newsflash--you are NOT allergic to gluten

ok, first i'd like to point out that i actually know people that are seriously allergic to gluten.  it's a very real thing.  however, i've been cooking professionally for almost thirteen years, and only in the last year have people started telling the waitstaff they're "allergic to gluten" and asking us to work around it.  the whole time i've been cooking i've occasionally heard "i'm allergic to tomatoes" or "i'm allergic to avacados" or whatever, and that's fine.  i can hold the toms on your sandwich or burger set.  but this whole gluten thing pisses me off.  it seems like its trendy to be "allergic" to gluten.  listen, if you wanna keep gluten out of your diet, that's your business...but leave me and all restaurants in general out of it.  we take food allergies very seriously, and trust me, if you're actually allergic to gluten, eating in a restaurant is extremely sketchy.  we bake all our own bread and burger buns and pretzels and whatnot, so there's constantly flour everywhere.  i can't promise there won't be any gluten on your meal.  if you are allergic to gluten, then most likely you have a pretty specialized diet.  don't push it on me.  don't come into my joint and demand we fix something for you.  if you don't see it on the menu, don't ask. 

and don't even get me started on vegans...i fucking hate vegans and all they stand for.  they're racist.  racist against meat.  and i got no time for racism.  if you wanna be a stupid hippie and not eat meat, whatever, but avoiding all animal products, even the ones that don't hurt the animal (eggs, butter, milk, etc)...that's just meat racism.

STOP MEAT RACISM NOW!

quote of the day

"i'm still trying to decide if i was just really drunk, or if that actually was a bus"--nico

turkey day

happy thanksgiving to my loyal readers.  all six of you.  today i'm eating up at the in-laws, and i've made up sweet potato stuffing and the most ultimate stuffing ever.  as some of you may remember, last year i made bacon cornbread stuffing.  the year before that i made sausage apple cranberry stuffing.  and since everybody loved both of them, i've combined the two recipes into one epic bacon sausage apple cranberry cornbread stuffing.  it's cooking right now and it...smells...amazing.  and i gotta give a big shoutout to my lovely wife, who did all the choppy chop.  she's a good helper, plus seeing her with a chefs knife kinda gets me all hot.  anyway, pics may follow, although with my current rate of blogging, don't count on it.  i can promise you, though, that tonight i'll be eating like a champ.

just the warrior in me i guess

so this is the first weekend since mid august that i've had brunch off.  due to a few different circumstances, i have to work tonight, but as a result i get tomorrow off.  which is rad, cause i haven't had a day off with the wife in quite some time.

but i digress...i should be sitting here, lazily enjoying my am coffee and espn, digging on the fact i'm not at work, and to be honest...i'm all ansy and wierd about it.  i know my boys are doing just fine without me, and working tonight isn't what's wierd...it's just...i dunno.  that's my crew, and they're running without me.  i keep looking at the clock and saying "well, about now they should be doing this" and "i wonder how busy it is" and i have to force myself to not text someone and check in.

and even though tomorrow will be a welcome break, i'm sure i'll still be all ansy cause i'm not on the line flipping eggs.  sometimes it's hard for me to enjoy extra days off.  i'm too loyal to my crew. 

but not too loyal to make myself some biscuts and gravy and watch empire strikes back!

no offense, but we hate you

wow.  ok.  first off, sorry i don't blog much anymore.  i tend to blog a lot when i'm pissed about something and the last couple months have been awesome.  love my job.

anyway, it's funny to me how much we in the kitchen complain about everything..  it's almost a game.  well, maybe not complain...we judge.  show up five minutes before we open?  you're a douchebag.  show up five minutes before we close?  douchebag.  order lunch (or god forbid, dinner) items during brunch?  douchebag.  bring more than three people out with you?  fucking douchebag.  we refer to the last hour of service as douche hour, and any table bigger than 8 is referred to as a douchetop.  pretty much, if you come to eat at our place, you will get ridiculed and called names.  of course, it never leaves the kitchen, but still.  we see you sitting there, eating and drinking, all happy and content, and in the back of the house we're discussing your sexual preference and the questionable genetic pool you hail from.  i think that's pretty standard in this business.  we depend on customers to make money, yet we cannot help but talk tons of shit on them.  i guess there's the fact that we view normal people as wierdos, and our brains go "seriously?  you want wings at breakfast time?  what a tool."

today is gonna be extra shit-talkie, cause it's stupid halloween.  if you don't already know my thoughts on halloween, feel free to go thru my archives and read last years halloween post.  halloween is for kids.  don't dress up.  that's stupid, and so are you.  in addition to most of the servers dressing up (some of them did it yesterday!) i bet half our douchebag customers will be dressed up.

ah well.  today is gonna give me a big ass bullseye to work with.  and my verbal darts are sharp, yo...

"what vegan breakfast options do you have?"

none.

go cry into your hackysack, dirtbag. the rest of us will be enjoying bacon and sausages and eggs and all manner of delicious animal products.

just pick one already

so, a couple weeks ago when i was approached about the brunch shifts, my proposed schedule was going to look like this...mon tue wed nights, thu fri off, sat sun brunches.  then the schedule gets put up and i got mon tue wed days, thu fri off, and sat sun brunch.  which was wierd for me, cause i would much rather work at night cause it's busier, but i'd also much rather work day shifts cause i can see my wife when i get home and have a relatively normal home life.  so i worked the days shifts this week, and they were nice and mellow, and i got to have some quality wife time.  the older i get the more of an early riser i become, so i don't at all mind getting up in the am to go to work, especially since i get done in the afternoons and have the rest of the day to play (i.e. sitting on my couch listening to music and playing mario).  after a week i feel like my body is acclimated to the change in schedule, and i got quite comfortable.

yesterday i was told that me and another cook are gonna be flip flopping days and nights week to week, so we can both have home time (his lady just had a baby).  and i completely understand the logic.  in fact, i support the logic behind it.  but what sucks is just getting used to one schedule and then having it change.  in the nearly four months i've been at my job i think i had three weeks in a row with the same schedule. 

listen, i'm a team player.  always have been.  but i'm also a broken ass old man now and getting off work at midnight one week and trying to get myself up in the am the next week is kinda hard on me.  (*snork*...hard on...)  ever since i started this job, every time i'm asked to do something i go "sure!"  work broiler tonight?  "sure!"  work cold side tonight?  "sure!"  work days?  "sure!"  work nights?  "sure!"  work weekend nights?  "sure!"  work weekend brunches?  "sure!"

at what point do i put my foot down?  i never wanna say no to my bosses.  but it's terribly difficult to make plans when i have no idea what my schedule is going to be from one week to the next.  i was told that the days shifts that i worked this week would be my schedule for at least a few weeks.  so, naturally, i made plans for my anniversary next week.  now, i'll most likely have to cancel my reservations cause i'm gonna be on night shifts.  i think.  i'm not sure.

ya know, i'm not mad about all this.  it's the nature of the business i'm in.  and i totally understand that dudeman having time at home with his lady and baby is equally important as me having time at home with my lady.  it is frustrating, though.  i'm all about doing anything and everything my bosses ask of me, and doing it with a smile on my face.  the only way to get raises in this business is to prove that you'll go above and beyond the call of duty (or to threaten to quit, which isn't my style at all).  and really, all i'm trying to do is to get my money, ya know? 

still, though, i'd rather plan for days off then have to ask for days off to plan things.

this is gonna be wierd

so, it's five thirty am on a saturday, and i'm drinking coffee before work.  first brunch shift.  i was asked to do brunch for a number of reasons.  first and foremost...they need a power cook.  they're losing one (have fun in napa, o-ring!) and need one.  also i guess the brunch guys are a bunch of sad sacks and they want me to liven it up a bit.  and it works better for my home life.  i've been assured that there isn't a busier spot all week than the broiler slot on a brunch. so getting asked to be that guy was kinda nice.  i do miss my fri/sat night crew, and i do miss working those big nights, but i guess brunch is where it's at.  plus i get time to see my wife.  and watch sunday night baseball.

i probably should have looked at the brunch menu on my days off...

and the clock strikes douchebag

ah, that magical time, the last hour we're open, those lovely 60 minutes that we in the kitchen refer to as "douchebag hour".  last night it was in full effect.  ya know, it never ceases to amaze me how annoyed i get at late tables.  listen, i know that we're open an hour later than most places in town, and we're right in the heart of the bar scene...i understand why it happens.  and after 12 years on the line you'd think i'd be used to late tables.  and i am, i guess...but they still piss me off.  i've mentioned it before, i just don't understand why it's okay to roll into a restaurant five minutes before they close and spend a half hour eating.  you can't roll into best buy five minutes before they close and spend a half hour looking at flatscreens...even though you're potentially spending thousands of dollars, they're closing, and gtfo.

now, we're a bar, and we're open for a while after we stop serving food.  but still.  don't be that guy.  or that guy and ten of that guy's buddies.  there's a reason we call it douchebag hour.

"i need an all day call!"

ok, all day i need two fill-its, one mid, one mid rare, two buff sammies, four cods-two tacos, two sammies, reggae wings, one tuna, fried chicken salad shit, three burgers two mid one rare, three chickies-one lem pep one for a burr one for chos.  two half pounders, three tots, and an assfuckton of fries.  re-call?

so, i have become awful selfish about the broiler station.  three months ago i was scared of it, and at the beginning of each shift would ask "where do ya want me?" in hopes somebody would say "cold side" and not "broiler".  but here we are, months later, and i walk in and set up broiler and that's MY station unless somebody tells me otherwise.  i like a break from it once in a while but that's my station.  most of the food (75-80%) comes thru the broiler station, and on taco nights or burger nites nearly all the food comes from the broiler.  so i just decided a while ago that if that's where the food was cooked, that's where i was gonna park myself.  that's my spot.  power stations need power cooks.  cold side is fun though.

