eggbeater

Chef Advice. On 'Giving Notice.'

Quitting a cooking job right has to be one of the most talked about subjects amongst cooks. Everyone wants to know how to do it right. And few people give, or take, notice of resignation well. Most cooks know that to give 2 weeks notice today is to have one's last day today. Most chefs know that to receive a 2 week's notice today is to have a good-for-nothing-'senioritis' cook for the next two weeks.

Giving notice right often appears to be more elusive than bankers showing personal responsibility for their actions. And, yet, is is possible. But you have to be prepared, intuitive, professional and treat the person/kitchen/establishment with as much integrity as you wish for others to treat you.

If you are not management, always give two weeks, at least. If you think the chef will fire you on the spot ask for your paycheck. In the USA you must be given your final check on the day you are fired. For every day you have to wait for your check your employer must pay you, whether you have worked or not. Knowing your State, City & Federal rights IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. If you think your chef is going to fire you on the day you give notice make sure you can afford it to give notice on that date.

If you want to give a proper notice and do not wish to be fired on the day you give notice, promise your chef that you will work every day you're scheduled harder than you have up until now.

Work hard to make the kitchen miss you and wish you were not leaving, before you give notice.

In the USA is is illegal for an employer to give you a malicious reference. The worst reference an old employer can give a prospective new employer is no reference at all.

But,

you know what?

Chefs are notoriously as club-ish as cops. If you have upset one chef in your city, chances are said chef will spread the word not to hire you. Yes, it does happen.

As I've said, many times before, a cook's world is small. Travel thousands of miles and you might work with someone you met already. Piss off a cook yesterday and tomorrow they could be your chef, or worse yet, your sous chef.

You think you're no one. You think no one notices. But chefs talk. They trade players or steal like baseball teams. Your chef, your pastry chef, sometimes a whole kitchen full of cooks, will be courted, will be swooned, will be stolen.

Give your notice with aplomb. Play your cards right.

Always play your cards professionally.

Even if your chef is a hack and the line is a bunch of shoemakers. Even if the owners of your restaurant are absent or drunk or appear to have no idea what it takes to build a successful restaurant.

Being professional when giving notice includes some, if not all, of these pointers ~

• Write a letter of resignation. This is a letter, not a sentence. Write it like a real letter not a text or an email. Date it. Spell everything & everyone correctly. Say something about what you learned. Give your final day as a full date. ie: "I should like to work on and up until Saturday May 1st, 2010." Hand sign the letter. Put it in an envelope.
• Print and hand deliver, do not email, your letter of resignation.
• Give notice on a day or during an hour when you can have a few private minutes with your chef. Even if this means asking for that 'date' a number of days in advance.
• Do not give notice in front of any of your co-workers. This will be seen as quitting and you surely will not get a good reference, or be able to place said job on your resume, if you quit.
• In your letter of resignation say what you learned and why you're moving on.
• Give 2 weeks even if you have only been at a job for 2 weeks.
• Stay calm and collected no matter how your chef is reacting.
• Do not stoop to insults. Do not cast aspersions. Do not place blame on others. Think about omitting the word 'you' from the beginning of your sentences and instead speak from an "I" perspective.
• Stay positive. Really. In lieu of however your chef/owners are treating you in your resignation meeting, stay composed. People will remember that you remained professional. Even after they have calmed down. Freak out later in the bar or with your lover or to your friends, but remain clear and determined and calm with your boss[es].
• Remember that you are not responsible for how your notice is taken but it helps to be compassionate/empathetic. It helps to see how your giving notice may look to your chef/team/house. Everyone takes departure differently. Know that those last two weeks will be hard and very very different.
• Leave on a good note. Leave your station/partner better than what you came into.
• If you have been in a kitchen for a long time, thank each cook/sous personally & privately. Even if it sounds sappy, people remember that shit. Many of us feel like we're in a thankless profession & getting a 'thanks, you taught me a lot' gets remembered.

If you are a chef, meaning you have a management role, your notice should be far more than 2 weeks. The longest notice I ever heard of was Eric Ziebold, who gave Thomas Keller a 4 year notice when he left The French Laundry to work in Washington DC. I gave Elizabeth Falkner a month's notice after working as her pastry chef at Citizen Cake for 2 years.

In the years since September 11, 2001 & this new economic downturn, giving notice has taken on new meaning. Few cooks & chefs are given the chance to do so before they are laid off or show up to see a city padlock on their kitchen. How owners and chefs give notice to their employees ranges from months and months notice to less than an hour.

It's a precarious business we're in. While people have to eat, they do not have to eat in restaurants or hotels or on cruise ships or hire caterers. 

The restaurant where I work now has recently placed an ad on Craigslist for cooks. In the resumes we have perused so far, it's obvious times have changed radically. It used to be you could not put the name of a place you worked on your resume unless you had been there at least 6 months.

