Slamming Dough

Everyone was feeling excited/nervous/edgy for tomorrow, the first day of opening early to serve brunch. That meant there was extra to do this morning, prepping for the additional egg dishes and French toast (using focaccia!), revising the menu up to the last minute, and Chef R working with the backroom kitchen staff to pump out rounds of brunchy salads and French toasts to the staff.

So it was down to C and me to make two huge rounds of dough -- for today and tomorrow, when we will be serving the whole menu, as well as a few brunch pies -- the carbonara has a raw egg dropped on it half way through the cooking.

We banged out a flourless chocolate cake, then Chef R sent me to the supermarket to pick up a cartload of groceries -- usually a list of 6 items would be a small handful, but when it's 10 pounds of potatoes, 4 pounds of brussel sprouts, 4 dozen eggs etc, it adds up.

We scaled and balled dough, which seemed to last forever, but I did notice that I'm getting faster without losing precision. Not a lot faster, but it's the upward trend we're looking for. C was over the moon because we were pretty much done with out prep, and focaccias and slice-pies coming out of the oven before 5, a rare event it seems in the restaurant and even more unusual because of the large amounts a Friday requires. I guess my presence is appreciated.

From service to close, the night flew by. I finished & plated/boxed pies for a while, but spent most of the time slamming dough, enjoying my increasing familiarity with how dough feels and acts, particularly according to temperature -- the warmer the dough is, the gooier and looser it gets, making it much quicker to stretch, but much easier to get too thin and tear.

Chef R pointed out different flaws I was producing in the dough throughout the night, but at the end she complimented me, saying that I was a huge help and felt I was 'clicking' in well. I've had so many horrendously horrible managers in jobs with tons of layers of management -- who would have thought such a good one would appear where there is almost no level of dedicated management?

ADDENDA:
Ate weirdly at the restaurant, but that's because odd food presented itself. Up until now, I was in the non-anchovies camp. I got over any strong negative feelings in c-school, where fish like anchovies and fish paste were discovered to be miraculous flavor enhancers that could make a dish. (Anyone who won't eat anything with anchovies in it, despite them being finely blended or diced, is an IDIOT.) I sampled a pie with the traditional strips of anchovies and it's very strong fishy/salty flavor was....not bad. I had a second little slice and enjoyed the fishy flavor more, the salty blast a little less. Interesting.

BREAKFAST: 8am, whole wheat English muffin with homemade hummus, water, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 11am, banana, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 1:30pm, black cherry soda, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 2pm, 3 pieces of french toast, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Chef R was experimenting with the new brunch menu, giving it out to the staff.

LUNCH: 5pm, 2 square slices, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
So much better than frozen!

PM WATERING: 7pm, quart

PM SNACK: 9pm. 2 small slices of sardine pie, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Pie sent back from customer, divvied among us workers.

PM WATERING: 9:15pm, quart

EVENING SNACK: 10pm, small square of ricotta cheesecake, ginger ale, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

Kitties don't like my oatmeal bars. Stupid kitties.

This morning I took my mountain bike to the trails in Van Cordlandt Park in da Bronx. I took two donuts with me from my local gourmet donut shop. (Yuppie -- who, me?) After a long subway ride, once I got into the park, I paused for a moment of donut appreciation. Eating fresh artisanal donuts on a crisp fall day in the middle of a forest, there is nothing quite like it. Don't know if it made me feel closer to nature or closer to donuts.

ADDENDA:
While riding my bike back from the deep forests of the Bronx, I met stray kitties in two different neighborhoods. I offered both a piece of my oatmeal bar (the only food I had on me), but neither had the slightest interest.

BREAKFAST: 8am, good yogurt with honey, raw cashews, vanilla, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 10am, 2 good donuts, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 2pm, WF sports drink, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 3:30pm, homemade spinach pasta scraps with sauce, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
The variable sizes and shapes (and particularly thicknesses) really brought the point home about how important the shape of pasta is, how it creates the relationship with the sauce.

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, homemade oatmeal bar, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Still think it's too sweet, but the butter/brown sugar/hint of rum flavor is pretty friggin' great, despite that.

DINNER: 6:45pm, frozen pizza, homemade vanilla ice cream, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
I cooked this exactly to box spec, which allowed for a pizza stone. So how was it?

In a word, crappy. There is pretense to healthiness -- the uncured pepperoni and an unknown percentage of whole wheat flower in the crust. While the ingredients list doesn't have 1,000 ingredients that I remember from the frozen pizza of my youth, it's still 3 servings per pie -- which means I just ate 1000+ calories and over 80 grams of fat. Let's not talk sodium. No, this is not healthy.

So if this is not healthy, I'd hope it would give me some visceral pizza pleasure. The crust tasted stale and cardboardy, the cheese was totally anonymous despite the listing of smoked provolone after moz, but the sauce had a nice level of sweetness to spice, provided by a little paprika. Still, taken all together, it tasted a lot like....a frozen supermarket pizza. Which is to say, crappy.

What does one eat before jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge?

Got my cook on this morning, since my only obligation was attending a staff meeting at the restaurant at 3pm. My goal was to do a batch of mushroom tomato sauce, and make hummus and pumpkin ravioli. First two got completed, but I didn't have enough time to cook the pumpkin filling and make the spinach pasta dough.

The tomato sauce was a bit experimental, aided by a food processor for the first time. Previously, I was sticking close to the Batali recipe, but now, well, why not just go do what feels good? I remembered what my dad would throw into his sauce, and worked from there. A diced onion softened in olive oil, with the addition of diced Italian cooking peppers. A pinch of salt, then a mess of finely minced shitake and portobello mushrooms, cooked down. One can of whole tomatoes mushed by hand, then another can of whole tomatoes blended to smooth. One bunch of oregano, minced. Two heads of mashed roasted garlic, right out of the oven. Simmered on low for an hour, threw in a cup of minced parsley. Salted to taste. Cooled, put into containers, then into the ice box.

While simmering the sauce, I split a pumpkin, cleaned it, smeared it with maple syrup, and cut side-down into the oven for an hour (along with the foil-wrapped garlic). Took a half container of spinach, threw it in boiling water for 60 seconds, then into an ice bath. Puréed the shocked spinach in a blender with a little water to smooth, then took 3.5 cups of flour and made a well, into which 4 eggs and the spinach liquid went into the middle. After about 15 minutes of hand mixing and kneading, the dough was ready to rest in plastic. Using my new pizza dough balling skills, I rounded it nicely, like a nice lil' green sphere.