"i need four small houses, one sess, one ranch, a bleu and a balls.  two hot browns, an ultie grill, nachos with japs and guac, one o spin no red o, two med chick sets, a dip samp, and two focosh for bowls.  oh, and three cornholes.  and a brownie.  and no toms on one of the med chicks add x feta."

i love moments like this

so, sunday was burger nite, and on burger nite i put a garbage can right in front of my broiler cause i end up with tons of used patty paper from both the burgers and the cheese.  so we're rocking it, it's busy, and loud, and awesome, and i guess that a sheet of patty paper caught on fire on the broiler and i didn't notice and threw it away into a garbage can full of other patty papers and empty fry bags.  suddenly i hear from the other side of the line "mike, your hands on fire!"  and i'm pretty sure they're not, that i would notice that.  so i slowly and deliberately raise my hands up in front of my face and turn them over to show everybody that no, my hands are very much not on fire.  and then one of the girls goes "no, your can is on fire!" and i turn around and it looks like a michael bay movie...just flaming away and threatening to blow the ansel system.  i can only imagine how it looked from their perspective...

"mike, your cans on fire"

*mike slowly raises his hands in front of his face, unaware of the raging inferno behind him*

sometimes i'm too awesome for words

chugging right along

so i think it's my schedule that is making it difficult for me to blog as much as i should, or as much as i used to.  i'm back on nights (power cooks for power shifts, i'm told) and nine times out of ten i don't get home till around midnight.  a shower and some food and a tall boy later it's one am and i just don't feel like typing.

anyway, things are going pretty well.  believe it or not, i've been at the new new place just as long as i was at new place.  took me a while to really get going, to figure out the groove of the kitchen and establish myself as one of the hardcores.  but i'm there.  i can fully say that i kick ass at work now.  plus we have a good goddamn time while we're kicking ass.  on friday, the daytime kitchen manager was still milling around and drinking and kinda stood there and watched the first hour or so of dinner service, and man, he just looked forlorn.  he left for a bit and i asked the nighttime kitchen manager "dude, who shit in miyagi's cereal?  he looks bummed" and i was told "he's just jealous of how much fun we can have and kick ass at the same time".  we were all dancing around to lady gaga or the scissor sisters and jacking our jaws and laughing and all that, but we were still absolutely cranking food out...six minute ticket times.  i guess there's power struggles and pissy attitudes during the day, but we don't see that at night.  we got a kickass crew, we all know our jobs, and we're a fucking team.  i guess not so much during the day.

so, yeah, things are good.  my schedule and paychecks so far leave something to be desired, but whatever...it is what it is.  the good outweighs the bad.  plus the mets are playing hot and the US drew with england yesterday.  so, yeah...things are good.

ok so maybe not so bad

ok.  i apologize to my loyal reader (readers?  does anybody still read this thing?), cause i have been a pissy little missy lately.  i have a problem getting down on myself, and i have a problem seeing the positives in a situation where there is negatives.  anyway.  i'm really trying to give my brain a 180 and keep myself positive and happy.  work is going a lot better for me than it was a couple weeks ago.  i feel like i've finally gotten where i wanted to be as far as knowing the menu and the flow of the kitchen.  i've had two weeks of good days at work.  i feel like i'm becoming part of the boys.  i actually found myself kind of training a new guy yesterday...nobody told me to, it just seemed like it needed to happen.  he is a dishwasher but our dish guys have to do lots of run-n-fetch for the cooks and occasionally heat stuff up, so i just lined him out on where stuff was and what to expect to get asked to do.

anyway, it's good times.  i am starting to like it a lot, and feel like i fit in and feel like i kick ass and all that.  the only problem i got now is that i'm not getting enough hours.  i really don't want to have to go somewhere else and start all over again, but there's tons of guys in the crew and we all need our hours...i'm not established enuf at this place to go demanding more hours or else, ya know?  i wish i was.  but i'm not.  there is another cook leaving next week to go work at a gas station (i know, right?), and i'm gonna talk to the kitchen manager about maybe picking up one of his shifts.  i really want this to work out.  it's getting fun, but i'm actually having trouble paying my bills at this point. 

aah, shit...if it's not one thing, it's another, right?  i guess i could have worse problems than three days off.  if i was getting 9+ hours a shift things would be ok but when it's slow i'm low man on the totem and i get sent home.  i'm in danger of not even hitting thirty hours this week.  i can not pay my bills with thirty hours a week.  and i got all excited cause last week i got a couple hours of OT, and i was like, "oh, i can do all the OT they wanna give me" and then i see my schedule and it's only four days, and then next week it's only four days, and i'm torn between being stoked i got three days off to sit on my ass and be lazy, and having to pay my bills.

i'm sure it will all work out.  (see?  positive attitude.)  i want it to work out.  a couple weeks ago i wasn't so sure.  but on friday i brought the boys all red bulls and i've been staying after and having shifters with the guys occasionally and i finally feel like i broke thru the fences and am running around with the big dogs.  it's good times.

anyway.  i guess there isn't much point to this post.  i just wanted to post something that wasn't all "boo hoo poor me".  things at work are pretty awesome.  things in my wallet, not so much...but i'm working on it.

on a side note, this is the worst day in history for me to be stuck at work...the mets play the yankees on sunday night baseball, and also it's THE GODDAMN FINAL EPISODE OF LOST EVER.  i told my wife she can only text me about the game.  fuckin abc...i make sure i have tuesdays off so i can watch lost and they put the fucking finale on a sunday.  suck it, tv execs...

the grass is never greener anywhere

*sigh*

six months ago i was completely entrenched in a good job that paid extremely well.  i got along with all my coworkers, and i had fun at work and generally never dreaded going.

now, i'm new guy at a very busy place...and new guy always gets shit shifts and shit stations.  i gotta be honest, guys...i dread going to work.  i get along fine with everybody, but i have doubts as to whether they actually like me.  i used to get excited about big weekends (mothers day, graduation, etc) and now they scare the shit out of me.  i feel like i'm in the weeds from the second i clock on.  i keep running into situations that make me feel stupid and worthless.  example--yesterday i was on the salad station (easier than broiler) and i ran out of corn muffins...i asked where the backups were, and i got looked at like i was an idiot and told "um, you have to make them".  k, that's fine, but don't act like i'm dumb for not knowing that.  also, generally with baked things they're baked off ahead of time and you don't fire off pans of muffins during dinner rush.  anyway.  i've worked the salad station twice, counting last night.  nobody has trained me, i just kind of jumped in and started doing it.  the one dude in the kitchen who i think might not hate me, he helps me when he can, gives me pointers and whatnot, but i feel like i ask so many questions he gets annoyed with me.  and it's wierd sitting at the end of the kitchen in silence when everybody else is talking about their mutual friends and experiences.

i dunno.

i've just been really bummed lately, and it's hard for me to focus on the good things.  with the schedule that i got currently, four days a week i get home after the wife goes to bed and she's gone by the time i get up.   i miss her.  and for all the positive things about the job (#1---i have one) i seem to get stuck thinking that i made a huge mistake leaving my old job.  and once that thought creeps into my head, everything else gets tainted with dark clouds.

it is what it is.  what's done is done.  but let me pose a little thought for all of you reading...if the place across the street is hiring and it seems like it would be fun, be very fucking careful.  a great man once said (actually it was awesome 80s band cinderella) "don't know what you got till it's gone".

i miss my old job.  i miss the boss, i miss the girls, i miss the kitchen staff.  i miss my extreme familiarity with the menu and the processes.  but most of all i miss the paychecks.  i miss feeling like i don't suck ass, and i miss feeling like i fit in.

but it is what it is...

back to square one

i took my first kitchen job in feburary of 98.  i was a college student, and i was eating with my dad and grandma at one of our favorite places, and the hostess asked me if i wanted a job.  i remember working a couple of dish shifts my first few weeks, but i was pretty much a cook from the get go.  i wasn't terribly serious about it back then, but it grew on me and eventually i became the kick ass line ninja that i am today.  i worked my ass off to move up the chain, both pay wise and responsibility wise.  six months ago i was getting paid very well, but i had kind of topped out at the place i was at in terms of responsibility.  i was getting bored at work, we weren't as busy as i wanted to be, and the food i was cooking wasn't what i ultimately wanted to do.  and then i got an opportunity to do something different, and even though i took a hefty pay cut to do it, on paper it seemed like the right opportunity.

we all know how that turned out, now don't we?

anyway, here i am, new guy at a new restaurant, where nobody really knows the time i've put in and nobody cares how much i used to get paid.  low man on the totem pole...after 12 years on the line, i'm the new guy again, the guy they put on the busiest station to get his ass kicked, the guy who seems to get fucked all night long.  they're breaking me in, even though i'm old and well broken by this point.  i understand, of course, and if i was in their shoes i'd do the same thing.  but it's wierd, and totally humbling.  there's a part of me that feels like "fuck!  i've been doing this for too long to fucking count wings and drop basket after basket of fries" and there's another part of me that knows that's just how it goes.  that's the game, folks...i didn't get transferred or promoted, i just started a new job.  i didn't come in as the new chef or the guy that's gonna clean house, just as a regular dude who needed a job. 

it is what it is.