Now you're lucky if you see 3 months of continuous employment on someone's resume.

But I'll say it again.
Treat your employer, your chef, as you wish to be treated.
If that job has meant the world to you.
If your chef is better than you ever thought she'd be.
If your fellow cooks took time with you.
If your sous taught you more than you ever thought you could learn in one span of time.
If you mentored, made a difference, came early & stayed late, took a leadership position before one was given to you, loved every menu change, didn't just complain but worked on solutions, were proud to say your worked at that restaurant, woke up {almost} every day excited to work, can say those dishes you made were spot on, called a station Yours, pushed yourself out of your comfort zone, got buried in the weeds every service and helped those around you finding their way through the bogs too, you can barely say all your learned because it overwhelms you--

If

you can't believe you're leaving a restaurant, a chef, a sous chef

you have fallen in love with.

Treat those people, and yourself, with respect, integrity & professionalism.

Because sometimes people evaporate.

Because in your next job you'll be working as many hours as you were working here, and it's easier to lose touch than stay connected.

And because

you never know all you've learned
until you leave.
until that job has become a dot in your rearview mirror.

I can't tell you how many times I've gotten jobs from connections I made in previous kitchens. Or with cooks I've worked with. Almost all, in fact.

Where I work now, for example. Gina dePalma, Babbo's everlasting pastry chef, was someone who kicked my ass to hell and back at Gramercy Tavern many many years ago, started asking around New York to see if anyone needed a pastry chef, when I was coming here from London last November. Jonnatan Leiva responded and then called Mourad Lahlou, a close friend to us both, to cross check me. It was on these two amazing chef's high recommendations that I landed in an execugtive role almost immediately after landing in New York City.

If you want to be treated with integrity, act with integrity. Even in the face of anarchistic unprofessionalism, that this industry is wont to display, at least recently, do it the old fashioned way.

Give notice to your job respecting your journey, and your chef's journey before you.

Because you know what?

Sometimes,

sometimes it can be the most amazing experience.

Sometimes

you can think you know a chef, you can think you love a chef enough, you can think you have learned all you can learn in a chef's kitchen

until you give notice.

and you both cry.
and you both reach for the others' hand.
and you exchange thank yous that reach into the very core of who you are.
and you are stunned by your chef's grace.
and you realize in that moment you know nothing.
and you know that knowing nothing means the most incredible journey ahead, not leaping off a bridge.
and you feel goosebumps borne of honor.
and you feel graced to have been allowed a position in his kitchen.
and you both want everything for the other, the way the best, most unselfish love feels.
and you know you will hate every minute that ticks away your time left in that chef's kitchen.
and you know that you will be his friend forever. and he, yours. equally and without condition.

Because, sometimes, showing up to life, on life's terms, can exceed your wildest expectations.

postcard poems.

unbound spring.
morning warmth.
a soft sun.
quiet sundays, a semicolon to summer.

`

Grand Central Station.
Iconic.
Marble.
Vibrating today with bagpipes and straight backs and a history forgotten.
There are tears at the edges of my eyes i did not put there.
I am grateful to be on a train today.
Grateful to have heard the music, the complicated instrument.

`

At the edge of Williamsburg, where development meets empty and water.
The city always looks the flattest flat from this angle.
Sunny out, wet underfoot.
Looking for perspective.
And answers that will never arrive.

`

New York is so undeniably itself under grey skies.
Barely perceptible tree buds quietly.
Greenwich Village.
Old streets.
Little corners.
Architectural details.
Brick cleaned by rain.
A whispered vibrancy .even in darkness.

`

the air felt like sea air today.
melancholy.
horizon line promising.
Forgetting.
hands waving at the dock.
fog mist soft wet wool.

`

today is watery melancholy spring
silk bias cut quilted sky
Neither gray nor blue.                             .both

`

besotted by spring.

`

First there was a string.
Then there was a knot.

`

Tender.
Flaky.
Rich.
Light.
Supple.
Vegetal.
Herbacious.
Unreal.

`

O No.
Vanilla is the muse of chocolate.

`

Today Brooklyn is Oakland.
Quiet. Desolate. Grey. Vast.

`

Purplish night.
New Jersey lights.
A soft and mercurial Hudson River.
Black dock pylons, broken rows, water eaten wood.
Gulls kibbutzing screaming interrupting.
Eyes refocus:one white bird sits neatly on each black line, like a matchstick.

`

Dusk.
Quilted sky.
Water towers silhouette.
Houston street and all its traffic lights.
Old squats.
Shiny kitchen equipment.
Memoried memories.
Footfalls distinct.

`

new york city winter 2009 - spring 2010

Becoming a Chef. What's the hurry?