Simmering, resting, roasting. Threw all the hummus ingredients in the food processor -- 2 cans of drained chickpeas, half a container of tahini, juice of 1.5 lemons, one head of roasted garlic, olive oil, a bit of salt. Let it go for a while, tasted it, added pinch of salt and a little chickpea liquid, then finished it. Packaged into the fridge, then on I went.

Scooped the pumpkin out of the skins after cooling, and into the food processor unil liquid. Spread out on a baking sheet then put back in the oven for 10 minutes to dry. Once out, into a mixing bowl with a bit of marscapone, Parmesan, cinnamon, nutmug, and melted butter that I hit with balsamic and maple syrup as it was browning. Mixed, tasted, salted, refrigerator.

Once again, a mountain of dishes faced me. My wife, after working in an office all day, probably wouldn't want to come home to that. So, despite not having an industrial dishwashing machine on hand (or any dishwasher at all), I got it all done and out of the house on time.

After the meeting, I was at K's house way uptown, and we were just loungin' n' talkin', comfortable and neither of us especially wanted to leave the apartment. So I made refrigerator soup -- soup with whatever was in the fridge. Into boiling water went a few rough chopped peeled carrots and a single white potato. Two yellow peppers I roasted on the burner. Once the carrots were soft, into the blender with some of it's water, milk, olive oil, butter, diced garlic and ginger, salt, pepper, a dash of nutmeg and cinnamon, a blurb of molasses. Sliced a bagel thinly, some olive oil and salt and onto a baking sheet to crisp and brown. Soup well blended and seasoned, garnished with the smokey diced yellow roasted peppers. Bagel chips came out surprisingly good, the soup was pretty nice.

When I got home around 9:45, banged out the spinach pumpkin ravioli (6 portions of 8 raviolios, 2 portions of spinach linguine, a large portion of scraps which will make a good meal -- why did I throw out these pasta scraps till now?!)


ADDENDA:
On the way to the restaurant, as I was riding my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge, I came upon a scene of a man teetering on the edge of the bridge, with the intention of flinging himself off. A helicopter hovered on the opposite side of the bridge, cops blocked off traffic in both directions, and police boats stood by in the harbor. I number of cops, with ropes clipped to the handrails, slowly approached and spoke to the man.

My first reaction was sympathy for this poor fellow -- what dire straights he must be in to get to this point, or perhaps he's mentally unbalanced, or both. Does he have parents, children, loved ones who will be harmed by his actions? My second reaction was curiosity -- did he eat lunch today? And if so, what? What does one eat before jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge?

And thirdly was guilt -- here I was, gawking at this stranger's awful ordeal, rubber-necking and being idly distracted along with all the tourists and ne'er-do-wells.

BREAKFAST: 10:30am, organic chex with good milk, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
In the midst of cooking, was going to finish the salad for breakfast, but it went all stinky.

AM TASTINGS: 9am-1pm, a few spoonfuls of hummus, a few spoonfuls of tomato sauce, a spoonful of pumpkin ravioli-filling, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 3pm, cup of good hot chocolate, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Chef R made it for everyone at the meeting.

DINNER pt 1: 5:30pm, slice of streetza, chocolate pound cake, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
From a crap joint called "Cheesy Pizza", believe it or not. Not very good.

DINNER pt 2: 7:45pm, carrot soup with bagel chips, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING WATERING: 9:30pm, quart

Exploration in the Freezer Case

I've been eating a lot of high-end pizza lately due to my time in the restaurant. How amazing it would be to eat that kind of pizza in the convenience at home, without the expense and time of delivery. Obviously, I'm not the first person to think these things. Today at the market while finally restocking my kitchen, it occurred to me that I hadn't really bought any frozen convenience food in quite a while. It used to be a good 1/3 of everything I got -- frozen White Castle burgers, burritos, breaded fish and chicken, Asiany snackie things, the whole gamut. But the main contender was always the frozen pizza.

And they all kind of sucked. But even pretty crappy pizza isn't THAT bad. So in the name of having some comfort food around the house for B while I spend some late nights at work, I went through the frozen pizza aisle and selected a handful of brands, from the Wholefoods house brand up to a chi-chi Wolfgang Puck number. Over the next few weeks I'll give them a try and critique them here.

ADDENDA:
Used up the last of the pancake mix in the freezer, which I made pre-c-school. Tasted pretty good, I mixed it minimally, came out the lightest and fluffiest yet....but misses that certain pancakey flavor we achieved in class. Next time I make the mix, gonna riff on the school recipe.

AM SNACK: 7am, banana, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

BREAKFAST: 10:30am, pancakes and bacon, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LINNER: 5:45pm, veggie burger and a little salad with fries, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, vegan apple crumble cheesecake, seltzer, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING WATERING: 9:30pm, quart

I would have called-in drunk, too.

Chef A is the third and final chef I had yet to work with. He a skinny bearded fellow with glasses similar to mine, probably around the same age. He works weekends and Mondays, and has his own catering company. When I came in at 1pm, Chef A hadn't arrived but the owner was in, flittering around the kitchen.

I went straight into it, calculating how much dough we needed then started to collect the mise. Chef A showed up around 1:30, doing his thing. He reviewed my calculations, teased me a bit about measuring in lbs and not kg on Saturday (!), then made the dough with me. Both Chefs R and C have their own little details and flourishes on how they make this crucial component, and Chef A was no different. After resting for an hour, he said it was good dough -- in response to his teasing, I said that I make many mistakes....once.

Spent the afternoon rough-chopping all sorts of root veg for a soup, then scaled out and balled a mess of dough. At some point, there was a kerfuffle because the dish washer for the evening called in "sick," but judging from his history and habits, it was assumed he was alcoholically derailed. Chef A jokingly asked me, "how are you with a dish washing machine?"

At around 5:30, Chef A asked me to fill in on dish duty -- no other washer could make it in. He said he knows it's not my job and I'm not getting paid to be there, but they'd pay me the going rate for a dishwasher. I really did not want to wash dishes all night, but I really did want to be a valued part of the team; so I said yes, whatever needs to be done I'll do it. The South American kid with lots of tattoos and minimal English gave me a semi-sign language tour of the dish station and where things go. And then I was off washin'.

Way back when, I had a friend who was connected to the 'zine culture (pre-blog) because she was a manager at Kinko's. She had a friend who traveled the country working as a dish washer, and writing about life. It's dirty, wet, and low-paying, but dishwashing jobs are easy to get. And calling in drunk may piss people off, but doing so won't get you fired!