the good parts of all this is that the fellas in the kitchen are fucking power cooks, and they're all super fucking cool.  they're doing a helluva job at making me feel welcome and comfortable.  and even though i have little to no creative control over anything (i get to make soups occasionally) i'm finally cooking the kind of food i've always wanted to cook.  nothing pretentious, nothing fancy, nothing you'd read on the menu and have to ask what it is...just food food.  pub food.  but virtually everything we do is from scratch, from baking our own burger buns, hoagie rolls, and pita bread to making all our sauces and dressings, breaking down big cuts of meat to get little ones as opposed to ordering pre-fab, and all that.  i've always been a big believer in the "if you can make it yourself why don't you?" school of thought.  the place i work now thinks that way too.  and we have a fantastic customer base, and we're busy as hell.  i've noticed that we don't so much have a dinner rush as we're just busy as shit all night long, which is not something i'm used to.

hmm.  i'm having a hard time putting this to words today.  i guess what i'm really trying to say is that it sucks to be the new guy again, but it's awesome to be where i am and working with who i get to work with.  i just have to put in the time, get my ass kicked and bounce back, and get in there and show everybody what i'm made of.  i've always fancied myself as a power cook, and now i just have to prove it.

i'm gonna need a couple of red bulls...

introducing the f n g. again.

for those of you not in the business, f n g means fucking new guy.  for the second time in around three months, i am the f n g.  but that's good, though, cause it means i got a job!  i was out of work for a week.  dropped tons of resumes but only got two callbacks.  the good thing is the second callback was for a place i really wanted to work.  the first place is a highly recommended steakhouse, but it's a bit of a drive, and the job i took is way easier to get to.  i also take perverse pleasure in the fact that it's just a stone's throw from the place i was unceremoniously dumped from.  although, i gotta tell ya, a week after the fact, i honestly couldn't care less.  it wasn't really working for me anyway.  i am glad that i made up with some people, and word on the street is that everybody knows what really went down, so it's all good.  although i did hear today from somebody who heard it was "a mutual thing" that i left.

ha.

anyway...i don't care.  everybody at that place rules except for one lying little snake-type creature, and that person digs their own holes, and kitchen karma works way faster than regular karma. 

anyway, new job!  it's awesome!  i rocked the broiler and the fryers.  made lots and lots of killer fish tacos, and cooked a ton of BIG FAT JUICY burgers.  new new place (i gotta find a better name for it) has a kick ass menu, and virtually everything is scratch made...just how i like it.

my pizza is done and the mets game is on, so i'm not gonna go on and on, although i could.  new job is rad.  love it already.

also glad to blog again.

a final act of classiness

so, how we did the tips at the old place (place i was just pushed out of) is that instead of having each server tip the cooks and dishwashers out at the end of each shift, all the tips are pooled and on the fridays we don't get paid we got our tips.  they were always split equally between the day crew (who did most of the prep) and night crew (who did lots of cooking).  so, yesterday was the tip friday.  after all the stuff that went down i didn't go back and get my tips cause i needed to cool off, and i was busy looking for another job.  so i went in this morning.  calm, smiling, not looking for a fight or to cause a scene.  el chefe was out front and i said "hey, do i got tips?" and he goes "no, we split them up between everybody else, we didn't think you were coming back."  i said "well, i'm not really coming back, i just want my tips."  he said "we thought you'd never set foot in here again"

is that a good reason to not give me the tips i worked for and rightfully deserve?  i don't think so.  was i surprised?  fuck no!  do i feel my last paycheck is in jeopardy?  fuck yes!  do i feel fucked out of fifty bucks?  you bet!  am i gonna get mad and do something about it?  nah. 

but do i want to?

hell yes i do.

guess who's the asshole?

guess who's the bad guy here?  me.  i got let go today.  fired isn't really the right word but i was told "you don't want to work here anymore.  nobody likes you."  i was pushed out.  i'm not a cool kid.  can't hang with the big boys.  apparently the pictures i posted (and took down when i was asked) had a few people up in arms, angry with me for pointing out their mistakes.  nobody asked if i was angry for having to deal with all that in the am (which i was), nobody asked if i maybe had something else going on in my life that was influencing my attitude at work (which there is), and nobody looked at it as constructive criticism (which it is).  people just looked at it as "oh, mike is a big fat jerk for showing and telling people there's problems that need to be addressed". 

you know, this blog used to be fun to write.  it's always been anonymous, i've been pretty careful not to use anybody's real names or ever, EVER mention the name of the place i work.  if you know me it's not too hard to connect the dots but that's not my problem.  i never meant to hurt anybody's feelings, nor was i personally attacking anyone.  i used this forum as a place to vent my frustrations and anger so it didn't end up elsewhere.  i have a problem with letting my anger and frustrations bottle up inside me and i know that, and my blog was a fun way to blow off steam at the end of the day, and i always felt better after getting my thoughts out.

today i felt personally attacked and disrespected, to a degree i've never felt before.  i've been working in kitchens since a lot of this staff was in grade school, and i know my shit.  i've always worked for owners and managers that knew their shit.  my old boss grew up in the business, and i got to pick his brain for nearly 12 years about the do's and don't's of the whole thing.  i know my stuff.  i'm truly sorry if pointing out things that i'm worried about bothered anybody.  maybe my blog wasn't the place for that.  but nobody around that place ever listened to me, or asked for my input or help, everytime i tried to step up and say something it fell on deaf ears, and i never felt like i was part of their little gang.  outsider since day one.  i tried to fit in, but i guess that's just how it goes.  i feel like nobody there cares that my wife has been out of work for nearly a month and i'm worried i can't pay my bills.  yesterday was my wife's birthday and i didn't have the money to buy her anything or take her out to dinner.  that bothered me.  and you know why i didn't have any money?  because i took a $500 dollar a month pay cut to come to the new place and be a part of their team, because i believed in them.  all i was told from day one was how awesome and professional everything would be, and then when i see things that maybe aren't so awesome and professional, i'm the asshole for pointing it out.  i just wanted to work, and to try and make that place all that i know it can be.  i'm sorry if i feel that someone who put themselves on the schedule at 8 should be there at 8.  i'm sorry if that made me mad.  apparently i'm the jerk for just wanting people to show up on time.  the night guys don't finish their work before they leave, and i'm the jerk for saying "hey, the night guys don't finish their work before they leave".  i'm sorry if i'm the one that had to point out a lot of things, and i'm sorry that everybody was seemingly blind to them in the first place.

i feel like i'm apologizing too much.  my feelings are hurt, though, and there's a huge part of me that wants to just blast out a post that's nothing but anger and profanity and tell-all information.  but that's not how i roll.  i'm bigger than that.  i wish the other owners would have talked to me about their issues.  i would have loved to sit down and point out to them all the times i mentioned on my blog how awesome that place is, and how stoked i was about it's potential, and how i really wanted to make it successful, and how happy and proud i was of the work i did there.  but sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. 

i'm a worker, man, and i'm gonna carry on.  i'll find something.  it just sucks to be the last one picked for kickball, or i guess in my case, the kid who gets pushed down and told "you can't play with us, you told me i pooped my pants!"  hey...you're the one who pooped your pants.  don't get pissed at me cause i pointed it out.

it sucks, cause today i showed up ready to work, smile on my face and ready to put a sticky situation behind us, i was ready to apologize to the owners for hurting their feelings, but also defend and explain myself.  i really wanted the chance to do that.  whether or not that changed the outcome of anything, i still wanted to explain my side of the story.  i'm bummed nobody let me.

on a lighter note, i have the weekend off, which is pretty awesome.  also i don't have to pick rosemary out of my teeth anymore. 

wish i coulda made one last soup though...

you must be mistaken

no.  no, i'm sorry, sir...i'm afraid you must be mistaken.  there wasn't a post here earlier.  what's that you say?  pictures?  no, i'm sorry, i don't remember anything like that sir, perhaps you were thinking of another blog?  hmm...you're sure it was this one...i'm afraid i can't help you sir.  well, no, sir, there's very clearly not any pictures here.  i don't like your tone, if you don't mind me saying...well, do you see any pictures?  ok then.  have a nice day.

also check this out

so, i was at a bookstore recently and bought a book called waiter rant.  it's really good, it's kind of a front of the house kitchen confidential.  even though i've never waited tables, as a kitchen lifer i identify and sympathize with a lot of the stories and experiences in the book.  anyway, highly recommended.  turns out this guy had a blog that was a lot like what i do, he came home after a shitty shift and ranted a bit, or after a good day he shared his triumphs.  just a good ol restaurant blog.  anyway, he's still at it, and it's a fantastic read.


http://www.waiterrant.net

who's more important?

every place i've worked has some sort of disconnect between the day crew and the night crew.  as someone who spent nearly all of my 12 years in kitchens working mid shifts (11-8) i've always been able to straddle the line, so to speak, and be on good terms with both the day crew and night crew.  don't get me wrong, i did my fair share of closing,  but for some reason i've always been scheduled in a mid shift.  i think it's so i could cook both lunch and dinner.  anyway.  what i'm getting at is that there's always sniping back and forth between the day and night guys, "these guys didn't stock this" and "those guys didn't clean this"  as a night guy i was forever complaining that the day crew could spill pancake batter on the floor and i had to clean it up, but if i forgot to stock the tomatoes before i closed i'd hear about it the next day.  now that i'm the opener, i see things from a whole new perspective.  and maybe it's the new shifts, or maybe it's the new restaurant, but part of me has totally switched allegiances and part of me is pissed at myself for jumping ship.  i dunno, it's hard to describe.  i love my new hours...i don't mind at all getting up early and going to work early because i know i'll be home at a reasonable hour, and after so many years of odd nighttime hours it's pretty nice to lead a sort of normal home life with my wife.  we eat dinner when the rest of the world does, i find we cook more (as opposed to fast food type stuff), and i don't have to dvr any of my shows anymore, i get to watch them when they're on now.  but there's a part of me that knows dinner service is when the big money is made, and it's when the restaurant is busiest and loudest and most banging and there's a part of me that misses being there, that feels like, knowing how good i am at what i do, i should be there.

