenty, and the fire balls that the older-than-dirt gas stove makes whenever you try to turn a burner on, and you've got a psa for what not to do while attempting to cook.

so today i thought i'd remind myself of some of my past mistakes in hopes of not repeating them. since i barely ever work any more, i have to be extra vigilant about keeping my clumsiness in check.

let's see, i definitely fell head first into one of those mega-sized garbage cans and did the whole cartoon-esque legs wiggling above the rim for help move. of course this happened in the summer so that the bruise on my arm that looked like a hand print was visible and forced me to say 'no, my boyfriend is not the violent type, i just fell in a garbage can' eliciting that sideways head-tilt from people who aren't sure if i need a domestic abuse hotline number. but since i figure that can only happen to a person once in their life, i'm probably in the clear with that.

i should also try to avoid burning myself. a friend once wrote my name out in bacardi 151 and then lit it on fire and i leaned in with my long ass hair to blow it out like a candle. well, that didn't really happen at work, but it happened, so whatever, i own the story and can use it anywhere. same goes for the time i was driving and a lit cigarette butt (um, i don't smoke) managed to get tangled in my hair and smolder away for a good ten minutes because i thought i had a bad tire that was making that gross rubbery smell. so maybe i don't have to worry about people throwing their discarded butts at my hair while i'm at work, or do i? i know they passed that law and all, but it still surprises me how many chefs smoke in professional kitchens. and no, i don't want to tell you where because some of the places i know this to occur in happen to make delicious food and no one's perfect right?

further in the vein of 'not burning myself' falls grabbing the handle of a pot that just came out an oven, or stirring hot rice so aggressively that a few angry clumps weld to my hand skin.

there have also been many, many knife slips in my culinary career so far, but i have since learned that the sharper i keep my knife the less likely it is to slip, or the more likely it is to cut really deeply when i do slip. which means my awesome knife sharpening skills i learned from the knife master at korin in tribeca are most often put to use when caring for my knife after cutting off a chunk of fingernail.

so if i avoid fire and knives, and garbage cans that look extra dangerous (just to be safe), what does that leave for me to actually do at work? sitting by the espresso machine mainlining lattes sounds about right, until i find a way to make that menacing too.

can i really do this?

tomorrow is the big day, my return to work. i'm excited, anxious, and nonchalant all at the same time.

while i pretty much know what i'll be getting myself into, things will be a little different. last summer i was the raging preggo who was on a very long leash. in the food business, it's typically a big no-no to consume more of your product than you actually send out to your customers. try telling that to an eight months pregnant lady who's been on her swollen clownshoe feet for upwards of ten hours.

so i think that this time around i'm going to have a small list of goals i want to achieve as i re-enter the world of the working:

1. be the one who gets along with everyone (i.e. no shit-talking)
2. do at least one thing per shift to help that i wasn't asked to do
3. try not to go to the pastry department's dry storage and eat all their jellybeans
4. get better at ass-kissing for my boss's sake (he's one of those 'napoleon complex' types and could always use a few words of encouragement)
5. let someone else have a turn at cleaning out the short-term cooler (i called it 'the matching game' because there was always two of the same thing opened and you had to combine them, i loved it)
6. try not to use my broken spanglish with the dishwashers hoping they'll see how smart and considerate i am by attempting to speak in their own language while i'm really just making it harder for them to understand me
7. don't get annoyed when i ask for more responsibility and actually get it

i'm not sure how well i'll be able to stick to these guidelines, but i really am going to try. i may end up giving myself some form of dissociative disorder, polite and charming at work, bitchy loudmouth everywhere else.

that thought almost just made it more interesting.


update: i just remembered another item for my list:

8. do NOT nag the tool who borrowed my signed copy of the murray's cheese book, with all my favorite gourmet cheeses labeled and noted, and then ignored my fervent pleas to return it

don't let the pineapple talk you into anything

today i'm going to be sharing my deep philosophical thoughts about the vast abyss that exists in my kitchen. it's a wasteland filled with forgotten food items, so depressing that when you gaze into its lonely world you are almost compelled to shed a tear. yes friends, i'm talking about my pantry.

in restaurant lingo, it's known as dry storage, or more commonly, that place to go when you want to raid the pastry department's stash of jellybeans and imported chocolates. in kitchens near and far, large and small, this is the dead zone of food. this is where you will actually find dust bunnies gathering on top of canned goods and bags of rice that seem to sigh if you touch them, exhausted by the effort of attempting to look appealing.

i have ventured forth into this dismal realm in hopes of either a) using some of the miscellaneous crap i have accumulated or b) throwing out (i mean, donating) those innocuous food items i must have purchased while delirious in my immediately post-partum phase.

this mission has brought to mind a certain anecdote about canned pineapple. my husband's sister, bridget, was telling us about the time she was at their parents' house and heard a loud sudden, banging noise. after careful inspection, she discovered that a can of pineapple chunks had mysteriously exploded in the pantry, spraying everything within a five foot radius with it's sticky syrupy bits. at which point in the telling of this anecdote my husband's brother, conor, jumps in with 'it was so tired of living there it killed itself!'