I was bummed not to be in the kitchen. But when I actually got into it, I didn't mind it -- mindless busy work, allways something to do. I think the one thing I hated about all the staff positions I've held in graphics was all the down-time, being left to my own devices to look busy while glued to a desk. Before I knew it, the restaurant closed, my new friend in the back offered up any pasta of my choice, I ate with the front of house peeps. Did some mopping and exchanged kind words with Chef A and others. And then I was off riding home with some wet cash in my soaked pants. Too bad I didn't have any advance warning, I would have worn my rubber pants.

ADDENDA:
According to Wired Magazine, blogging is dead -- there is too much driftwood produced by media outlets, skammers, and nincompoops. The new hotness is...twittering. Restricting myself to 140 characters....could be fun but....that's not really writing. I'm doin' this for myself as well as the reader.

BREAKFAST: 9am, banana, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 12pm. BLT on rye with fries, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Really need to get groceries. Just not a lot in the house that wouldn't require a solid 45 minutes of prep and cooking. Went to my local diner, where I used to eat as a treat every weekend -- now, I can barely stomach it. The bacon is sooo industrial and salty, the fries so generic and soulless. Still, it was cheap-ish, fast and convenient.

LUNCH 2: 5:30pm, margarita pizza, black cherry soda, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 9:30pm, small spag & meatballs, root beer, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Had a half-sized small portion, which is still pretty big.

In Search of a Slice

On Saturday I did a 'prep' shift in the restaurant from 11:30-6, which was definitely more intense than everything I've done there up to this point. First thing, a group of 20 Swedish dentists came in for a private party -- C and I banged out 20 pizzas for them without a hitch, we had dough prepared yesterday and it was predetermined what they'd be getting.

However, everyone ordered dessert and all of a sudden the restaurant was out of all the desserts -- all of which are made on premises by the pizza chefs. We had to call in the owner's teenage son to help with pulling 20-odd espressos. And we needed to make dough for a Saturday night, which is a large double batch. And tonight's special pizza had pumpkin to be roasted.

I helped C measure out the dough stuff, then I got to work making a ricotta cheese cake, then the tiramisu again. Unlike with Chef R, there was a lot to do in little time and C couldn't really watch over my shoulder to direct me. After a few hours, the 3rd chef came in: A, a bearded fellow with a blunt manner. Chef R is the manager/chef de cuisine who does cook but is half out the door in management while Chef A seems to be the main cook, C the 2nd string, and now there's me: the semi-competent apprentice!

During the shift, ingredients ran out a few times. So I had to run to the nearby supermarket to stock up. It was constant turmoil until the minute I left. Fortunately, it was quiet for the first hour, and it was relatively easy to escape.

On the way home, biking from Prospect Heights to the Lower East Side, I blasted the Pixies on my iPod and let the waves of stimulus just work itself out of my head. It was a feeling similar to the combination of weariness and exhilaration after riding a hard 100 miles on a bike, minus the ass pain and angry shoulders. It's a good feeling. I dig it.

ADDENDA:
Sunday, I woke up early and rode about 54 miles on my bike, encompassing the ride up to the Bronx as well as the Tour de Bronx itself. It's a free ride, and the economy showed its effect -- no free t-shirts and miserable food at the rest stops. Some rest stops were giving away this newish 'fuze' beverage. The labels made all sorts of claims but the taste was just overly sweet, slightly syrupy. Whatever.

I pretty much skipped the rest stops and by the time I was in the northern end of the Bronx, I started looking for a slice joint to get something in my belly -- when riding distance, you should eat before you get hungry, and I was on the edge of losing my steam. The neighborhoods around Eastchester were pretty working class, and every trafficked intersection had lots of fast food and Chinese takeouts...but no pizza. How can a neighborhood not be sprinkled with slice joints? When I finally got to an elevated subway station, I knew instinctively there HAD to be a slice joint near the entrance. I looked around and indeed, a block away was pizza. Sometimes it's great to live in the city in which you grew up.

SATURDAY
BREAKFAST: 9:30am, organic chex, good milk, quart of water, .75 bowl, hunger 3/5

LUNCH: 2pm, mini margarita with caramelized onions and mushrooms, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
No time to eat this, had to grab bites while measuring ingredients for dough and making assorted desserts.

DINNER: 8pm, Chinese brick, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
I've learned two things to handle the take-out brick -- be hungry enough, and don't get the carb combo. A lomein and fried rice, deadly; broccoli & protein and fried rice, much more manageable.

SUNDAY:
BREAKFAST: 7:30am, good yogurt with honey, raw cashews, vanilla, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 9:45am, 2 good donuts, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 11am, 1 "granola" bar, bottle of fuze, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 1:30pm, slice pof pizza, bottle of gatorade, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 4:30pm, eggplant parm hero, bottle of cream soda, 2 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 5pm, handful of hot eggy cakes from vendor in Chinatown, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 5:45pm, ear of corn from street fair, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 7:30pm, kimchi, kalbi, white rice, smore, vanilla ice cream, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
At a Japanese BBQ place with various HVSs.

5 Hour Rush (Stupid, Stupid Scale)

Today in the restaurant, I started out making the tiramisu, a sweet dish I never made in school, but again, followed the recipe given. Made me think how the ingredients included Italian ladyfinger cookies and instant espresso -- if we were real high falutin', they'd be made properly on premises. Since it was Friday, we had to make two batches of pizza dough, each one 24 kg. The picture above is one batch mixing in the Hobart mixer -- that's my food on the lower left. Big dough, yo. Chef R criticized me a few times for sloppiness with the flour, and I was glad -- she's not a pushover, she's paying attention, and most importantly, she gives a shiz about the details.

I met C, who also does pizza at the restaurant, a graduate of my c-school. The three of us portioned and balled the dough, got the square pies for slices in the oven, stretched and baked the focaccia. At 5pm sharp, customers started coming in and it didn't really let up till 10:30.

Toward the end, I was in the back kitchen with the crew prepping some mise for tomorrow -- a couple of gallons of cherry tomatoes fell under my knife, then family dinner with the front-of-house peeps and the owner's wife -- a good, friendly vibe, everyone energized by the five hour rush, relieved it was over.

Down the street, this outdated billboard:


Hot Bird was the previous restaurant in the space of the pizzeria's sister restaurant. How fickle and churning the restaurant scene is.
ADDENDA:
Went to the doc this morning for a check up. On the positive side, my blood pressure was a shocking 119/84 -- I had him measure it twice. Part of my original motivation for c-school was health reasons. If I were to get control of the issues that were my father's main health problem, I had to 'watch what I eat'. Watch, sure, I watched all sorts of crap in large quantities fly down my throat. If I were going to stop eating out so much and cook more....