anyway, that's not my point.  my point is that as an opener i'm dealing with a whole different set of hurdles at work every day.  nearly every day when i come in, there's at least one bus tub full of dinner dishes, with sauce and ketchup and melted cheese crusted on everything, and the remnants of ranch dressing solidifying in the dressing cups.  the silverware is usually still sitting in the soak bin.  a couple of times here recently there's been a lot of dishes left overnight, so many so that i have to actually run a few loads just so i have clean plates to serve breakfast on.  also it's apparently ok for the night guys to leave the stations unstocked...like, i come in in the morning and flip open the sandwich station and all the cheeses are half full and the mayo is pretty much gone and there's only a handful of mushrooms left, but everything is wrapped, meaning the time was took to saran wrap each six pan, but no time was taken to stock.  i dunno...i know at all the places i closed at, i had to stock my shit at the end of the night.  i'd hear about it the next day if i didn't.  and the kitchens i came up in, whether you were closing or not, you stocked and cleaned before you left.  period.  now i get to work, stock and clean somebody else's shit, cook my shift, stock and clean my shit, and leave. 

it leaves me feeling wierd.

also theres this

i just wanted to let everybody know that everything is just fine with me and work.  i voiced my opinions and they were heard and since i had those couple of bad days at work everything has been awesome.  i'm excited about work, i'm proud of what we do, and i am in no way thinking of quitting anymore.  we just had to sort some stuff out and it got sorted out so it's all good.  i decided not to worry about crap i have no control over.  i got it too good to come home stressed everyday.  so, no worries everybody!  life kicks ass!

everybody wants some

so, awesomeness has occured.  my boy jamie (who i have neither met nor ever spoken to in person) has been a loyal reader of my blog here, as has his buddy eric (do they work together?  shit, i dunno!), and because we share the same sort of experiences as cooks, we've become buddies kinda, we shout out to each other on facebook and whatnot, and i think it's awesome.  i have no idea where those guys live, i think it's near philly but i'm not positive.  anyway, jamie started his own cooking blog and he emailed me and asked me if i wanted to contribute, and i was flattered as hell, and of course said yes.  so this post is pretty much to let my other readers know that i'm going to be ganging up on another cooking blog with cooks from around the country.

http://www.kitchenconvoluted.blogspot.com

i'm gonna go post about soup!  check it out!

so here's what happened

k, so i went to work on thursday completely unsure of if i would quit or not.  none of the owners showed up very early so i just got the kitchen up and running like usual.  when el chefe got there he could tell i was pissed and he kept his distance.  was hating it all day and had dark clouds churning through my head.  then about one thirty el chefe goes "are you upset?"

".....fuck yes i'm upset!  you fucking pissed me off, dude!  you bailed on your kitchen to go get your fucking hair cut and we weren't even ready to serve the special!  it's bullshit!  i'm VERY fucking pissed off at you right now!"

and basically i yelled at chef like that for almost ten minutes, then he calmly took me outside and let me yell and rant some more.  then, when i was done, he explained his side of the story.  but instead of immediately firing off excuses and stuff he just sat there and took it.  he totally let me yell at him (and oh, was i yelling) and didn't yell back or anything.  he knew i was pissed, and he knew i had a good reason to be pissed.  anyway, we ended up talking for almost an hour about stuff, and i felt way better afterwards, and yesterday i had a great day at work.

it's funny, we don't really have a coworker sort of relationship.  it's almost like a marriage...he does shit that makes me mad, and i seethe about it, and finally we talk and make up, but instead of make up sex we just knock out lunch rush.

el chefe likes me cause i call him on his bullshit.  i don't really talk to him like a boss, i don't pull punches and i tell him when he's doing something fucked up or stupid.  he loves that about me.  and i love being able to just tear him a new one if he deserves it.  which he did.

anyway, once again it's all good.  will it be all good in a week, a month, two months?  i dunno.  but i'm really gonna try.  i want this place to work.  it has all the potential in the world, it has a fantastic location and a great staff and it's an absolutely beautiful space.  so i wanna stick around and make it as awesome as i know it can be.  just don't sneak off the line to go get your fucking hair cut.

so yeah, now it's saturday (my friday), i got paid yesterday, and i don't have to take the bus today (i don't mind the bus, but sometimes there's crazies on it, and it takes a lot longer to get downtown than if i was just driving) so i don't have to leave the house as early.  that's good.  and i feel good about things, and i love the saturday crew, so i think today will be just fine.

we have our grand opening tonight and launch our dinner menu, so there's gonna be lots to do this morning and afternoon.  i may come in tonight to sample the dinner goods.

anyway, i know a lot of you were worried on account of my facebook posts the other day, so i just wanted to explain.  it's all good.  i was just mad and frustrated but instead of staying mad and frustrated or getting madder and more frustrated i verbally beat the shit out of my boss and now i feel better.

happy saturday, folks!

unsure about the future

so, ok, the whole key thing got worked out.  barely avoided disaster, though...i told my wife last saturday that if somebody wasn't there by ten after i was going to leave.  there wasn't anybody there at eight, or eight o five.  at eight o eight i checked the door again and it magically opened.  so, two minutes away from quitting my job.

anyway, saturday turned out okay, and i had a good couple days off.  then i came back to work this week.  tuesday was ok but slow and boring.  yesterday...

yesterday i got there at 8 (got a key now, remember?), and i got the kitchen up and running.  owner number 2 was scheduled to work at 8...come in, open up the dining room (vaccuum, mop, all that) so we're ready to go at nine when we open.  owner number 2 got there at nine.  i was looking for the vaccuum at the time and was pissed cause i thought i was gonna have to open the front in order to be open for business on time.  so i started the day out bad.  i have issues with the management.  i don't feel like they really want it.  i feel like they just want to own a bar, not have a successful business.  it's all show and flash for them.  and i thought el chefe was different.  ok.  owner number two actually asked me what time we started serving corned beef and cabbage.  there's literally fifty flyers in the dining room that state exactly what time we start serving.  only owner number two didn't bother to look at them.  we were supposed to start serving at 11.  we were not ready at 11.  i was ansy, cause all i wanna do i serve our customers.  so, noon passes and we're still not ready to go on the corned beef, and el chefe didn't seem concerned at all and kept telling me to calm down.  at one thirty we still weren't ready to serve the special we advertised would be avaliable at 11.  so i was getting pissed, cause el chefe didn't seem concerned at all that we weren't ready.  then, he offhandidly mentions that he needs a haircut, and all of a sudden he's gone.  he actually left to go get his fucking fauxhawk trimmed up, and we still weren't ready to go on the special.

that sent me over the edge.  i didn't really talk for the last couple hours of my shift, then i came home and proceeded to drunk and question the decisions i've made in the last couple months.  yesterday i was fully convinced i was going to go in today and hand in my keys and just tell them to fuck off.  i wanted to sleep on it cause i was having a bad day yesterday (WORST ST. PADDY'S EVER) but this morning i still think i need to move on.  now, it would have been a much easier decision if the wife hadn't got let go from her job on friday.  so, i'm in that "i need this job i fucking hate" spot right now.  but i also have serious doubts that this place will even be open six months down the road.

incidentally sous chefe has already put in his two week notice due to being concerned about the same management issues as me.  i almost think that they need to lose him and me before they'll pull their heads out of their asses.  but honestly, with management like this, i dunno if it will do an ounce of good.

there's a big ass part of me that says "fuck it.  go quit, take the rest of the week off, and on monday go find another job."  i'm pretty sure that i can find something else pretty easily...there's lots of restaurants in this town, and i'm sure some of them need a good line cook.  not many places are actively hiring, but with my work history i'm sure i can barge my way in somewhere...give me a chance, put me on the line, and you'll want to give me full time, i promise.

i dunno if i'll quit today.  there's a part of me that says my pops will be dissapointed in me for giving up but i also think he knows i know what i'm talking about and if i see a sinking ship he'd want me to bail the hell off of it.  he's gonna be scared that both me and the wife are jobless (or would be if i quit) but we both got great work histories and skill sets that are always going to be in demand.  plus, we got a grip of money in the bank right now.

i dunno....we'll see what happens.  i'm not optimistic.

hopefully getting this out will make me feel better

ok, so i had my first bad day at the new job yesterday.  it started out bad and i just didn't feel it all day.  here's the situation.  i'm the opener.  i'm scheduled at 8, and we open at 9.  i ride the bus to work, and the bus stop is just a block from work, and the bus gets there by 7:45.  so basically i'm there ready to work at ten to eight (i smoke a cigarette in the alley after i get off the bus).  here's the first problem....i don't have a key yet.  for whatever reason, they've never given me one, even though i hear almost every day "you're getting a key today".  this week especially i've heard a lot about this mysterious key but i still haven't seen it.  now, whatever...that wouldn't be so bad i guess, but there's three owners and none of them are ever there at 8.  it's always 8:05, or 8:11, and yesterday it was 8:30.  now, first off, that seriously cuts down the time i have to get the kitchen ready for breakfast, which makes me look bad when someone wants to eat at 9 and i can't do it.  secondly, i was waiting outside for almost forty five fucking minutes, and it was cold and windy.  the friday am server, who has actually started showing up late cause she knows nobody is there at 8...her and i waited for twenty minutes together and i had been waiting for twenty minutes already.  apologies were said, but i was pissed.  i mean, 8:30 one day isn't the worst thing ever, but i've been opening since early feburary and i still don't have a goddamn key, and i think i've gotten in there before 8 maybe three times.  i feel like the owners just don't have their shit together.  i mean, come on.  i'm there five days a week.  we've had plenty of time to get me that key.  it's just never materialized.  and it worries the shit out of me that it appears not a single one of them can be bothered to just show up and open their business on time like everybody else in the world.  and i'm left standing in the cold like a jagweed.