A recent post and some ensuing comments to it has led me to be thinking more about the current issues which restaurant kitchens face. This is not at all to say hotel and catering and test and bakery and private cheffing kitchens are excluded from these issues, but most of my experience is with restaurants, and since I cannot share with you what I don't know, I let you cross out one word and fill it in with the one you know. Let's make a deal, shall we-- give me a few centimeters of poetic license and I'll give you a small country's worth of poetic comprehension?

Restaurant kitchens are what you see when the industry is X rayed.

As well, restaurant kitchens tend to be the ones cooks become chefs in. Independently owned restaurants tend to be the professional cooking environments chefs become recognized names in.

And restaurants, in the Isosceles triangle of professional cooking hierarchy, are considered to be the peak. In other words there's an unspoken rule in cooking: restaurant cooks are real cooks and everyone else is a hack. Restaurant cooks look down on catering the same way New Yorkers make fun of New Jersey. It's unspoken, but really it's not.

Because of this prevalent attitude, when someone wants to start cooking professionally, they are rarely introduced to the hundreds of thousands of other ways to get paid to cook. And because restaurant cooking is notoriously, unapologetically brutal, cooks who 'can't make it' in restaurants feel like, or are made to feel, both overtly & silently, like complete failures.

Is it true the first step of recovery is admitting?

Or is it what you do with your admission that counts?

Understanding the emotional and pschychological tactics the restaurant industry use to attract, keep & work to death its cooks is important if one hopes to gain entry into its labyrinth.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still in it. I love it. But I know it too.

Well.

Not a lot appears to have changed in the industry since I naively joined it 17+ years ago. What was true then is still true now ~

• most cooks do not get paid for all the hours they work
• most cooks work 6 days a week or more than 5 shifts in 7 days
• most cooks work an average of 60 hours a week, and chefs can be upwards of 120
• most cooks are not offered &/or cannot afford health insurance
• most cooks have to quit or get injured in order to 'get a vacation'
• most cooks experience at least one if not multiple injuries which take them to the emergency room
• most cooks are male and get paid more than their female counterparts, being 'Chef' is no exception
• most cooks eat less than one meal a day
• most cooks feel abused in their workplace & that abuse ranges from yelling to physical violence
• most cooks have legal and illegal substance abuse issues, whether past or present
• most cooks look as if they have not seen the sun in quite some time
• most cooks can not afford to pay off their culinary school loans on the wages they make in the industry
• most cooks who went to culinary school said it wasn't worth as much as they thought it would be once they began working 'for real'
• most savoury cooks know nothing of pastry & vice versus
• most savoury cooks/chefs do not like dessert, and think the making of it is below them
• many savoury chefs do not employ equally good pastry chefs for fear dessert will compete with their limelight
• most pastry chefs get treated like second class citizens by way of wage differential, equipment mistreatment or lack thereof, shortages in staff and in-equal billing/name mentioning on menu/website/press/cookbooks
• pastry chefs rarely get the kind of press savoury chefs do (when was the last time you saw a photo of a pastry chef on the cover of Food & Wine etc.)

I think you see my point.

You might ask why I still do it. Knowing what I know. Or seeing that, in almost 20 years, not much has changed.

And I say. Be the change you want to see in the world. Even if your world is only as small as restaurant kitchens. Even if your world is only as small as the cooks {?un}lucky enough to work with you. Even if your world is only as small as you think it is. Because making change takes a long time. Change can oft not be seen until it's become quite small in the rearview mirror.

Most of us only know what we've learned long after we've left.

Which brings me to the subject of this post.

In "Chef Advice. or when cooks say " ." chefs hear " ." " I imply something I do not say outright.

There has been a change in the industry I've called home in the last 17 years. And, to be fair, it had started long before I stepped on the foot of Reed Hearon who was the chef to kick my ass to hell and back all those years ago.

In a profession considered a craft considered a lifelong education considered a place where you paid your goddamn dirty dues in a workplace considered to be completely insane and without fairness or law or recourse or reason in a series of apprenticeships unpaid and paid with minimum wage and or easily let bodily fluids and not, what was discontinued to be, slowly, quietly, but methodically undermined by this thing we know as culinary school.

And not because all culinary schools are the root of evil.

But because a school system was built to more quickly train what it had taken others {who would be, no doubt, asked to teach in such facilities} dozens and dozens of years to learn.

And that, my friends, is what I was implying but did not say outright in my last post.

What has changed, because of culinary schools or the advent of them; because of tv chefs or the creation of themselves as products by mainstream media to sell you an image you'd rather swallow whole than the Real One (see bulleted list above); because of reality shows and the chefs they 'find' to play real ones on tv {all entendres intended}; because of all the glossy food magazines telling you how much luxurious fun it is to be a chef,

what has slowly crept in,   i n s i d i o u s l y   is the HURRY.

The speed at which everyone seems to want to be a Chef.