On the negative side I weighed in at 225. When I got home 30 minutes later, I was back to 219. Perhaps time for a new scale.

BRUNCH: 10am, large green salad, millet and sausage, homemade vanilla ice cream, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, 1 slice pizza, black cherry soda, .75 bowl

DINNER: 11pm, rigatoni with mushroom, small slice of lemon cake, water, 2 bowl

EVENING WATERING: 12:15pm, quart o' tap

Half-a-Pastrami

Tomorrow I'm back in the restaurant, but today I was left to my own devices. Made an 11am yoga class -- with only one other student, the privilege of having an irregular schedule. Went to the movies with Y afterward, then Y took me to the 2nd Avenue Deli for lunch, as a gift for graduating c-school.

I have a long relationship with the 2nd Ave Deli. I used to occasionally go there with my father for lunch. When I was in the music biz, I took a band from Montana there, who felt pastrami was just too weird -- most of them got burgers. My friend Y comes from a restaurant family, and looooves to eat, and we've spent many late nights at the original location. Chocolate babka, no matter how stuffed we were, was always dessert no matter what.

When my father passed away a few days before Thanksgiving, one of my first nights out of the house with friends was at Y's house around Xmas. Y made a glorious meal with her boyfriend at the time, and I brought a whole babka from the 2nd Ave Deli (if I did that today, I would have made it myself.) We ate a vast quantity, and then there was the babka. We didn't eat a piece of the babka -- we ate the WHOLE babka. The babka was love -- love for my friend, love for my father, love of my time I spent in that restaurant with them. I rolled out of there with a seriously distended tummy and when I got home, got promptly sick.

When Y asked me where I wanted to go to lunch, it was the obvious choice. Starving from yoga and hoping to cycle after, I thought a pastrami sandwich would be quite enough. However, I could only eat half of it -- in my entire life, whenever I've ordered a full pastrami, I've eaten it. I had a few of Y's fries, sure, and the health salad and the pickles, but by the time half got down, I was just....done, and being with Y, desert was not optional.

There is half a left over pastrami sandwich in my fridge. Man, I guess I'm not the same person I was when my pops was around.

ADDENDA:
Thing is, the pastrami was good...but not that good. Too lean, needed more fat -- if you're going to eat something as nutritionally dangerous as embalmed meat, it has to be macho -- you go large or you go home. Anyone who purposefully orders a lean deli sandwich, that's up there with sugar & fat free ice cream, caffeine free diet coke and turkey bacon. Just pointless.

BREAKFAST: 10am, cupcake, banana, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
It was either eat a cupcake, or throw 'em out. It was nice that I could taste the slight staleness -- a real cupcake, not a preserved industrial convenience store thing.

LUNCH: 3:30pm, health salad, pickles, half a pastrami on rye with mustard, a few french fries, water, a couple pieces of rugala, small piece of babka, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, small cup of vanilla ice cream, a few tiny graham cracker cookies, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

Jury Dudey (Rush to Cook)

After spending the day sitting around in jury duty, I was released after 4pm and went food shopping. A friend coming over for dinner to watch the debates. Originally thinking chicken, broc, and homemade sweet potato chips...but as while wandering the market, shifted over to sausage and faro, a dish I made once in c-school. Don't remember the details, just three prime staples -- sausage, faro, and stock. No stock, got chicken broth. No faro, got millet. Italian sausages looked wan; got Chinese 5-spice sausages instead.

When I got home, poured some juices into pop molds for the wifey, then made vanilla crème anglaise for some ice cream. Have no refined cane sugar, only organic unrefined cane sugar, which is very....brown. The anglaise came out very tan, and the sugar gives it an earthy, molasses tinge -- could I call this "lightly caramelized vanilla"? Then I popped out an apple crisp, with granny smiths and more unrefined cane sugar, into the oven. Then I cleaned and chopped a mess of veg for some proper salad.


By this time it was close to 7, and the millet hadn't gotten on, the crisp was coming out, and I was on the phone with wifey. Didn't look up my old faro recipe, just winged it. On the millet package, it just says 1 cup of grain to two cups water, toast grain in butter, then add boiling water until absorbed. What I did was sear the crumbled sausage in one pan, boiled the broth in another, and toasted the grain in butter (not icky oil) .What I SHOULD have done is sweated some onion, deglazed with some booze, added some garlic THEN toasted the grain. Dropped in broth & sausage, minced red onion, minced scallion, then covered to simmer. After a while, doubled up on the broth, the grain was a lot thirstier than what the package said. Near the end, salted a bit, tossed in some minced chives for color and....didn't taste like much. Baaaaah.

ADDENDA:
BREAKFAST: 10am, 2 donuts, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Gourmet amazing 'nuts from the donut plant on my block on the way to jury duty. Had to wipe the memory of the dunkin' shmutz from my memory.

LUNCH: 1:30pm, lamb over rice, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
From a downtown street vendor, many lamb and rice options, but this one looked the cleanest. Food strictly whateva.

DINNER: 8:15pm, green salad, millet & sausage, small piece of apple crisp and vanilla ice cream, water, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
After sampling everything while cooking, killed my hunger.

Jury Dudey (Appreciating the City)

A day in the courts after a weekend in the woods, -sigh-. Still, nice to walk outside at lunch and be confronted by literally hundreds of restaurants instead of hundreds of elegantly decomposing automobiles. Getting on the computer and ordering whatever the hell I want for dinner and having it appear within a half hour, that ain't gonna happen when your closest neighbor is a mile down the road.

ADDENDA:
Stepped on the scale, told me 219 for a second week in a row. Hurm.

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, raw cashews, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

LUNCH: 1:30pm, mixed gluten, mock ham in rice dough, mashed taro treasure boxes, deep fried vegetarian crescents, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Lunch at Vegetarian Dim Sum. Was desiring ice cream after, but was just too full.

DINNER: 7:30pm, Philly cheese steak with whiz and onions, garden salad, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Nothing to cook in the house, B out partying it up with the gals, so I ordered in some man-food. Was tempted to order fries, but thought I might feel queasy from that sea of grease, so femmed it up a bit with a simple salad my mom would of loved -- iceberg lettuce, cuce, tomato, white onion and that's about it. Fries: $2.50, salad: $3.75. Hello, fat-ass nation!