i do know they knew i was pissed at work yesterday, cause i got a call about an hour after i got home from one owner apologizing for me having to stand in the cold and she said "i have a key here for you" and i've heard that a million times already so i didn't really respond and i could tell she wanted me to come get it and i just said "nah, i'm sure i'll get it tomorrow".  i don't think i should have to get it from them, i feel that as owners it's their responsibility to make sure i have a key so i can open the place everyday.  if i had a key, i'd never have to wake any of them up just to let me in!

so anyway, i'm fucking coming back home if somebody isn't there by ten after to let me in.  straight up.  i would hope after all that bullshit yesterday somebody will get off their ass and be there at 8 today.  i dunno, guess that as a lifelong night cook i'm just used to showing up fifteen minutes early.  and honestly, i don't mind that nobody is there at 7:45 when the bus gets there, but come on...somebody get there by 8, or just give me a goddamned key.  do i think i'll get the key today?  no.  do i expect anybody to be there at 8?  no.

nervous about shit right now.

soupity soup soup soup

so, yeah, i've been getting to make a lot of soups lately, and it's good times.  ok, let's see...let's go down the list.  so far, i've made

carrot and coriander - twice...it's my favorite soup in the world and kind of my go-to soup when i just need to knock something out.  it's absolutely delicious.  garnished with heavy cream and cilantro

beer cheese - i used a pitcher of stella artois and cheddar and pepperjack and served it with smoked paprika popcorn on the side.  boom.  it was genius.

roasted red pepper and tomato bisque - not very creative but we had a case of red peppers that we needed to use.  never made this one before.  could have been a bit zippier, but good.

jalapeno chicken chowder - also a first timer.  turned out pretty friggin spicy so i dialed it back with a handful of powdered sugar (i know, right?).  ended up just right.  happy as hell with this one, and will totally make it again.

black bean & tomato - was pretty good until el chefe told me to add a half gallon of water and a can of tomato puree.  he thought it wasn't thick enough and i agreed but it dumbed down the flavor considerably.  before the additions i thought it was a little brothy but had a nice black bean flavor and just enough heat to remain interesting.

i think i at least helped make a couple more but i forget what they were...oh, el chefe made some potato, orange, and milk abomination that i suppose had some potential but turned out too milky and wierd.  anyway, making soup is fun and i'll try to let ya know if i do something new this week.  i know i haven't been blogging a lot lately but my schedule is all wierd now what with me working during the day and going to bed at a reasonable hour.  don't get me wrong, i love my new schedule, but it's wierd not working dinner rushes and being able to eat with the wife every night, and not have to dvr the office and lost.  i used to blog after the wife went to bed but now we go to bed at the same time and i just forget.  sorry!

anyway, there's a new bourdain on.  later.

tighting up the screws...

so, work has been good this week.  things are getting easier for me, and i'm feeling way less out of place.  see, el chefe and sous chefe and one of the other cooks have all worked together for years and they have the flow...they all know their stations and what needs to be done and they all work really well together.  kind of how i worked with everybody at the old place.  anyway, it's just a learning curve.  it's getting better.  what i noticed this week is that i pretty much take care of the cooking and everybody else does prep and makes sauces and gets other stuff done.  i can run the line by myself so they pretty much let me.  it's not crazy busy in the mornings or at lunch (yet...here's hoping) so i can do it no problem.  opening has been getting easier for me too, i'm getting a good routine down and the first couple days i opened i didn't have the kitchen nearly ready for service by the time we were open, but now i got it ready with twenty minutes to spare.  the girls have been referring to me as the "breakfast stud" which is kinda nice.  i'm fat and out of shape so i'll gladly take somebody calling me a stud, even if its for something as innocent and easy as cooking hashbrowns.  it's funny, the other guys are all night cooks (well, so was i, but i worked a lot of mid shifts that required me to cook breakfast for a while at the start of my shifts) and they mess with their hashbrowns too much.  just let them cook!  and don't dump oil on top of them!  i put oil down and spread it out with a grill spatula and spread my browns out, season them, and just let them cook.  i flip them about a minute before plating to heat the top (now bottom).  that's it.  el chefe keeps tossing them around and moving them and they take forever to cook and never get good and crispy.  anyway.  hashbrowns.

so i've had three different ex-coworkers come in to eat and check the new place out this week, and all were very complimentary and happy for me.  it's a good spot.  i'm enjoying the hell out of myself, learning a lot, and i get to wear shorts.  because i'm the opener and day cook i really only work with about three different servers but they all like me and they're all great at their jobs.  the other owners love me cause i'm reliable and i'm always smiling and positive and they can see what a kick ass cook i am.  it's nice to be noticed.  not that i wasn't noticed at the old place, but for what it was i never really got a chance to shine.  i can say this for sure...at the old place i never made a soup that sold out in one night and had many many compliments and people talking about it later.  i made the carrot and coriander soup again friday afternoon as a weekend soup and i came in yesterday morning and i couldn't find it anywhere and when sous chefe came in i asked him if any was left and he went "no no no...people love that soup!  it was gone early"  i feel like i got an even better do on it this time around, and it was nice that everybody else (customers included) agreed.

anyway.  i got today and tomorrow off, which is my first two days off in a row in around a month.  i think the last weekend i had was when i was still working at old place.  not that i'm complaining.  i'm not scared of work and i love money, so it's all good, but still...that second day off will come in extremely handy.  actually i'll probably just play mario and nap all day.  but to get to play mario and nap two days in a row?  priceless.

best chicken fried steak in town

so i'm sick of doing movie quotes.  it takes me forever to think of them and most of the time i get them slightly wrong.  i know song lyrics better.  anyway, i'm done with it unless one of you puts up a helluva stink.

so work has been good.  we're getting busier, and we're kind of the new downtown spot for business to have their functions and work parties.  we just did the missoula downtown association's anniversary (birthday?) party.  that was tuesday.  el chefe and i knocked out hours upon hours worth of chop and slice.  there was 60 on the books for five o clock, and even though most of them ordered off the menu, we had tons of appetizers laid out for everybody.  i made a batch of pico de gallo so big it i diced a whole case of tomatoes for it.  fresh fried tortilla chips and ten pounds of pico made for a happy bunch of folks.  there was also tons of mozz sticks with fresh marinara in bread bowls, and turkey & asparagus deli rolls for people to munch on.  it was nice.  i didn't stick around for the party cause i had worked almost nine hours but it went off without a hitch and we once again showed how we throw down.

wednesday was good, pretty busy in the afternoon, actually.  i was supposed to come in at 8 and el chefe wasn't going to come in until 9 to see if i opened the kitchen right but nobody was there to let me in at 8 and i don't have a key so i had to call el chefe and have him come down anyway.  he was only around for about an hour, he said he was going home to shower but we kind of made him stay home cause he's been at the restaurant day in day out for weeks straight...he needed a day on the couch.  so i held the fort down, got everything ready, made a soup (cream of asparagus...didn't like the texture but the flavor was great), and only cooked a couple of breakfast tickets but had more than a few for lunch and then a busy afternoon.  it was nice.  good ol day in the kitchen.

now i got today off, and i'm glad.  i too need a day on the couch.  i haven't had two days off in a row in like, a month.  i gotta work friday and saturday (long shift on saturday) but then i get sunday and monday off, so that's gonna be rad.  i'm gonna go get a haircut today, which i have been contemplating for weeks.  see, i wear a hat most of the time (90% of the time it's my ol blue mets had turned backwards) and i love the way my hair is sticking out of the back and bottom of my hat.  i have a pretty sweet mullet going on right now, actually, and i've gotten quite attached to it.  the thing is, i'm pretty sparse on top so without my hat i just look like freakshow from harold and kumar.  in the rare event i don't have my hat on i look absolutely ridiculous.  if i had hair on top to fluff up or spike then i'd totally keep the mullet, but as it stands, my hair is long and thick on the sides and in back, and up top it's all wispy and thin.  i look like gene wilder on a bad hair day.  so i'm gonna go cut it.  i've been growing my hair for like, four or five months now and every time i go to get a haircut something happens to stop me or i get sick of waiting at the haircut place or my wife runs her hands through my hair and says she likes it.

anyway, bye bye mullet.  it was pretty sweet having you.  we haven't really hung out since sixth grade when i had sweet step sides and a pimp rat tail/mullet combo.  thou shalt be missed.

haha, i just about posted that without actually mentioning the chicken fried steak.  it was all mullet, and i got sidetracked.  so yeah, our chicken fried steak is actually a six ounce sirloin pounded out (so we don't have to kill it, you can actually get it mid rare cause it's sirloin), and we have a secret breading, and we serve it with fried hashbrowns (fryer fried...super crispy and awesome) tossed with paprika and our bomb sausage gravy which has a very nice underlying sweetness.  and you also get two eggs.  for ten bucks.  it's gonna take over this town.  this town loves it's chicken fried steaks.  once the word gets out we should be going through a hundred a week.  anyway, yeah.  it's awesome.  crispy on the outside, tender juicy and delicious on the inside, a little heat, a little sweet....big pile of crunchy hashbrowns, a couple of runny egg yolks....absolute heaven.