WHAT IS THE BIG HURRY?

To become something that one can't really become anyway? Because being a chef is a verb. It's about learning and growing and asking millions of questions and eating and smelling and tasting and listening and it's constant. Sometimes its the kind of repetition that makes you want to blow your brains out. Sometimes it's rewarding in ways you can not verbalize so you cry or do another line of coke or fuck your brains out or lay down on the floor and look up at the ceiling after a particularly grueling night of service. Most of the time only those who wear your uniform too can understand your accomplishments, albeit small or far between.

The hurry is disrespectful.

It disrespects every person who has come before you.
It disrespects those who have taken their whole life to learn.
It disrespects those who are attempting to teach you.
It disrespects the industry as a whole.
It disrespects the craft.
It disrespects every piece of food you touch, every animal you butcher, every service you try and set up for.
It disrespects diner, owner, dishwasher, waiter, busser.
It disrespects the finesse, the knife, the ingredients, the process, the uniform.

If you're in a hurry you're disrespecting yourself.

And that disrespect affects me and affects the kitchen as a whole, and in turn affects the entire industry.

The way a city begins to lose its soul when landmarks are destroyed, this hurry has eroded parts of a craft I love fiercely and wish to protect. 

And

to know a love, to be a craft, to walk a talk, to have and to hold dedication, to live a full life, to be brave and vulnerable both, to speak the truth despite circumstance and loneliness, to rally and advocate for the silenced, to write about those whose words will never be read, to listen, to know and still to speak out, to keep what I have by giving it away, to attract but not promote, to conjure stamina day in and day out, to learn and to teach, to mentor and to guide, to allow dissent, to practice anger without violence, to swim deeper and deeper into into the whys and the hows, to engage you, to bake and share delicious foods, is the hope of eggbeater, and its author.

Bushwick Brooklyn, under a wet thump of snow.

 

Menu Changes. or: what to do when history repeats itself.

I don't have to tell you that the economy of your country, city, town, continent, family has tanked.
I don't have to tell you anything about it. You know.
I don't have to tell you to hold onto your job. You have. As long as you've been able to.
I don't have to tell you not to spend your money on frivolous items. You either have or you have not; either out of need or need to rebel.
I don't have to tell you how many restaurants have closed, how many cooks and chefs and pastry chefs are out of work.
I don't have to tell you that if you love, really love a restaurant, you may want to become a regular.
I don't have to tell you that if you really love a chef or a pastry chef's work, you should tell everyone you know to go eat at said person's workplace. You know.
I don't have to tell you the power of positive press is far quieter than the power of negative press. Whether you rant indignantly on Yelp, or feed a piece of barely true gossip to Eater, or pan a place on Chowhound, or talk doo-doo on your own blog/Twitter/Facebook about a particular place,
you play a part in the wild fire that will surely consume said business.
I don't have to tell you anything. You know why? You know.
You're smart.
You read as much as I do.
Probably more.

I don't have to tell you what happened on September 11, 2001. I don't have to tell you that the Internet Bubble, based on money which did not exactly exist, but which was generating thousands of businesses to be born, and invite more people than could even fit in San Francisco & beyond to move there, and displace thousands more, burst. At about the same time as September 11, 2001.
O yes. It was a fun year. A great time to be working in a luxury industry making food people neither needed nor could afford.
I lost my job of 2 years that year. After that I was unemployed for longer than I have been since I started working, at age 14. I witnessed over 6,000 restaurants close in San Francisco. In one year.
You probably remember that time as well as I do.
I know you remember what you were doing that day.
And if you lived in NYC or the Bay Area, you remember the recovery time.
It took years.

It is for these memories, these reasons, these experiences, which I still feel, still know, viscerally, that I remain forever grateful to have a job, when I have one.
It is for these memories, these reasons, these experiences, which I still feel, still know, viscerally, that I have grown.
It is for these memories, these reasons, these experiences, which I still feel, still know, viscerally, that hope to always know perspective, even the smallest amount, is utterly important.

Because

a little perspective

goes

a long way.

When it happens all over again. History is only important, if you can learn from it.

There are very few restaurants that do not have to worry. About food costs. About labor percentages, about inventory, rent, the economy, holidays, weather, natural catastrophes, equipment, vermin, waste, stealing, lawsuits, worker injuries, etc. Very few. Not none, but probably less than a percent I'm guessing.

Everyone thinks it's so much fun to be a chef. So creative. So nifty. So delicious. So exciting. So glamorous.

And they're right.

Some of the time.

The rest of the time they're wrong. Very wrong.

