Other People Are Having a Much Better Time

I am supposed to be in New York. I was driving up with my friend MB. We were going to watch Jon Stewart. And eat food! And go to the restaurant supply district! But then, my boss's wife decided to have a baby. So now I am watching Top Chef after my 14 hour work day and feeling bitchy. So this guy I know, the DK, makes this sound when he is unimpressed with life. It's sounds like a sad duck. He calls it Indignant Duck. That is the noise I am making now. Mahhhh!

Management is as management does.

So, at work, I am not officially in charge of anything yet.  Nothing.  I am doing the in-charge kind of work, but there has been no announcement.  Nor any sort of uniform change.  I feel I should get a special hat.  Or a star.  I think I am supposed to be wearing a black apron, but I don't know where to get one and it feels sort of showy, and also I am the sort of person who wears power lightly.  Or not at all!  Since, and don't tell anyone this, I have never been anyone's boss.  Ok, so full disclosure:  I used to be in charge of a lot of things that needed to happen, and people had to do them for me, but no one ever worked for me.  And now people do.  And today I learned why people bitch about having employees.

So, I am the only one in the kitchen who speaks Spanish at a sort-of-approaching-useful level.  Everyone else yells out verbs in the first person and then follows them up with English.  Which creates directions that would confuse even the most intrepid of linguists.  Seriously, what would you do if your boss yelled "And I cut for the potato into the future!"  You would weep.  That's what.

Today, one guy was very concerned about his vacation pay.  And someone else wanted to know if their sister's friend could come in and start being a dishwasher.  And another guy wanted me to fix his paycheck problem.  And the thing is?  I don't know what to do about any of these things.  So I just translated, and realized that being in the middle of other peoples problems sucks, because you have to be the face of bad news to two parties in a matter that you don't care at all about.  Not even in the least.

Sigh.  Pasama otra cerveza, porfa.  La merezco.

Engineering by the Gays

Our apartment was assaulted by the rain this weekend. No, not rain. A monsoon. Of Indian proportions. I felt like we needed a wedding to qualify for this type of deluge.

And our apartment is worse for the wear. A lot of water decided to come through the window casement and pour all over the floor. Hurray! I was at work, so J. had to do some emergency rigging to keep the water off of our precious and ever-soluble Ikea furniture. Seriously, I fear that our Poang chair would melt into a pile of paste if we let it moisten. J. did a fantastic job using nothing but trash bags, blue painter's tape, towels, and some buckets. Impressive.

Art posing as Form.

And as a reward, now begins a long process of repair in which builders will demolish the front wall of our apartment and mess up our beautiful paint job, while simultaneously forcing us to live in a cloud of plaster dust. Excellent!

How much do we REALLY need to fix this? Can't we just ignore it? You know, throw a towel over it or something?

Insane Month Ends With Insane Reversal Of Role. Audiences Stunned.

So, I'm the intern. Or I was. Now I am the boss. What do you think of that? Yeah, it makes me queasy, too.

It's like if you were working hard at your place of employment and then all the sudden the guy they hired as a temp became your boss.

Let's hope that you really like that temp, because I am that guy.

That. Guy.

I work with about fifteen really talented cooks. They are all Hispanic. Only one of them speaks English well, and he is almost finished studying to be an electrician. He doesn't want to be a sous chef. So, because I never had to crawl through the desert to make a better life for myself, and my parents were born here, speaking the English, I get to be the boss. Blah blah blah, managerial experience, blah blah blah, computer skills, blah blah blah. Let's be honest. Those things I have because I was born here.

Don't get me wrong, I am going to do a fucking awesome job of being the boss. But don't think I don't know why I got where I got.

But for fifteen minutes, I am going to celebrate going from intern to sous chef in the shortest time ever. Ever! When I started this whole culinary world experiment I promised myself I would stop trying to micromanage fate, and I would just let the universe provide.

Hurray Universe! Hurray! HURRAY!

It's Sharing Time.

These are the things that make my world go round today:

A shiny new blog that my friend the Princess (no, not you Chris.) referred me to that made me spit milk out of my nose this morning. A sample, for your enjoyment.

You know you have them: excess bananas, malingering on your kitchen counters and gradually outliving their usefulness. Unless you’re one of those locavore people who only eat food produced within 1.3 miles of your Berkeley home*, which you built by hand from local stone carried block by block from your homemade quarry (it was a fun family weekend project!). You can go back to steaming your fresh-picked asparagus in the sparkling spring water little Timmy just gathered from the stream running behind your renovated eco-friendly but historically-accurate bungalow. Great job smelting those pots and pans!