Down On Curly's Farm

I was invited this past weekend to cook in the kitchen of a semi-dilapidated old house in the middle of woods of Western Massachusetts, where my nutritionist Ilsa is attempting to start up a working farm on a small piece of dirt owned by our friend Curly, who inherited a huge tract of land along with a house.

Curly's (not her real name) farm is a small plot of cleared land next to a 40's era house on a small road at the edge of a 200 acre forested piece of land. She grew up there, when her dad owned 4,000 acres and sold timber. The land behind the property is now owned by the government, never to be developed, and the land behind that is state-protected watershed.

I arrived on Friday night and scoped the kitchen -- not clean, not orderly, water damage ravaged the floor and walls, and just piles of odd non-functional equipment. The basement is haunted with rotting classic bicycles in the root cellar. Eight different kinds of juicers, various uni-taskers, and the fabulous Pot-O-Plenty. This 70s device was some sort of pressure-cooker/deep-fryer, with dishes listed on its front with the appropriate setting. Meat fondue, Swiss steak, chop suey, steamed pudding, it's all at your fingertips with the pot-o-plenty!!

After the first night of a deliciously quiet and dark sleep, the first thing I noticed in the kitchen was the window in front of the sink and work space the overlooked into....deep forest. At home in my apartment on the Lower East Side, I face a stone back splash and cabinets, and need a radio to keep me focused. Here, the silence in kitchen work was balanced by a majestic window, what a fine accompaniment.

Curly and I hopped in the car and made the hour trip to Amherst, where we hit up a great farmers market (fresh local ginger! sexy butternut squash!) and a Wholefoods. After riding in a car for an hour to get groceries, it dawned on me that this was it -- whatever we picked up now was going to have to last us through Monday, no quick walks to the local marts, no Freshdirect.com for next day delivery. At the same time, whatever I chose to purchase was being paid for by all of us -- I can't just go buy stuff just to have it on hand: buy it, use it, don't leave anything over that can't sit on a shelf for a few months.

Here is a run down of the menu that emerged over the weekend.

Saturday:
Lunch: simple Asian vegetable stir fry with rice noodles. We picked up a wok, and I brought mirin and sesame oil up with me. Got amazing bok choy from the farmer's market, and the local ginger flavored the oil marvelously. The flavors came out pleasingly balanced, just like in class.

Dinner: Seared chicken breasts and seared sea scallops, butternut squash risotto, green salad with mustard vinaigrette. Excellent old cast iron skillet, perfect for browning chicken boobs (which I dissembled off a chicken rib cage for better freshness and cheaper food cost). Risotto was a bit of work (recipe at end of this entry for those who want it!), but it was a nice, rich show-offy dish.

Sunday:
Brunch: buttermilk pancakes from scratch, buckwheat pancakes from mix, oven-fried bacon, cider, fruit. Minimally stirring, leaving the lumps in, made the buttermilk pancakes surprisingly soft and pillowy, was really happy with that.

Afternoon snack: Quinoa salad. Using the grain that was on hand, used up some random veg and chicken stock. Easy to make a large quantity with minimal effort.

Dinner: Pizza & Apple Pie. The pizza was a bit of a challenge. The dough I made Saturday, with double 00 flour I brought up with me. The electric oven got to around 500, but I had no cookie sheets, so I improvised with various upside down pans coated in foil. The first pizzas I made how I made at home, but they had a hard time being so thin with so little heat, and were quite pale and flibbidy-flobbidy despite the top browning. The second round I made tall & thicker and greased the foil with olive oil. The oil crisped the bottom of the pie, and the additional thickness held the snap better -- not great but not embarrassing. Like sex & chocolate, even when it's not that great, homemade pizza ain't that bad.

The apple pie, the apple pie, not sure where to begin. A real pie is a tedious thing to make, a frustratingly elusive thing to make well. The few pies I've attempted in the past have been soggy, leaden affairs, causing the ghosts of plenty of county fair pie-competitors to weep. Despite finding more than 30 pie and muffin tins, 20 bundt and loaf pans, multiple rolling pins and various tarte shapes and cookie cutters, according to Curly her mom was not a woman into the whole county fair competitive scene -- she just really liked to bake. Wandering the detritus of her baking life, I couldn't help but feel like a guest in this deceased woman's home -- a home made warm and personable and loved by her love of this tricky and very American art. And nothing is more American (or New England) than Apple Pie.

(According to the Yankee Magazine Cookbook laying around the house, the definition of a 'Yankee' from a Southerner's perspective is a Northerner. The Northerner's definition of a Yankee is a New Englander. A New Englander's definition of a Yankee is a Vermonter. And a Vermonter's definition of a Yankee is a Vermonter who eats apple pie for breakfast. But I digress...)

So I chose what I would think would of been one of Curlymom's favorite pie tins, and first thing was making the dough. Flour, salt, rub in the cold butter till it's like corn meal with pea-sized pebbles. Add some egg and water till it comes together, ball, flatten into two discs, chill for a few hours. Cook down sliced apples with sugar and spices and butter, chill that too. Roll out dough, place delicately into pan. Fill with innards, top with second round, brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Polk holes. Chill the whole thing for another 30 minutes. Bake for an hour, turning down the heat gradually as it browns. Hope for the best.

I can't say if this was the best tasting pie, but it certainly was a sturdy, attractive example of pie-kind:

I think the kitchen really helped me in this case: it was a bit cold, and it helped the butter against my warm hands, ended in a much more tender, flaky crust. The apples (Jonah Golds) from the farmer's market held up and kept their shape despite being soft and pillowy, and the bottom crust was like pizza -- crisp on the bottom, doughy in the middle and melding just so into the syrup on top. The top layer was a golden dome of crunchy, browned deliciousness that just kissed the apples beneath. Curlymom was looking over my shoulder, helping me out making a proper pie for the first time, happy to get some fresh pie to daughter and friends.

MONDAY: Lunch: Pasta with roasted garlic tomato sauce, sauteed string beans and mushrooms with garlic. Dry pasta laying around, most of a can of crushed tomatoes from last night's pizza, I peeled a spare tomato and added it in. Since there was bags and bags of garlic lying around (spare from what was being planted), I roasted a bunch and added it to a simple tomato sauce.

Dinner: TVP, left over Quinoa Salad, left over risotto. Textured vegetable protein laying about, so I made vegetable stock with all the remainders and scraps of veg in the fridge to give some flavor to this rather drab 1970s hippy protein substitute.