Because sometimes the most creative things you're doing is

• figuring out how to cut costs without firing your entire staff
• changing your menu overnight because none of your purveyors will deliver to you because of outstanding invoices
• working every station even though the kitchen is composed of 6 stations in the layout of a 3 bedroom house
• juggling a myriad of medication to take while working sick
• offering every kind of 'special' that will attract every kind of diner at any price point you think all of these people can or will want to afford
• filching your numbers to reflect what the owners want to see
• keeping your management away from the bar where you know they're drinking away any of the profits you might otherwise be barely seeing
• figuring out how to serve food you worry is going off but can't afford to throw out
• shaving ounce after ounce off of your plates of food in ways diners won't notice so you don't have to raise prices, which diners always notice
• keeping your body alive on 3 hours of sleep, no food and coffee as your only imbibement
• switching arms, hands, wrists, because your primary one is so injured you can no longer use it well
• and
• p.s. you don't have health insurance
• even though
• you work in one of the most physically challenging indoor workplaces you know of

Menu Changes.

These words are a stand in for other words.

Menu Changes mean a variety of things. A menu changing is a symptom. Menus Change because they have to.

After September 11th, 2001, Menus Changed. In order for restaurants to stay afloat, they had to lower prices, drop expensive proteins, lay off extraneous staff {ie pastry chefs}, ask the staff that stayed to take pay-cuts & do twice the work.

A lot of Menus Changed and many restaurants started making Comfort Food. The United States needed comfort. A lot of it.

So tonight, when I was asked to change my menu, radically, I understood. I didn't like it, but I didn't stomp my feet and say, "It's not fair!"

I understood its implication. I know its history.

I had my "reactionary, emotional, angry" self tempered, calmed {silently} by my 'Grounded Self,' and I took the order as a challenge.

For I am only one of millions who has [had] to Change Menus. Change plans. Change on a dime. 

Change Menus. Get grateful. Turn challenge into lesson. Know life is full of lessons. Have perspective. Calm down enough to see the forest through the trees.

Because you know what?

Changing Menus is changing directions is life changing, and

the only thing you can rely on is change.

sfl does nyc.

nyc appears to have gotten hold of me. again.

one day I'll be able to tell you why I had to leave London. and what I was doing there. one day this news might be delivered from London, again, or maybe here, again again.

right now it's hard to say.

all I know is I'm still here.

and I've begun working. at a humble but elegant neighborhood place in the West Village called 10 Downing Street. and strangely, coincidentally, ironically enough: Jonnatan Leiva, the chef, hails from San Francisco. if you want to know what my menu looks like, check out my last set of dessert poems. they were my homework for the interview.

{sometimes you have to travel really far to go home.}

...it looks like I'll be here for a while. until Spring I imagine, maybe longer. I've been grounded by a severe back issue. physical therapy, acupuncture & pain medication are my current recipe for recovery. not to mention love & support from family & friends.

that's the news, as I know it to be, right now. but, as the expression goes, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

the only thing you can rely on is change.

dessert poems. V {winter in nyc

apple cider ice cream
fried apple pie
rosemary caramel
Macintosh apple salad with warmed brown butter vinaigrette

frozen honey nougat
grapefruit supremes
kalamansi lime gelee
butter-toasted brioche croutons

bay leaf cream-carnaroli risotto
juniper berry & cocoa nib shortbread
comice pears
pine nut brittle dust

butterscotch pot de creme
pile of brown sugar-cumin-buttered pecans
vanilla egg cream, chantilly

panzanella of devil's food cake & sour cherries
chocolate chocolate twig ice cream
chicory cream
hot milk chocolate sauce
vanilla salt

warm persimmon pudding
persimmon-roasted shallot-walnut-dried white fig salad
labne sabayon

membrillo filled sheeps milk cheese doughnuts
rose petal tea sugar
earl grey cream

parfait of ~
various peppercorn & jaggery roasted pineapple
black sesame-amaranth jaconde
spicy coconut sorbet
tahini-toasted coconut jelly cubes
coconut caramel
black sesame-almond milk foam

semolina "custard"
fennel seed-broken almond-golden raisin-preserved lemon-candied orange peel-honeycomb-olive oil relish
burnt orange caramel ice cream & frozen honey mousse creamsicle
poppy seed lavosh

thyme & buckwheat crepes
cream of pear & parsnip soup
orange flower water roasted pears
sizzling buckwheat groats
white coffee chantilly

fudgesicle granita
grilled pound cake
marshmallow-milk chocolate-sourdough pretzel lumps
shuna's famous hot fudge sauce

previous dessert poems  ~

I  II  III IV

The High Line, New York City

 

 

 

The High Line is a park, is nerdy, is hip, is a railroad bed, is a new perspective of lower Manhattan, and the Hudson River too, is art, is life, is the sky above and the pavement below, all a bustle, is quiet, is stone, is plants, is birds and crickets too, is grasses, is pebbles, is design, is random, is history, is New York City, is a gallery, is like nothing I have ever seen before, is radical, is majestic, is the work of thousands of regular people, and special ones too, is open to the public, is a once-in-a-generation piece, as my friend Maury Rubin said recently.