while i laughed so hard i cried a little at this story, i found myself wondering if i too, was driving any of my neglected consumables to suicide. when my eyes landed on the bag of barley, long passed it's expiration date (um, wtf is there an expiration on barley for anyway? it's just a grain, and if you keep it in an airtight container, or in the original bag with a paper clip holding it shut, it should be good for a long, long time, right?), i cooked it up for dinner, mostly to ease my guilt. it helped a little, but i needed to go further.

so far it hasn't been as bad as i thought it would be. i actually made black bean soup * the other night using canned beans. not only did it look exactly like the picture, but it tasted pretty good too. score one for the wasteland.

this small step in the right direction is what i needed to revitalize my pantry. i will make the commitment to keep things current if you, pantry, will promise to take your prozac and not let any 'accidents' happen on your watch. working together i know we can build a solid relationship based on mutual respect. no more will i stuff you with soups i never intend to eat, or 9 out of the 10 ingredients needed to make a recipe, doomed to perpetually being 'almost' used.

pantry, i'm here for you. we'll get through this rough time. and then, just when you're starting to show vibrant signs of life, i'll revert back to my old ways until the next passing moment of introspection strikes.

*note: i did modify the recipe slightly. i added an extra can of beans to the pureed part to make the soup a little thinker, and i think it was for the better. the soup needed it, and i got to use one more can from the pantry, everybody wins.

back to the daily grind

my daughter is nearly 6 months old now. while that means a multitude of developmental milestones are occurring so fast i can't catch them on camera quick enough, it also means that it's time for me to go back to work.

this has been a back-and-forth topic for my husband and i for some time now. it's that old catch 22 of the cost of day care vs. the income i would be earning. although, for now, we've reached a conclusion. part-time work will prevent us from spending a fortune on day care, and allow me to re-enter the adult world without a baby on my hip for 15-20 hours a week.

everybody wins.

so what will i be doing that's so illustrious as to call me away from my new full-time job as house-wreck (i mean mother)? i will be returning to my catering job that i held when i was a million months pregnant. they were so nice there, only making me stand for 10 hour shifts at a time, as opposed to the normal 12 hours.

i can ride this part-time thing for a few years, maybe make little miss a baby bro or sis at some point, but i know that i will have to fully rejoin the workforce eventually. i am looking forward to having a career, but it'll have to be something kid friendly. whatever could i do in the food industry that would be about the same schedule as when my kids are in school.....

that's right folks, i'm talking about becoming a lunch lady.

did i ever think when i was 18 that a day would come that i would intentionally consider slopping out beans and franks after spending bags of money to go to a fancy culinary school? who would? but the lunch lady has evolved, and so have i.

today's lunch lady is responsible for designing healthy, cost efficient meals that are regularly rotated. she not only makes sure the food is prepared to her high standards, but is also the merchandiser and shipping/receiving manager. and that's on top of ordering fresh supplies and collecting lunch money from the parents.

the idea has been flickering on and off in my head for a while, hypothetically. but just yesterday i received a phone call from a dear friend, who happens to work in the school system, hysterically laughing because she was on line in the cafeteria and realised that being a lunch lady would be a perfect job for me.

so there it is, my new calling. i could even work in the same elementary school my kids go to and embarrass the shit out of them every day. i may not win any upcoming seasons of top chef, but i would be able to work making delicious food while still being home to help with math homework.

can you see it yet? i mean, i'll probably ditch the old fashioned hair net for a sleek new uniform and matching cap. but maybe, just maybe, i'll have a chance at changing that old stigma and building something, well, i don't know, less lunch lady-ish. at least i'll always have that adam sandler song to motivate me each day.

we're all targets

as i sit here munching my delicious soy crisps (creamy ranch flavor) i find myself contemplating what even made me decide to buy soy crisps in the first place.

they are quite tasty, but the very first time i bought them, i had no previous experience with soy in a snack-chip form and really had no idea what to expect. so how did they make that monstrous leap from grocery store shelf to my shopping cart, and ultimately into that tender spot in my heart reserved for my favorite snacky treats?

the obvious answer is the right one in this case, marketing.

the white bag with fresh-looking green leaves and branches flowing beneath the title 'nature's promise', the organic brand stocked at my local food market, was designed with just that very purpose in mind. and it worked.

i looked the bag over, compared price and ingredients to the brand name rice cakes tempting me from the next shelf. the soy crisps were less than half the price and lower in sodium, and after all, nature DID promise that they were 'all natural' and 'cholesterol free.' but this investigative shopping would never had occurred had i not been attracted to the outside of the bag.

this train of thought prompts me to think about the people who earn a living conceptualizing and creating the many advertisements we are all exposed to in our daily lives. how much money must have been invested for such firms to specifically target buyers for their products? how much time is spent making each item appear unique, and do so in a way convincing enough to make the average consumer part with his hard-earned cash for something new compared to something predictable?