It was nice running away in a kitchen with and without recipes, looking in the fridge and pantry and figuring out what I could produce. It was fun on the ride back, scarfing crapalicous donuts with my nutritionist (I guess this is my equivalent of smoking a joint with your drug counselor). Now that I did it once, I want to go back with a more solid idea of what I'm going to cook, then just improvise like a jazz saxophonist when I only have some of puzzle pieces.

ADDENDA:
On some of my spare time, when I wasn't sweating over pie, I took a wander into the woods behind the house. Yes, it was peaceful.

To the reader who requested the recipe for the butternut squash risotto, here goes:

First step, take yer squash, cut off the skin with a knife. Cut into long quarters, scoop out all the seeds and strings from the center of the gourd. Lay on some foil, douse with olive oil and salt so it's covered, wrap in foil, stick in 350 degree oven for an hour or so till it's fragrant and soft. Cool, then process to a smooth mush, either by hand, a masher or a food processor.

Soften some finely diced onion in olive oil till translucent, then throw in the arborio rice. Once rice is translucent, toss in 1/4 cup or so of wine/vermouth/flavorful booze, cook off the alcohol till the pan is dry. Low flame. Now ladle in one ladle of simmering chicken stock (or any other kind of stock), adding more when it's almost absorbed. CONSTANTLY STIR, this brings out the starch and makes it creamy. 1 cup o' rice to 8 cups of stock -- when it's toothsome and tender, yer done. If you run out of liquid, soldier on with hot water. Once it's tender enough, add your mix-ins. Grated parm, marscapone rocks, go crazy. This is where you add the mushed butternut. Mix so it's even, taste, add more cheeses or salt to taste. Rock on. Serve quickly, it turns from creamy to gluey pretty quickly.

To bring back to life. Mix in more stock or water, heat on stove while stirring till the consistency and temp is right. Don't stop stirring!

Gone Cookin' (Farm Feast or Foible?)

Slept in, spent the afternoon packing and thinking of what could be fun to cook this weekend -- this evening, I'm leaving for a farmstead in Massachusetts, where a friend inherited a large piece of land and another is attempting to farm the soil. I'll be in the kitchen cooking for three others, and I'm not sure what the state of the place is -- I hear it's a bit rough. I'm busting out the school tool kit and a quart of double 00 flour.

No mixer, no food processor, no blender, no ice cream machine, what in earth am I gonna do?! I'll have access to a farmer's market and a Wholefoods by car, and apples are in season. So, apple pie in a simple paté sucrée (rub that butter into that flour!) it shall be! Ditto roasted squash, since one of us doesn't eat wheat or potatoes, another doesn't eat meat, and the other has dairy issues. Oy.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume I won't have internet access this weekend. Check back here on Wednesday for a full report with pictures...

ADDENDA:
Had extra latke mix in the fridge, so it was either lunch or the trash. Aging it for a day in the fridge helped the flavor of the chives, salt, and potato come together, and a lot more moisture separated from the mix, too.

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, banana, 4 spoonfuls of pudding, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
There was only a little pudding left, a lot of burny bits in the corners of the bowl. I'm so gonna cook the hell out of my next batch. And serve it with whipped cream, mmmm.

LUNCH: 2pm, potato pancakes, pickles, apple sauce a la momma-in-law, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

Had to run off, hope you can wait to learn what I had for dinner until next week!

Achey Breaky Stomach (Latkes-a-Poppin')

This evening I went back to c-school for the first time since graduation to take a continuing ed class: contemporary Italian pizza. Similar to the 'make pizza at home' class I took a few weeks ago, this one focused on making more authentic pies -- double 00 Italian flour in the crust, some traditional (sautéed artichokes), others less so (bottarga: pressed & grated roe) toppings -- and a cavalcade of Italian cheeses. At the previous class, I had to request buffalo mozzarella; today the class was already equipped with a bucket of it, as well as stracchino, caciocavallo, robiola, and some others that were a pleasure to taste.

My pastry chef, Chef G, taught the class; it was nice to slip into her groove for a night. The class was mostly setting the mise, and it was fun carmelizing a bucket of onions with A, blogger for one of the premiere foodie sites in the city (and unrepentant Jersey girl). I got in a minimally topped margarita before everyone else, in hopes of taking advantage of a hotter oven, but soon enough a flood of all sorts of pies followed, and my pie took a sold 15 minutes, getting too crisp yet underbrowned. When I put it out, I turned around to get basil, and Chef G basically yelled, "WHOSE IS THIS? WHERE IS THE BASIL?" I should have had it in hand, I should have known better; for a second I was back in in the culinary program. Need that hot-out-of-the-oven heat to wilt the basil properly.

I spent the next hour basically grazing the pies, as there were a lot of topping combinations, hoping to be inspired. A had a fondness for ricotta, something I've regarded as a calzone stuffing, not a pizza topping. However, her pie matched it with a green pesto and zucchini. The zucchini had a lightness that complemented the ricotta's fluffiness, and the sharp saltiness of the pesto drew them together nicely. One guy did some sort of sardine pie, he swore it was only mildly fishy, but it tasted like a chum-bucket to me. A few people did arugula pies, but nobody finished these with any sort of dressing, they looked a bit drab, but I quibble.

Toward the end of class, some butter cookies were put out, and before I could blink, the chocolate ones were gone. Damn, I wanted chocolate. Craving was the mother of invention as I scoped out a bag of it, along with a carton of almond paste. I took a hunk of the paste, dissolved it in some water, thickened it with a little flour. Stretched a dough, coated it in olive oil to protect it from the wet almond sauce, then topped it with a sprinkling of dark chocolate pieces.

Good idea, poor execution. The almond wasn't intense enough -- it kept the dough pleasantly pliable on top, cradling the chocolate, but the almond flavor was just a mild tickle in the nose -- it needed to stand up and greet the chocolate. I think this could be a really good dessert pie, maybe even in a deep-fried mini-calzone kind of way, but I have to figure out the almond paste issue. Hmmmmm.

ADDENDA:
Woke up with a pudding hangover, with all the dark dark chocolate keeping me up all night, and now blocking my desire for breakfast. B requested I make latkes for the family (for you goyim, it's the day of atonement, Yom Kippur), so I got the rotating grater going and got 6 pounds of organic potatoes processed into 2 Spanish onions, salted, then pressed in a colander to get as much moisture out as possible. After sitting a while, I poured off the liquid and scraped up all the delicious potato starch back into the mix. Into the pile went more salt, pepper, 6 whole eggs, a half cup of matzoh meal, and a large handful of finely sliced chives.