If you live in NY or anywhere near NYC and you have not been to the High Line yet, you have no excuse worth breathing life into. Just go. And if you have New York City on your future plans, fit this beautiful space in.

If you're so jaded to think you've seen and done it all already, go somewhere else and leave those of us crushed out on the High Line alone to enjoy it with each other.

The High Line is my new favorite person, place & thing. I go in the rain and sun and in cool and on warmer days.

I went last week and took too many photos. It was rainy, very cold, and almost completely empty.

There are four sets on flickr that, especially if you go in order, will give you a very close idea of what it feels like to look ahead, side-to-side and all around the High Line...

one, 2, THREE &  f o u r.

/i have a crush on you

place i call home
someone in california i've never met
person whose words stay with me, tucked safe, all day. following me like faeries, inquisitive, flirtatious, firey, expansive, temptive.
i have always had a crush on you, red headed girl
city i used to live in and live in again but you're a different city now
red bicycle
fellow who knows and has always known and may always know but who i'll never kiss
farmer and keeper of land and dogs and swimming hole i know as well as my body
Yorkshire girl collecting evidence, wearing pink shoes and being a fierce friend for 20 years this october
co-pastry chef one and also two
treehouse i left behind
succulents
family i've come to know who speak a hundred languages and live where the Eurostar takes a turn
i have a crush on you
s.s. you know who you are. you have a different name and so do i. you write long letters and aren't afraid of my words.
i have a crush on you chocolatey spicy deep taste of freshly roasted ground and espresso'd and hot milked coffee
Bonsoy soy milk
pastry chef camaraderie
Mentoring
inspiring
Neal's Yard Paddy & Rob whom i've never met but whose voices i drink once a week
i have a crush on you
girl with music at her fingertips and an Unlikely name
married bois and that one from Canada who makes me blush when we play Bridge
and you
silver haired LA boyfox who conjured and pulled me here, upon his lifeboat, and fed me delicious cakes and could see my path even when i can't because my eyes are muddy
azo. always i will love you. always i will be seen by you. always i will believe you'll come back down to earth
cb. you are big and bigger and also i remember when your father threw the salad out the window. i will visit that bench in central park and remember our first kiss.
i have a crush on you number four because you're orange and,     well... so there.
bw. because i will never be able to tell you. your brother is a close second because he's so much you, and yet completely opposite.
yes, i know you think it's silly but i have a crush on you aj and your pink tie and practical nature and mostly i love that you give gm what he never would have taken from anyone else. not even me.
i have big long-standing crushes on you euro boys in shepherd's bush who have made me rabbit stew and the best aubergine i have ever had. i love your open open hearts
i have a crush on you hp because you have allowed me to reach in and pull out gently what was there always.
rgl. you are brave in ways you may never realize.
db, of course.
aw who used to be ab with the longest double word score name. you have known me since before i could look back at the person in the mirror
i have a crush on you
ok. your grace stunned me when i walked into your kitchen. i will never be the chef i was before i met you. i know something else now because of you. i know another side of integrity and sharing. and no matter how scared the people i work with are in my future, i will remember how you shared and opened all your doors to me. even though you knew very well what i was doing there.
and you mr x. thank you for being my ally and for teaching me about why Hobarts are the best stand mixers in the world.
i have a crush on you dl from Israel with your scratchy tough exterior and bold tone. you're straight and you'll never see my eyes but i see you. and felt honoured to be on your team.
i have a crush on you ah and tmp because you have years yet to know your power behind the stove. i hope i get to see you tear that cocoon apart and stand as tall as your dna made you.
i have a crush on you too d. spratt and not just for your surname! you knew my name and said it aloud. you saw me and placed me there, even though you don't know it.
i have a crush on you: my Bridge game. because i get to conjure everything my mother taught me, but have the time to learn now.
roy. your camp is infectious. your love of baking is physical, literal, body. it is not about fame but about the alchemy of butter meeting flour and marrying inexplicably, tenderly. your humour is silly but when it comes to the kitchen you swim seamlessly with moving tide and undertow alike.
i have a crush on you new york city, to whom i am about to return. to whom i am indebted to for pages and libraries of adventures, original crushes, heartbreaks, delicious tastes and bitter grief.
i might even have a crush on you u n c e r t a i n t y
because you continue to teach me to put one foot in front of the other even though the horizon is obscured, let alone any forest.
i have a crush on you
life.
even though i never thought i'd say that.
you give unrelentlessly,
everything.
and i have a choice
to pick it up, fold it carefully, and hold it close
if i so choose.
i have a crush on you
heart.
because you remind me i am who i have always been and no amount of hardening
will make you wooden.
will stop you from beating
and having crushes
on you.