let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown!

so, hey...pretty good breakfast today!  i worked last saturday and it was ok, not busy at all, not really even steady, but ok.  last sunday was valentines day and nobody really goes out to breakfast and i was only at work for a couple hours getting my ravioli special ready.  so i was really hoping for a good day today, i want us to become THE downtown spot for breakfast.  there's some tough competition, so we gotta be on point, but we got our chicken fried steak dialed in today and it's gonna be the best in town, i promise. 

anyway, yeah, it was good and busy for a while today...it's kinda funny, when el chefe was there it was kinda mellow, then he went to get some six pans and stuff and while he was gone it got pretty banging, and it was just me and a new guy i hadn't worked with before.  he's awesome (a recent culinary school graduate), huge, and he helped me put it down today.  but since we haven't really been busy for breakfast yet i don't really feel like i have it all down and felt like i was in the weeds and holding up the show but the two servers kept telling me how awesome everything was and how fast it was coming out.  i'm just used to breakfast being a well oiled machine, with ticket times no longer than five minutes.  we had hashbrowns and meats ready to go so all you had to do was cook eggs and plate.  at the new joint i'm still getting used to everything (everything-where stuff is, how the equipment cooks, all that business), and i kept running out of sausage so the ticket times were more like ten or twelve minutes but everybody was really cool about it.  i also kept forgetting the toast cause i'm used to the servers doing the toast.  i keep getting kind of flustered about ticket times but the food is still coming out fast.  i just pride myself on being a kick ass line cook, and anything that takes longer than a couple minutes kind of bugs me.  el chefe is a perfectionist so ticket time isn't his primary concern.  but what could be a train wreck actually works really well, cause he gets on me about how stuff looks and i get on him about how long it's taking, and between the two of us, we bang out great food, and we do it quick.

anyway, i'm gonna go pick up my last check at the old joint tonight, and get my eat on while i'm there.  i kind of miss those cats, and i want a cheesesteak. 

i don't want a large farva, i want a goddamned liter of cola!

so yeah, that whole crawfish boil thing?  wow.  it was awesome.  crazy busy.  ran out of crawfish at 7.  had three hundred pounds of live crawfish ups'd straight from new orleans.  and sold every last one.  well, not really...some of them were dead (maybe ten pounds worth) and me, el chefe, and sous chefe all picked fighters and put them in jars next to eachother so they could see eachother and develop hatred and resentment towards one another, then we were gonna let them have a crawfish fight and see who's was the winner.  el chefe picked a huge black one and named it the colombian black mamba, sous chefe picked an even bigger one and named him mr. t and i picked a little red one that was fast and fiesty as hell and named him mr. whiskerbiscuts.  he's a sketchy little fucker.  anyway i left at four so and i just assumed they had their fight but they were all still there today, just staring at each other.  sous chefe fed his some bratwurst and i was temped to jack mr. whiskerbiscuts up on red bull and vodka but never got around to it.  and all day at work i swear to god the colombian black mamba was staring at me, and any time i got near his jar he reared back and started snapping his claws at me.  he didn't do it to our dishwasher, nor any of our servers.  just me.  my guess is that he just hates the irish.  which is wierd, cause i didn't think invertebrates were capable of bigotry but there ya go.  they hadn't fought by the time i left today and i bet they're all dead of boredom tomorrow.  i was hoping they'd be all fired up cause we murdered and ate all their friends and relations.

anyway...so, eh....oh yeah!  the crawfish boil was awesome, i cut up 150 lbs of bratwurst, and we had tons of corn and potatoes in there too.  fifteen bucks a bucket, with three dollars going to the missoula housing authority.  my pops came in and brought some of the chinese mafia (my extended stepfamily) in and said the bucket they bought had probably fifty or sixty crawfish in it.  we were also doing two dollar bud lights and friggin seven dollar pitchers of hurricanes.  i just went home after work, i thought it was a good idea for everyone involved for me to not get near 7 dollar mixed drink pitchers.  me and gator bobb used to get pitchers of bloody marys for breakfast back in the day, and we'd get super crunk by like, nine thirty.

so yeah, yesterday was a blast.  i'd never even eaten a crawfish before.  and i did it right, crack that sucker in half, suck the spicy bits out of the head and then eat the tail in one bite.  they were pretty good.  probably not something i'd order but if somebody else had some i'd eat a couple.  i'm like that with scallops, too.  anyway the buckets were huge and we were packed and the bar made a killing and it was a good time for all.  also it was for a good cause and it's always nice to be part of that.  today was pretty slow but i had a good time anyway.

i'd like to shoutout to both jamie and eric and say thanks for keeping up with the new joint on facebook....we  try to do updates from the kitchen but i keep forgetting there's a computer in there.  i keep forgetting about the tv, too, although last saturday we watched saved by the bell while we cooked breakfast which was just as awesome as it sounds.  we're gonna get a hd tv in the kitchen before this summer so me an el chefe can watch the world cup.

well, snakes don't have PARTS, but if i had to call it anything, i'd say it's his knee

so, work has been as both crazy and slow as a new restaurant usually is.  yesterday we were crazy slow cause it was president's day.  now, at all my old restaurants, presidents day is usually busy, cause we're open and not much else is, but since new joint is downtown across from the courthouse, it was absolutely dead yesterday.  now, the whole last week has been pretty good, steady lunches, breakfast is getting busier every day, and the bar just kills it at night.  yesterday i felt bad cause me and el chefe hadn't had a ticket all day and we were playing around with food and when we finally did get orders we weren't set up or ready in the slightest.  it didn't take all that long for food to hit the window but it was certainly longer than i'm used to for lunch tickets (which i try to keep under eight minutes).  and since we're downtown we really gotta get on that ticket time cause downtown people only got a certain chunk of time they can eat and we need to get them in, get them fed, and get them out.

anyway, today will be better, cause it's fat tuesday, and we're doing a huge ass crawfish boil.  fifteen bucks gets you a bucket of crawfish, sausage, corn, and potatoes, and pitchers of hurricanes are 7 bucks.  so hopefully we're busy.  also hopefully the crawfish gets here by noon, which is when the posters say we're starting.  we have to cook outside cause i guess the whole business stinks to high hell, but it's gonna be interesting to say the least.

anyway, the special i had in mind on valentines day didn't get served the way i had initially intended.  ok, it was a lobster, ricotta, and meyer lemon (a lemon/mandarin orange hybrid) ravioli with parsley and dill, and served with a roasted corn and chive cream sauce.  i came up with the dish from start to finish, i shopped for the ingredients, and i hand made all the ravis.  so, to my surprise, el chefe served it slightly differently than i wanted, and so yesterday we had a chef off to see who's dish was better.  we each made one ravi and served it the way we wanted.  mine looked like this.

 

el chefe made it like this

 

he fried the ravi and put a chocolate drizzle under it and served sauce on the side.  i thought his ravi had a better texture but i still like my dish...anyway, apples and oranges.  what do you guys think?

it's way too early for me to think of a movie quote

so...victory is mine!  i made my famous carrot and coriander soup yesterday at work, (the first soup i've made at the new place) and goddamn if we didn't sell out.  well, we sold the pot i made for lunch, and i had to make another one for dinner.  i left at five thirty so i dunno how busy it was last night or how well the soup sold at dinner but i was damn proud of how it sold during the day.  we weren't busy, more steady, but we were selling just as much soup as we were selling fries, which is pretty awesome for a burger joint.  anyway, i was all anal about how it looked when it was served and it looked like this

 

boom.

it was awesome.  today i'm gonna make a beer cheese soup with smoked paprika popcorn.  i'll let ya know how it goes.

i dunno, i just like smiling...smiling is my favorite!

so, today is the end of an era.  the end of my current time with bossman.  hopefully i won't ever have to go beg for my job back.  again.  hopefully this new thing will take off and become successful and busy and everything will be all good.  i don't really wanna think about what will happen if it doesn't.  i wanna be positive about the situation.  i'm really excited about this new restaurant still, and i know that with the crew we got, we have every chance in the world of being successful.  still though, it's an unknown.  but there's no reward without risk, right?

anyway, today is my last shift at the old place.  i bought boss a fifty dollar bottle of jameson 12 for being such a champ all these years.  i know he'll appreciate it, as he likes the whiskey like any good irishman.  it wouldn't surprise me if there was a card and maybe some cupcakes or something for me on my last day.  i bet jace made me cupcakes.  she's totally a grandma like that.  i bet if i showed up at her house she'd try to make me a sandwich and get me to put my coat on.  i'm gonna miss that crazy old bag.  i'm gonna miss everybody, actually, even the people that piss me off all the time.  they've got a great crew out there at the old place and even though it wasn't where i ultimately wanted to be, it's still a pretty good little restaurant that definitely has a place and purpose and loyal customers.  i wonder how noticeable my absence will be, aside from the noise level (i'm terribly loud and vulgar).  i'd like to think that with me being gone there will be a noticeable drop in the food quality but i think that's just my ego talking.  they'll be fine.  it's not complex food and they got good cooks so they'll be fine   still, i have been so loyal to boss over the years i can't help but feel just a little wierd about the whole thing.  i know it's gonna work out for me, and i'm super excited about the whole deal, but i've been working for boss for 11 years cause he's the best boss ever.