I kid because I love! I’m pro organic, local foods that have not spent three weeks sitting in a refrigerated tractor trailer, and look forward to the start of the CSA season. But you know what else? I also love a frigging banana.

Yes. We all love frigging bananas. Also, I love you.

Find more at Thursday Night Smackdown, where she loudly (I imagine) and profanely cooks some damn fine foods.


A Public Service Announcement Brought to You By the Bank of Ghana (and sent to me by the English Guy).

That's right. The Bank of Ghana.


Well, I would hope that if inflationary pressures ever exploded here in the United States and we had to chop off the last four zeros of our currency just so one paycheck wouldn't have to be stuffed into a duffel bag we would get a song this good. But I doubt it. Remember! THE VALUE IS THE SAAAAAAAAAAME.

My favorite part? The harmony on the last word: "TRANSACTIONS!". These people LOVE this new money!


I am pondering the wonder that is my new cookbook. It arrived yesterday from Canada (I don't know why. I ordered from an American company. It was printed in SE Asia and is published by a British house. The wonders of globalization never cease.) But thats not what makes it a wonder to ponder. It is the fact that the entire cookbook IS ABOUT PIE. That's right. PIE.



Full of delicious photography, I've been basically licking the pages for about an hour. I'm not proud. For Americans, pie usually means fruit in pastry, but it can be sooooooo much more than that. Pie can be savory, and full of meat or fish or sausage or any number of things that I want to eat RIGHT NOW. The British are pretty good at pies, and soon, I will be, too.

My favorite thing about this cookbook? It unabashedly calls for lard. And I am going to buy some.

Been on the 96 bus for two minutes. A high decible arguement has broken out over how much the bus fare is. It's written on the farebox, people.

An hour ago I had to pee so bad my eyeballs were floating... Now, thanks to the kitchen being 800 degrees, I'm fine. Totally gross.

Yeessssssss.

I saw Nancy Pelosi at work a week or so ago. She was there for a fund raiser of some sort. She is shorter than I had envisioned.

Coming out of the bathroom, I was retying my apron. She was walking to the bathrooms. Her smile was so large that I thought maybe we could go spelunking and use it as illumination, the way it was gleaming in the dim light. You know, hold her aloft to light the way for us intrepid explorers, and such. Whatever. You have weird thoughts sometimes, too.

Me: You are Nancy Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi: Yes I am.
Me: (slowly, and kind of creepily) N a n c y P e l o s i.
N.P.: Yeesssss. (smile dims significantly)

awkward silence

N.P.: Thank you for cooking tonight. It was delicious.* (smile looking very strained, as if her face might soon crack)
Me: Yeesssss.

This is where she went into the bathroom, and I realized that I am the reason everyone gets a security detail in Washington, DC. What the hell is wrong with me? At the very least I could have been like “Big ups for Balmer, Nanc! How's those grandkids treating you?”.

Instead, with a slow yeesssssss, I ensured I am placed on an FBI watch list.

*It was not. I clearly remember thinking political parties will eat anything and be happy as long as it is accompanied by booze.

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Kitchen Games: Latin Versus Non-Latin Cash

One night we had a contest to see had the most cash. I lost. I had two dollars. Everyone else looked at me as if I was a naïve fool who would be caught cashless by the debt collectors and thrown in debtor's prison. The winner was a dishwasher named Juan, who had $327. Everyone roundly agreed that this was a wonderful thing. Everyone I work with is hispanic, except for the chef and chef de cuisine.

For the rest of the evening, several people advised me, in an older-brotherly manner, that I really should be carrying more cash.

I mean really, they said, what if you need a lot of cash for an emergency? I would just use an ATM, I countered. Blank stares, some raised eyebrows, as if I just said that I would make some money with crayons and construction paper, or rely on my magic wand to get the cash.

My money is in the bank, I would protest. No one can steal it from there. This would normally be met with raised eyebrows. 'It's federally insured!', I wailed. Hardened faces, as if I was repeatedly spitting on the proof of a loving God.

Two nights ago one of the line cooks, Raul, reached into my back pocket and fished out my wallet.

“You know, your should really start carrying more than $40 dollars...”

Jesus Wept.

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Kitchen Games: Or Harassment By Any Other Name

Chef likes to pick on people. Not really in a mean way, but also, not really in a nice way. My second day he told me he was going to make me cry. I told him I would stab him in the hand with a fork when I was half way there, just so he could gauge his own effectiveness at making me cry. He paused. And stared at me. And I prepared to be fired.

To date, I have not been fired nor have I been made to cry. So detante, perhaps?

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