favorite ingredients

demerara sugar
eggs
love
buckwheat flour
butter
honesty
inquisitiveness
rosemary
lima salt
bacon fat
espresso
humour
Jersey milk
cold water
freshly ground black pepper
goat yogurt
cocoa nibs
desire to learn
pink peppercorns
Madagascar vanilla beans
fennel seeds
patience
passion
humility
the ability to say a sorry you mean
beef bone marrow
crab
chocolate egg creams
leeks
Scharffen Berger milk chocolate
peach leaves
Royal Blenheim apricots
rhubarb
mangoes
passion
butter caramel
puff pastry
deep breaths
diplomacy
wet green peppercorns
lemon zest
orange blossom honey
mastic
strong black tea
homemade soy sauce
corn on the cob
roasted red peppers
overcooked broccoli
mama
family
research
Jane Grigson
Laurie Colwin
cherry blossoms
the scent of hay
cumulus clouds
roasted chicken
Little Gem lettuces
quince
sun warmed blackberries in August
wild blueberries
hazelnuts
kisses
French Horns
memories
egg bagels
red cabbage
fresh horseradish
playing bridge until 4 am
old school Adidas
holding hands
bicycling down a steep hill
sauteed foie gras
raw clams on a New York boardwalk
Coney Island
juniper berries
fresh blackcurrants
young ginger
asking questions
cardamon
jaggery
oats
thick cold tart yogurt
Meyer lemons
marmalade
crushes
sharp knives
baby offset spatulas
camaraderie
the banana song
homemade marshmallows
Yiddish
haroset
hip hop
raw fennel
eggplant/aubergine
canneles
bee's wax
persimmons
eating fruit off trees
Black Mission figs
mud pies
postcards
words
Sharpies
absorbent side towels
typewriters
silver quenelling spoons
stainless steel saucepans
parchment paper
lust
silpats
the color orange
sailors
unrequited love
novels
farmer's markets
craft
dark chocolate
leaf gelatin
green almonds
nocino
asking for help
golden raisins
rosewater
pistachios, untoasted
ripe tomatoes
the scent of rice on steam, cooking in your house
sesame oil
pomegranate seeds
soft brown sugar
hot porridge at dawn when there's snow falling outside
Thanksgiving dinner during the first week of November
flirting
compliments & complements
lobster
smoked fish
heirloom apples
dogs running through open fields
green olives
bread baking
brown butter
whisks
crushes
Santa Rosa plums
okra
tears
love letters
Doyenne du Comice pears
taking chances
having faith
walking through our fears
roux
Lyle's Golden Syrup
Damson plums
Meadowsweet pannacotta
sober sex
shallot-morel-puff pastry tart
black truffle
grapefruit
making new friends
teaching
learning
train trips
toasted English muffins
peeled chestnuts
whole roasted young fava beans
Muhammara
rolling pins
young coconut
forbidden black rice
confidence
seeded watermelon
green, opalescent fleshed H'aogen melons
pumpkin pie
sleep
vivid dreams
asking 'Why'
red quinoa
helping the most important person in your life die
walking through grief
Mara de Bois strawberries
scallops
swimming in the ocean
moving great distances
knitting
jokes you laugh at while telling them
corniness
adventures
loving
being loved
not being afraid of difference
redefining success
apologizing
watering all the plants on the same day
watching an orchid take weeks to blossom and stay for months
baths
organizing memorials
honey roasted peanuts
eating freshly churned ice cream off the spatula
adding baking soda to caramel and watching it froth up, turn opaque and later break it open and see why they named it Honeycomb, or Hokey Pokey
burning fingertips on tuiles
making lists
showing up for the hard stuff
surviving
glitter
a tongue on the inside of an elbow
torching meringue
raking leaves
lemon juice
hot fudge sauce
cucumbers
hot chorizo
padron peppers sauteed in olive oil and drenched in sea salt, eaten out of a black cast iron skillet
biscuits made with hand rendered lard
buttermilk
elderberry cordial
limes
gingerbread cake
yellow peaches
the desire to live.

silence does not make the heart grow fonder.

I've ignored you, eggbeater.
I've ignored you, people who read eggbeater.
I'm sorry.
It's for a lot of reasons. None of them good. Or explanatory. Or accurate. Or inaccurate.
All of them rationalizations. None of them valid. All of them murky.
But I'm going to make a list.
Maybe that will help.
I love lists. They usually help. Except when they don't.