it may be safe to say that as long as the marketing works, it pays for itself. everyone makes a profit and i enjoy my soy crisps guilt free.

but what about when advertising backfires? who looses out? is the public deprived of a great product because of poor marketing? or it is a form of capitalist natural selection, only the strong survive?

i'd like to believe that our population of consumers would, on average, as a whole, support businesses/companies worthy of our dollar. but then i find things like this. did you read the product description? only about two sentences in and it has already become completely elitist and exclusive to most americans. someone, somewhere, got paid to write that, and people are buying into it.

the more i ponder why someone would actually buy anything that so unabashedly targets a certain lifestyle, thus perpetuating classist notions and ideals, the more it becomes clear to me that this advertising tactic is enormously successful.

this company will not only make their product appealing to those overtly aimed for, but also for the many who strive to be thought of as existing in that category.

and so i give up. i cannot win a battle of etiquette with advertisers. they exist solely to make us take notice. often it's the more outlandish messages, subtle or not, that we talk about the most.

red or white?

wine tasting is for snobs.

that's what i used to think, until not too long ago, when i was introduced to the basics of wine. simply, being able to identify what you like and then buy what you want instead of some over-priced bottle that you end up hating.

so although very much a novice, i can appreciate that there's more to wine tasting than sitting with some old fuddy-duddys (someone wearing a monacle, another checking his pocket watch, etc.) discussing the significance of the plot of soil a particular grape is grown in.

granted, i usually am one for the details, and the details of wine making can be somewhat interesting in small doses. but details can also make the process feel a little overwhelming for a beginner. so instead, i choose to learn 'how' to taste.

first there's the whole clean palette part, then there's the progression from light to dark, there's also the swirl-n-sniff (technical term), followed by the swooshing of the wine in your mouth like you're rinsing with listerene, to coat every bit of surface with the flavor and texture of the wine. and then this is where it gets tricky, the spitting part.

now, i can understand if your job as a purchaser for a major wine retailer (or something else of the sort) requires you to taste 300 wines in one afternoon, you have to spit, i get it. but if you're just out for a casual wine tasting with some friends, i don't feel obligated to spit. one very convincing reason being that i am almost positive i would either a) miss the intended target for the spit, b) knock over the spit-containing vessel at some point during the tasting, most likely onto someone other than myself, or c) accidentally look at the spit and be completely unable to continue tasting.

so taking all of these factors into consideration, in addition to the fact that a simple tasting in most places is either free or very affordable, i have a new opinion about wine tasting: it's a great way to get drunk and learn a little before you get drunk, helping to validate the whole experience.

i mention all of this mostly because of a recent wine tasting afternoon i just enjoyed with my husband and some friends. we got to tour a couple of wineries, ranging from cutting edge to the oldest vineyard in america. we all learned, drank, discussed, and then reverted to more childish forms of entertainment. but at the end of the day, it really was what we made of it, not the stuffy, formal ordeal we each may have imagined it might be.

so run, kiddies, run to your local winery. drink, chat, (learn a little if you want) and buy a bottle of wine to support your local winemaker.

what's for dinner?

how many of you out there find yourself stumped by this seemingly innocent question on a daily basis?

i, for one, have a particularly redundant discussion with my husband about this very topic most afternoons. it's not my fault, and it's definately not his fault.

the problem here is that we recently spent upwards of 40k so that i could be trained by world renowned chefs at a classical culinary institution. so, with my big expensive diploma in culinary arts, i am challenged to "i don't know, make something good" as my husband offers.

this then leads into his frustration about how everywhere we go when people find out that his wife is a chef, the immediate response is "wow! you must eat good at home" (insert chuckle here). to which my husband thinks to himself "if you only knew, pal..."

my old stand-by for this argument, i mean, discussion, has been that restaurant food is so yummy because there is an enormous team of people working in harmony to bring about that wonderous creation set before you at the table. everyone's role is important, especially the dishwasher.

yes, i'm talking about that little friendly, under-sized, perpetually cheerful fellow, old enough to be your grandfather, who exists in all food service establishments across this great land of ours.

he scrubs mountains of dirty pots and various utensils with an efficiency that could only come from decades of practice. he reaches for the exact size saute pan you are frantically searching for before you could stammer out "donde es, ummm, uhh... how do you say pan?"

his contributions are often overlooked in the moment, although he is well-thanked at the end of the hectic dinner service. but he, HE is the very reason why it is so easy for professional chefs to make elaborate meals, even on the smallest of scales.

in my teeny-tiny kitchen (without even a mechanical dishwasher) there is no way that i am willing to tackle the many elements necessary to turn out gourmet eats on a regular basis. twice a week, sure. three times if you're lucky.

does that make me lazy or practical? i still haven't decided. but i can tell you what's for dinner tonight, grilled cheese. eat it and love it.