don't get me wrong, i've worked a couple shifts at the new place and i'm so goddamn excited about the possibilities there...also it's just...well, cooler.  it's downtown, and it's a bar, and it's in a gnarly old building that has all these hallways connecting all the bars and all these graffiti murals in the hallways.  the customers are a whole different chunk of the public that i haven't really had the chance to cook for yet, but know that they will be more receptive to the kind of food that i wanna cook.  for instance, tomorrow i'm cooking breakfast and lunch at the new place and i'm gonna make my carrot and coriander soup, which is really the greatest soup ever, and the one time i made it at old place nobody ordered it cause they all thought it was wierd.  the folks i'll be cooking for now will find the idea of a carrot soup intriguing and they'll most likely order it.  i hope!  it's a great soup, i first had it when i was in ireland after i scaled a giant rock in the middle of the sea, and it was an unforgettable food moment for me.  just absolute soup perfection. 

anyway, i'm rambling...i gotta stop by new place and talk to el chefe about valentine's specials before i head to old place to hammer out one last shift.  he wants all the cooks to come up with their own specials, he said he'd try or order anything we needed, but we also got a big box of fruit compotes and pastes and he wants each of us to incorporate one of the pastes in our dishes.  it's almost like a top chef competition!  i bet i lose...haha, i'm gonna have to pack my knives and go!

nah, i'll be fine...and i'm fucking excited to see what i can do when given absolute creative culinary freedom.  my first thought was just pinching a dish i had at a different restaurant a couple weeks ago, and even though i don't know exactly how they made it i'm sure i could at least duplicate it if not make it better.  but i should probably look for something else to do that's more my idea from start to finish.

i better get on that i think el chefe has to order stuff today so i gotta decide in the next hour.  hmm.  i'll let ya know.

what do i know about diamonds? nothing really...i'm a boxing promoter, and until last week a happy one at that, but...what do i know about diamonds? i know they come from Antwerp.

ok.  i got a night's sleep under my belt since the insanity of last night.  hindsight is 20/20 folks....we did good but there was a ton of stuff we didn't do/should have done differently.

it's funny, we had a successful first day, and i guarantee we made money hand over fist (mostly cause of the bar), and for as good as everything actually went, i came away from it thinking "oh, we can do this next time and it will be better" and "we really should have done this and this" and stuff like that.  i'm my own worst critic.  all things considered, we did really well...none of us really even knew eachother (i'd never met any servers, and i'm also horrible at remembering names), none of us had touched the equipment or beta tested the menu or anything.  last week when i went to orientation and signed my papers they were all talking about doing a couple of tastings during the week so everyone could get familiar with the menu.  i had to work at old joint all week so i guess i just assumed they had done it.  nope!  it was the culinary equivalent of the first day of school, only all the chalkboards are broken and nobody can find any books.  anyway.  things we need to address immediately...the window/heat lamp situation.  at my old place the out window (the pass-thru that we cooks put finished food in and the servers grab it from the other side) was two 10 foot shelves, one on top of the other, with two 4 foot lamps on each level.  and as much room as that is, we can fill it pretty easily.  at new place last night we were using a window that was...oh, say, look around the room you're in.  see a bookshelf?  just a standard bookshelf.  yep.  we had one level of a bookshelf worth of window.  and a little 18 inch lamp that couldn't keep up.  so that needs to be fixed first off, cause food needs to stay hot.  period.  also we need to get the flat top grill figured out.  it just has dials with no numbers on the front, and we were having a hell of a time getting it dialed in.  usually with a flat top you have a hot side (350-375) and a cool side (225-250), and you cook burgers and stuff on the hot and grill sammies and stuff on the cool, and we had one big ass hot spot, and we trashed a lot of bread cause it kept burning on us.  we need to figure out the appropriate places on the dials.  the more we cook on it the better it's going to be.  another thing i feel bad about today is my timing.  i bet el chefe would tell ya i did good but i felt like i was in the weeds all night.  granted, right off the bat one of the fryers went down so all i had was two baskets.  so i was either backed up or firing things too early.  mostly too early.  see, at my old place i'm so used to just running on everything the second i get a ticket that i kept getting ahead of el chefe and sous chefe.  they were having their own problems, of course, so none of us were really focusing on banging out tickets together, it was more like we were each having our own little complications.  we had two new hot table contraptions (bins with electronically heated water that you keep pans of sauces you want to keep warm in)...before service we filled them both up with water and one of them just immediately leaked out all over the counter and the other one refused to get hot, so we ended up having to dominate half our spider top (stove top burners) with double boilers of sauces.  sous chefe had to deal with that, and also with teaching the dish kids how to make salads and wraps.  el chefe had the flattop problem and i had the fryer issue but goddammit we all came together to push through and i think we did a damn fine job.

it's only going to get better, of course, and i have a big smile on my face today, cause last night was a pretty good start.  i rocked a 12 hour shift and loved every second of it.  and i work with a bunch of dudes just like me.  they're cooks, not just people who can cook, ya know?  we are all tattooed and gnarly and we listen to heavy metal real loud and we all just plain love cooking food for people.  it's not just a job, it's a passion, it's a calling...i can't really describe it well enough.  but last night i felt like i was home.  and last night was my first shift.  it just felt right, and the vibe was there, and we had fun and we did serious work and talked shit to eachother the whole time.  el chefe kept singing the "my name is kobe, uhh, these are my shoes, uhh" from that nike commercial, and each time he did it it got funnier.  see, i figured it out last night when i was watching tv.  el chefe sounds exactly like the dog whisperer, except he swears a lot more.  also he's pissed i got the chef knife tattoo on my arm cause he wanted to do it but now he'd be a copycat.  anyway...we're just a bunch of culinary thugs, and we're gonna be a powerhouse, i promise...

Blue, you're my boy!

ho-lee shit.  what a day that was.  ok, so i was supposed to work at nine today so i got up all early and took the bus and was forced into conversation with a deranged old man who absolutely out of the blue says "i'm gonna go see that 3-d movie!  with them blue dudes!" and it took me a second to realize he was talking to me, cause i was looking at the new menu.  and i said "yeah?  you going now?" and he goes "no!"  anyway, yeah, the bus sucks.  nice bus, i guess, but i haven't ridden a bus in years and of course there was a fucking lunatic on it.

k, so i get to work at nine and el chefe is there and it doesn't look at all like a place that's gonna be open in two hours serving food...the bar wasn't stocked at all, the dining room was full of boxes and random shit and not at all put together.  i get to the kitchen and el chefe goes "oh, whoops!  i forgot to call you.  i told everybody else not to come in till noon cause we aren't going to open until five."  which bummed me out considerably but we hung out for a while talking food and finally i was just like "what are you doing now?  can i help?" so i ended up printing out all the menus and chiseling some fucking grout out from around a drain.  i mean chiseling, dude...with a hammer and chisel, and all it was was silicone grout, but it was wicked old.  anyway  we did all that and had planned to start food prep at noon but didn't really get going until two.  and since i was technically only scheduled until five all el chefe was planning on having me do was prep, but i conned my way onto the line for dinner, cause i wasn't about to miss opening day.  the bar got pretty full before we started serving cause it was our floor manager's birthday, and she had a shitload of family and friends come in.  and we were planning on going live at five (haha, that sounds like a news guy) but it wasn't until six we decided to go and right off the bat we had tickets upon tickets upon tickets, and we were all like "ok, who does this and when do we have to start that and do any of us really know the menu or the equipment?"  and for like, a half hour, the answer was a very strong NO.  but we got into the groove, kitchen wise, although it took a little longer to get on the same page as the servers cause for the first time ever for me, i worked from handwritten tickets, and didn't really know the servers names and our window is too small and the heat lamp is too small and we were pounding food into the window and it sat there for too long.  i'm not sweating it at all, and nobody else should, and i promise by this time next week all will be good to go.

anyway, we knocked out dinner, i worked the fryer and the appetizer station.  my folks came in and so did the wife and gator bobb.  took forever for them to get their food, but all were understanding, and most complimentary about the new digs.  i think my dad was honestly impressed.  the new joint is very much a different beast than old joint.  i think the dining room/bar is beautiful.  it was a dining room at six.  it was a bar by 8.  but by that time it was a bar serving pretty good food...

there was a lot going on but one thing that sticks out to me was that when i got to the prep part of the day (i spent almost two hours editing and printing the menus) el chefe and sous chefe were listening to limp bizkit super loud, and i was like "ahhh...i'm home."

i know, the three of us are probably the only three people on the planet who still love limp bizkit, but there ya go...kindred spirits, i tell ya!  this thing is gonna be fucking awesome!

big ups to mushmouth on nailing the major league quote, by the way.  i love that movie.

here's clew haywood...he leads the league in most offensive categories including most nose hair...when this guy sneezes he looks like a party favor!

so, tomorrow is officially my first shift at the new joint.  they were supposed to open today but i guess some permits took too long to get so there was no food and the bar wasn't able to open until 4, but i was assured by el chefe that tomorrow we're good to go for serving food and being open.  so, i get to knock out the first day's rush, which feels pretty special.  i hope it's busy, although there's every chance that it won't be.  i'm not sure if they've advertised or anything, all i can really count on is the wife is bringing some work friends from the hospital to eat lunch.  i'm a little nervous and a lot excited.  even if we aren't busy i'm sure there's gonna be stuff to do and new people to meet, which is always nice.  i'm scheduled at the old place thru friday but the boss pulled me aside today and told me if they were gonna be shorthanded at the new joint until i got there we could talk about me maybe leaving early.  which is a very cool thing for him to do, but since i told them last week that i was gonna do right by my current boss they might already have it covered.  i guess i'll just have to show up and see.  i don't wanna put anybody in a tight spot.

anyway...wicked pumped about tomorrow.  gotta get up early, which is wierd, and take the bus, which is even wierder.  i don't have to take the bus, i guess, but the parking garage downtown isn't that big and i don't wanna chance it that early in the morning.  there's a bus stop right by my house and it'll just be easier.  and i'm gonna be off around five, so i'll be sitting at home looking at the clock at 7 on a friday night and not cooking a dinner rush, which will be the wierdest thing of all.  i've wanted day shifts for years but never got them and now that i have them i honestly feel kinda wierd and guilty about not cooking dinner rush.  well, i feel that way right now.  tomorrow i'll probably be three drinks in by then and watching lost again.

ok so it took me almost an hour to write that, i obviously got nothing right now.  tomorrow, though...tomorrow there will be news.