Fried off a few to taste, adjusted seasoning, shared a few with B, and soon found the latkes did not appreciate day-old pudding as a neighbor. To atone for this sin, I went to yoga, burped and gurgled, and sent in a portabello sandwich as a peace keeper. Things ran late at my momma-in-law's, as I took the nuclear option (antacid) and promptly napped for an hour, so I left B to fry up the latkes while I went back downtown to participate in pizza class.

BREAKFAST: 11am, 2 test latkes, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
I got puddin' stomach.

LUNCH: 1:30pm, grilled portabello sandwich with small side salad, bowl of dahl, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 3/5
Burped my way through yoga, snarfed some vegan food after, didn't do any favors to my stomach.

PM DRUGGING: 4pm, 2 antacids
Pudding, latkes and portabellos, not happy mixing in my stomach.

DINNER: 8-9:30pm, nibbles of 15 or so different pizzas, a handful of buttercookies, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Must be the mind-body connection, felt good being surrounded by pizza.

Bagel Love

I picked up hot-out-of-the-oven bagels and sour pickles from a pickle stand on the way home in the morning, a nice local produced (and unintentionally totally kosher) meal. Spreading cream cheese on the bagel, I was reminded of a strong food memory.

I must have been 9 or 10 and on a rare visit at a friend's house. Seth's mother was there, and she served us bagels with cream cheese. She spread her cream cheese very thinly, just a skim coat so you couldn't see the bread underneath, but not much else. My mother would lard on the cream cheese like frosting on a cake, generous and peaked. My first reaction was YUM!! -- my mouth isn't being gummed up with a ton of cheese, I can taste the bagel, it's just yummier. I hadn't come up with the concept of 'balance' yet, but that was the beginning. Then I had another reaction that came around like a swinging hammer.

This other mother, not my mother, wasn't overly friendly to me, certainly didn't love me like my mother did. She prepared this bagel for me not out of love and devotion, but because she was obliged to because I was in her house at a meal time -- was she just skimping on the cream cheese because she didn't love me? Was the unpleasant blanket of cream cheese a sign that my mom loved me?

Today, I spread my cream cheese thicker than Seth's mom, but thinner than my mom. I look forward to showing my love with a better sense of balance to my kids, so they can associate love with the best a bagel has to offer.

B came home early and went into the bedroom for a nap and I went into the kitchen. She wanted broccoli, she said. So I roasted some in the oven, coated with a little bit of olive oil, diced garlic, cubed portobello, sea salt, fresh ground pepper, and freshly toasted panko crumbs. When it came out of the oven, I hit it with a nice raw milk sharp cheddar cheese that made it scream, "ALLAWAGAWANDA!" Or something.

C-school was in full effect in making the protein. I cleaned and deveined a bunch of shrimp, butterflied them, then used a bacon press to keep them flat and get them to quick fast on the caste-iron grill pan. When I saw it stuck, I killed the heat the the shrimp released themselves in a minute to be flipped. I took a small sauce pan and placed the shells in there with a rough chopped carrot, two pepper corns, some dried shallots and some dried porcini. Covered it all with cold water, brought to a boil, then let simmer for an hour. Strained it into an ice bath, and once cooled into the freezer with a 'homemade shrimp stock' label -- next time I make shrimp or shellfish for guests, I'm gonna fashion a wicked pan sauce with that stuff.

Around 7:15, I was seriously craving sugar, had no sweets in the house, and did not feel like going to the corner store. So I poked my head in the pantry, took note of what I had, and -- c-school in effect! -- made chocolate pudding, using this recipe as a guide. I only had baking chocolate, so added an extra quarter cup of sugar, and doubled up on the eggs, as I only had medium. Upon tasting the hot pudding, it tasted a bit on the bitter and unsweet side still, so I added a shot of honey, a splash of vanilla and an extra pinch of salt. Into the fridge, drat, the recipe says cool for 2 hours, if I eat it hot, then it's a mousse, right?

ADDENDA
An exciting morning in the courts for jury duty; I was excused early so I can return Tuesday for selection on a case involving the multiple murders of presumed contract killer. Oooh, am I invalidated by writing that here? The vending machines were quite scary in the back of the waiting room, but at least now there are computer stations with free internet...

BREAKFAST: 7am, organic chex with good milk, banana, quart of water ,1 bowl, hunger 4/5

BREAKFAST 2: 11:15am, fresh onion bagel with cream cheese, 3 small 3/4 sour pickles, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACKLES: 2-4pm, pretzel chip things, spoonful of peanut butter, potato chips, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 6pm, pan-grilled butterflied shrimp, roasted broccoli with sharp cheddar, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 8:30pm, hot chocolate puddin', .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

Professional Pizza (Ballin')

Today was an intense day. Even though I did one trail (one-day in a restaurant where I literally trailed the chef), today wasn't a trail -- it was the first day of my externship: time to put the feet to the fire, so to speak. The (unpaid) work is for credit toward completing my culinary degree. In theory, there will be a job there for me after my apprenticeship. And that job will be Pizza Cook. Chef de la pizza? Pizzaoilo? Assistant Pizza Chef?

The point of culinary school is not to turn the student into a celebrity chef, or even a chef. It is to teach a standardized set of skills, theory, and techniques so that when you go to a joint and say, "Gimme a job, I gots me a culinary degree yo," they'll have a reasonable expectation of what you can do. I felt that in full effect at the restaurant (which for purposes of anonymity, I'll call "Prospect Heights Fine Pizza" or PHF here).

I arrived at 1pm to meet the head chef/manager of the kitchen, let's call her Chef R. Got on my comfy chef shoes from school, put on my cycling cap (with sweatband lining it.) Without much pomp and circumstance, we got straight to it. She pulled out a chart with the formula for the dough, the foundation of any pizzeria. Without giving too much away, the dough is a 50/50 mix of Italian double 00 and organic high-gluten bread flour -- not the stuff of a run-of-the-mill slice joint. After seeing how much dough is left over from yesterday, it's calculated how much dough is needed for the day, and how much new dough is needed -- the mix is 10-20 percent old dough, to give a certain depth to the flavor of the dough. With the extra old dough, foccacia is made.

The flours, salt, and fresh yeast are placed in a Hobart floor mixer after the liquids are put in the bottom (warm water, olive oil, a bit of whole milk). Chef R stood with me, telling me the signs to look for when the dough is ready to come up, and warned me that if I'm going to walk away to turn off the machine (as it can go from perfect to overmixed in a matter of seconds). About half way through, we chucked in the right proportion of the old dough. It took both of us to unload the dough into a carton and bring to the front kitchen that is open to the dining room, where the 'za is made.