The Why I Have Been Ignoring Eggbeater. A List.
          Of Reasons. Possible and Accurate and Ridiculous All.
 ~out of tune drumroll please

`
working too many hours.
feeling heartbroken.
spending too much time dispelling wantonly on twitter.
needing sleep.
cleaning the house. thoroughly.
having a houseguest from oakland.
working too many shifts.
not cooking at home.
not taking a lot of photos.
feeling blue. and cerulean.
making long phone calls to the states.
not making enough phone calls to the states.
taking care of best friends falling apart.
feeling like i live in legal/illegal limbo.
having to hide the names of the places i work/have worked.
thinking that eggbeater doesn't give you what other food blogs give you.
moving to a new country.
wishing i knew more about technology and feeling behind the times.
wanting to re-design eggbeater and not feeling like i have the time or know-how.
not eating enough fruit and vegetables in season.
not understanding how British seasons work.
having a secret relationship as i was losing my first job.
having extreme difficulty navigating the personal-political-managerial egos of my new workplace.
having constant foot-in-mouth disease.
believing the things recent ex said about americans.
being caught up in inordinate drama with the ex and his profound narcissism. (self procalimed: i'm not saying anything he didn't say about himself)
feeling pressure to give recipes recipes recipes.
not feeling like recipes mean much.
being terrified friends of mine here and in states were going to kill themselves.
feeling as though food blogs are ridiculous in the scheme of world and personal affairs.
not feeling like i belong to the clique of london food bloggers.
feeling lonely.
turning into a girl.
trying my hand at dating for the first time in a long time.
only eating tea for breakfast and cheese for supper.
homesick.
angry that i don't know where home is.
feeling the pressure from friends in the states to 'come home.'
feeling betwixt & between.
worrying that my life is moving backwards or staying stagnant.
moving someplace where 'my past is erased.' who i am is an unknown. how i work is questioned.
traveling between confident & low self esteem. as if the border were impossibly thin; permeable.
feeling like the odd man out at work.
promoting my workplace on social media venues.
financial worries.
lack of inspiration.
not having time or gumption to read other people's blogs.
being overwhelmed by my email inbox.
noticing how few personal emails i get. and write.
wanting to write about really big subjects and not knowing where to start.
having few people to share my food thoughts with.
feeling unrequited love with an old love.
marking 4 years since the day she died.
turning 17. amongst people who constantly offer me a drink/give me hangover advice.
living in a new city which is both familiar and foreign.
missing and being missed.
missing having chefs/cooks/pastry chefs as friends.
missing family.
missing california fruit and one farmer and two dogs.
missing portland oregon.
feeling old.
feeling tired, physically & emotionally, from time at work & worry about friends.
not seeing enough nature.
feeling like summer passed me by because i never went swimming or did anything 'summery.'
wondering why i'm here.
wondering where else i should be.
spending too much time alone & without structured plans with friends.
spending too much time at work or working.

it's like playing hooky from school. and for every day that passes, the day to go back becomes exponentially more difficult.

it's rare this chef takes suggestions, but if you have gentle ones, fold 'em up and put them in the hat. i miss eggbeater too, and would like to know what you'd like to see to get you back here more regularly.

until then, thanks for reading, even if intermittently.

august is/

purple
dense   hot   confusing
summer at it's most brutal.

electricity in the air
everyday
in august
gathering skies
flash floods
storms without warning

sticky salt water skin, hair
sunburnt skin
city pools
crinkly toes
school's almost here
last days of va ca

august is/

death   grief    dark
hot humid   mosquitoes   green flies
fireflies
stars in the night sky
fires  marshmallows  chocolate
blackberries   bee stings
sleepaway camp
secrets
bats sleeping upside down in the rafters.

the boathouse at dusk
kiss me out back
tell no one.

august is/
stagnant
still water
loss   memory  lake drownings.

BBQ's
meat on the grill
black  char  salt  fat  blood.
cold beer. sweet tea. pie.

A U G U S T

solid
but gone before you know it
dark dark forest
pine green black dirt snails & slugs.
august is cotton sheets, sweat at dawn, quick fucks, cherry ices, yellow nicotine fingertips.
sitting on the stoop.
the violet hour. heroin. tight knots.
air conditioner rain.

august is/
LIGHTENING
electric current  at all times
hail and thick yellow sun
watermelon   red check cloth   poneytails   brambles.
berries.
corn.
picnics.

desire.

remorse.

it's the last month of summer
and no one wants to let it go
easily.

august.
is the affair
secret
the love that shouldn't be
that can't be.

mornings are always the night before
in august
you can't escape night.
deadly
night shade.

august is/
diminishing hope.
time standing still
homesickness
forlorn

lick stamp
spread hand on airplane window
kiss hard goodbyes

tell me a secret
leave me forever
lose your mind
and mine too

august is/
the deep south
soul food
change as break
transition
water bent wood
blue plus red
black plus blue.
stain.

memory
re memory
sentiment
resentment

august is the bottom of the ninth
summer silt
tributary
sand between toes
jellyfish, dense in the ocean
horseshoes under the docks
lowtide
mussels clams lobster
melted butter

screen doors
wasp nests

lost love.

august is/
august. no comparison.