"commander, tear this ship apart until you find those plans, and bring me the passengers...i want them alive!

so, had orientation at the new joint yesterday.  got to meet the rest of the kitchen crew and very briefly sat in a room with the waitstaff but didn't get to meet any of them.  the front of the house manager is actually a girl i used to go to high school with.  anyway, the kitchen staff is me, chef gus (who shall be henceforth known as el chefe), wade (night cook), colin (pt weekend days), billy (pt weekend nights), and two prep/dishwasher kids, one was named merit  (i think) and the other one i forget his name but he had a camo hat on so i'll just call him bubba.  i saw the schedule, and it was exactly as el chefe promised me.  that's a plus.  i didn't have any reason to think otherwise, but it's nice to see it on paper. 

el chefe really wanted me to be part of the launch so i got friday off at the old place to come knock out lunch at the new joint.  i still got a week and a half of shifts at the old job, but he wanted me to feel like i was around at the beginning, as opposed to showing up two weeks into it when everybody is starting to settle into their routines.  and i was flattered, and i'm excited to show up on friday and show everybody how i put it down.  the menu isn't hard but i still got a little homework to do before i show up.

so yeah, yesterday was spag night blah blah blah did i mention i got a new job?

sorry, it's pretty much all i can think about.  that, and the season premier of LOST last night.  holy shit, by the way.

anyway, just wanted to knock out a post to let everybody know i'm still blogging.  stay tuned, kids!

i don't want fop, goddammit...i'm a dapper dan man!

so, i've a bit of news for ya...i took a new job!  it was a tough decision to leave the old joint and the bossman (who i've spent 11 years working for), but i got a great opportunity to advance my career and i had to jump on it.

now, anybody reading my blog on a regular basis should have noticed that i've never actually mentioned the restaurant i work at by name, nor have i named my boss.  i dunno why i started that in the first place, but i think i'm gonna keep it going.  i guess if you really wanna know the names of either of the places you can poke around my facebook page, i'm sure they're both on there somewhere.  i don't know why i keep the names off this page...i just do.  jamie and eric...your thoughts on the subject?

anyway.  the deal was this...i guy i used to work with like five or six years ago, i heard he was opening a new place downtown.  i let him know (through the cook's grapevine) i was interested and i heard back he was interested and we finally met up yesterday and lemme tell ya...the new place is gorgeous.  it's actually in the spot of one of my old favorite breakfast joints, but the dining room has been redone.  it's in downtown missoula, and it's a wicked historic building (i guess).  it's full of mirrors and molded wood and high ceilings, and it's getting a new circular bar right in the middle (that's right, folks...liquor license!  boo-yah!)  and the kitchen...aah, the kitchen...it's beautiful.  now, someone who doesn't cook would look at it and say "wow.  it's big.", but from a professional line cook's opinion, the place is amazing.  there's so much more space than i'm used to, both counter space for prep and plating but just the space inbetween things, there's just tons of room to move around and not bump into the guy you're working with.  i'm used to working in fairly tight quarters, where if you had three cooks in the kitchen you had to stick to your station cause there's not room to get past somebody else.  this new kitchen could easily have five or six people working at their own stations with loads of room for everybody.  it's got either new or pretty new equipment, and we're getting TVs put in so we can watch the world cup this summer.  it's got an upstairs and a downstairs (downstairs there's three more walk-in coolers, and a big prep room we're planning on catering out of...also got an offsite food and liquor license).

anyway, the kitchen is bomb.  and the chef/owner is someone who i can learn from every single day.  i wasn't really learning or advancing at my old job.  loved it, but that's the truth.  i'm so excited to push my limits and learn new stuff and see what i can do when given creative freedom.  i was told i can make soups.  i love making soup!  i was also offered a schedule that's waaaay more compatible with my wife's schedule, and that was important.  it's pretty much gonna be regular job hours..9-5 m-f, and that's gonna take some getting used to, but in a good way.  also, since it's part of the downtown association i can have a free bus pass so i don't have to drive to work or find somewhere to park...and since i used to work outside of town where i had to get on the highway to get to work, that alone is gonna save me tons of money over the long haul.  pretty excited about that.  the chef is somebody who i can apprentice under and eventually get my own chef papers, which was a huge part of my decision.  that, and the schedule offered to me, and everything else on top of it, just made this a opportunity that i couldn't pass up.  i'm taking a pay cut to start out, but i'm fine with that.  i'm confident that we can make this place a moneymaker, so i'm not worried about it.  i'm really excited to get into a brand new place and see what we can do with it, how far we can take it.  i've always worked at places that had established customer bases so it's gonna be interesting to try to build a fresh one.  our skills are gonna be put to the test, but i'm willing to go one on one with any restaurant in town.  we don't just have some cooks, we got a fucking all-star riot squad.  it's gonna be a fun ride.

but first, i gotta knock out a few more shifts at the old place.  the boss was really happy for me and told me i made the right decision when i gave my notice yesterday.  which was incredibly hard, by the way, just because i've been with him for so long and he's always treated me with respect and dignity, and in addition to being my employer he's been a great friend.  i knew he'd be happy for me, but it's kind of like leaving your family.  restaurants are like that, more so than any other area of business, it's always more of a family thing than a coworker thing.  the people that tend to be lifers in restaurants are a different breed of human, and we recognize eachother and stick together.

anyway.  changes are afoot, my friends...keep reading.  it's gonna be awesome.

hi derek! i'm little cletus! i'm here to talk to you about child labor laws!

so, not much is happening at work, nothing really worth blogging about.  i'm way more excited about upcoming stuff on tv than i am about anything else.  LOST, people!  LOST is almost back!  i'm an absolute lostie...i got into it in the third season, i think, and got the dvds and watched it from the start, and it is the SINGLE GREATEST SHOW EVER ON TV EVER IN THE HISTORY OF FOREVER.  i absolutely promise everyone reading that if you put in the time, and watch it from the start, you'll be hooked.  the only people that talk shit are people that don't watch it enough to follow it and people that have never seen it.  it's amazing.  anyway, that's next tuesday and tonight i got new parks n rec, office, and 30 rock.  so i'm really just going to work to kill time before i watch tv tonight.

story of my life

that kid...is BACK....on the ESCALATOR!

so yeah, we've switched to movie quotes.  this particular movie was one of my most quoted for years.  also my dvd cover is signed by the director.  it's awesome.

anyway, work is busier but still boring, nothing worth writing about really...nobody has shit up the place, and no customers have sucked too hard this week.  it's been a short week for me cause i had to go to a funeral on tuesday and tomorrow it's the wife's holiday party.  they can't call it a christmas party cause of like ten people out of five hundred that don't do christmas.  they can't have christmas decorations, and they can't have it at christmastime.  anyway, it's supposed to be a 1920s murder mystery theme, which means i'm gonna dress up and drink silently with other husbands, as opposed to just drinking silently with other husbands.  it's funny, all the wives are chatting up with eachother and working the room and seeing everybody they work with and the husbands just kind of...drink.  it's a good time.  the food is usually worthless but it's free and also i'll be drinking.  since it's a 20s theme and i'll be wearing a zoot suit i'll probably drink martinis.  they taste like ass but make you look so sophisticated!

in other news, on tuesday the wife and i sat and watched like ten episodes of little people big world in a row.  and i noticed something.  i'll just lay out the pictures and you can decide for yourself.

*interestingly enough, when i googled "zach roloff" this picture was on the first page so i guess i'm not the only one who's noticed but still...damn!

in other news, got the ol taxes done...getting a nice chunk back but it's pretty much already spent.  nothing fun, i'm afraid...i guess i'll have to wait to get dj hero. 

no one but me can save myself but it's too late

i cannot believe that nobody commented on that last post.  seriously?  shit on the walls, people!

anyway, last night was friday and we were pretty busy.  it was nice.  there were only two servers and no hostess so it got a little crazy for a while but i'm sure when i get there today i'll have a nice pile of tips.  hope so, anyway.  we're running beef stroganoff this weekend, and yesterday i spent a half hour making up a killer strogo sauce...saute onions and garlic until fragrant, add mushrooms and cook until mushrooms are brown and yummy, add TONS of cabernet and let it boil the booze out, then add sour cream, season to taste.  i usually start by sauteing the beef in with it but boss had a ton of steak par cooked and portioned when i got there.  so i made this great sauce, and the first order we got for it i cooked off some of the steak and jesus, it was bad.  it was dry and mealy, and i was embarrassed to serve it.  i asked boss what kind of meat it was and he said sirloin and i said bullshit and he said i know right that's why i can't sell them as steaks and i said well you just made my stroganoff look bad.  oh well.  i have no control over things like that.  i do what i'm told, i use what we got and i make the best of it.  we are probably running it again tonight, but maybe i'll throw the meat in with the sauce to at least wet it up a bit.  boss wanted to run omelets with it but i told him unless they were full of sauteed onions and cheese and other wet stuff they would be too dry.  he asked me what i'd do with it and i told him grind it up with bacon to make it fattier and use it inside something like shepards pie so nobody notices how bad it is.

ah well.  making gold out of turds is what i do.