The dough had to rest and relax for a minimum of an hour. While R took care of ordering and administrative stuff, she set me up to make flourless chocolate hazelnut cake. Unlike all the warnings in c-school, I was given a recipe and enough space to get the task done relatively comfortably. This is where my c-school training helped. Separating 16 eggs was no problem, setting up and getting the robocoup ditto, zeroing out the scale whatevah, whipping eggwhites to stiff-peaks got it, beating in one step, folding in another, understood. No silly questions, into the oven, cleaned the station, good impression (hopefully) made.

Then we got ballin'. For the 26 kilos of dough we made, we had to portion out different sized for the slice pies, the individual pies and the kiddie pies. Once portioned, they had to be rolled in a circle in cupped hands to make perfectly even and round spheres. I've been shown this technique in class, in the pizza tutorials I've taken, and taken a crack at it home, and still hadn't got it. This time, under the pressure of wanting to be taken seriously as a professional, I got it on my second try. That's for the best, as I did it about 200 more times right after!

I sat in the backyard and ate a few slices as service began around 5pm. Talk among the staff expected a heavy night -- tonight was the 2nd presidential debate, and judging from the vice-presidential debate, everyone wants pizza to accompany the enlightened discussion of the issues (snort). As the night rolled on, my main task was to stretch the dough as the orders came in. Following Chef R's lead and technique, I avoided thickened edges and tried to make the dough perfectly even and round all the way through. First slap the dough down, then stretch with one hand while holding it down with another, then pick it up and use the knuckles-going-round/tossing method to achieve the final size while detecting and reacting to thin and thick spots. The first few came out wrong -- I've been aiming to go from thin in the middle to thick at the crust for such a long time -- but this technique was different and, I daresay, more elegant. Chef R comforted me, saying it takes some practice to get some feel. Midway through the night, she was tossing compliments my way for my dough stretching.

So I would stretch, Chef R would top with the various combinations on the menu and slide them into the oven, I would prep the boxes or plates, pull the pies when they got appropriately charred, slice them, finish certain pies with post-oven ingredients (like basil on the Margarita, arugula, and cherry tomatoes with salt and olive oil on the tricolore), and either call out 'order up' for in-house or place them on a rack with the ticket for delivery.

Chef R & I got into a rhythm, dancing around each other clumsily and getting the pizzas out. The night stayed quiet, but there was an uptick around 8pm for delivery, but the deluge never came. The owner visited and joked that this was because of the bad luck the new guy brought, ahhh thanks. Despite it being 'slow', tickets ganged up on the board and I lost track of how many doughs needed to be stretched, what was in the oven, what needed to come out and be finished, plates or boxes....I was quietly in the weeds, due to my lack of inexperience. I just poked my head in the oven, stretched more dough and looked for cues from Chef R, who was clear and comfortable and probably didn't even notice I was lost. I soon picked it up again and before I knew it, my 10 hour shift was over.

Chef R made pies for whoever wanted one, clean up was relatively straightforward and easy, and best of all, unlike friggin' c-school, this place hires someone to wash the dishes. Chef R asked me how it was, I could only come up with the words, "whole lotta fun." Due to jury duty, school obligations, and going away this weekend, I'm not starting my externship formally until next week, but I'm looking forward to getting in there and getting my hands dirty on more pie.

BREAKFAST: 9am, organic cornflakes with good milk, banana, 1.25 bowls, hunger 3/5

PM SNACK: 12:15pm, slice of yellow cake with chocolate frosting, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
On the way to the restaurant, feeling nervous, didn't want to get there too early, stopped by a nice bakery.

LUNCH: 5:15pm, 2 square pizza slices, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Eaten standing in the industrial but pleasant backyard of the brownstone the restaurant is in.

DINNER: 10:15pm, diavolo pizza, root beer, 2 bowl, hunger 4/5
Fresh moz, thin peperoni, some hot pepper flakes, hit the spot after rubbin' n' slappin' dough all evening.

EVENING WATERING: 11:30pm, quart of water
Winding down slowly.

Welcome Back

Now that I've finished culinary school (well, at least the class-room stuff; I still have 210 hours to complete as an extern at a restaurant, which starts tomorrow), I'm still not the greatest home cook in the world. But I do have a nice set of skills and ideas that make cooking a bit more interesting. When you end up cooking a wide variety of foods, including stuff you'd never eat in a million years, you have no choice but to...open up a little. I even ate eggs! Still not a fan, but I can cook them competently.

Learning to feed: It's about learning to eat well, with thought and compassion for others and the world from which the food comes. It should be as fundamental as learning to read. These will be my newly invigorated explorations into eating and feeding -- myself, my suspiciously flexetarian wife, my omnivorous friends, my strictly vegan HVS, and other friends and family.

This weekend was mostly spent with my wife, recovering from graduation -- indoors, and eating poorly. Tomorrow, I'll spend the day helping making some damn good pizza.

Note all the previous entries here are from the blog previous to Culinary School Confidential, my initial stab at keeping a diary of what I ate called, "I Am What I Eat, I Eat What I Wish to Become". Oy, such a title!

ADDENDA:
When I got on the scale this morning, I was shocked to see it say 219, a solid 6 pound drop from a week ago. Ilsa will not be happy -- since I dropped from a high of 235 to 225 over a period of 6 months, I maintained that weight for another 6 months. I guess the stress of school ending led me to eat less, as well as a couple of solid bike rides and 3 yoga classes last week, the physical activity to keep me balanced. To balance the weight loss, I ate a big ol' brick of Chinese today. Now THAT should make Ilsa happy!

I usually don't eat this crappily, just a weird transitional day.

LUNCH: 1pm, peppersteak with pork fired rice and an eggroll, water, 2 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 5pm, homemade vanilla ice cream, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
I finished the ice cream so my wife wouldn't be tempted.

DINNER: 7pm, brown rice pilaf, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Softened onion in butter, sauteed the basmanti brown in it for about 10 minutes till it got really fragrant, through in a quart of store-bought chicken stock along with a few spoonfuls of minced dried shitakes and a few bay leafs and thyme stems wrapped in cheese clothe. Brought it to a boil, covered it, into the oven at 350 for about an hour till the liquid was absorbed. A little bit gluey and firm, but tasty. The store stock already had a ton of salt in it, no need to add any more.