Category: Eat

  • Cutting This Tomato Hurts My Soul

    Cutting This Tomato Hurts My Soul

    It’s January. I shouldn’t be cutting a tomato. I shouldn’t be cutting a cucumber. I shouldn’t be cutting raspberries or mangoes. I shouldn’t even be cutting asparagus. But here I am. For the past year, I have suppressed my emotional pain when using out-of-season produce. I justified it because I was in culinary school. They

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  • Let me have my fear, goddamn it!

    Let me have my fear, goddamn it!

    I can’t seem to figure out why people are so obsessed with getting over fears, and telling me I have to get over mine. It’s actually getting pretty annoying. Keep your shit to yourself and stop telling me how to handle mine. They say, “You’ll grow.” “Challenge yourself.” “You’ll become a better person.” Shut the

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  • Massacre at Squash Field

    Massacre at Squash Field

    It was a cool, cloudy day in the late afternoon of Tuesday, November 18th. The sky was dark blue-grey and there was a light, hollow breeze from the south. The grape leaves, painted in fall reds, oranges and yellows, were rusting and letting go of their vine hosts. I was in the east field dressed

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  • Thank you, chef, may I have another

    Thank you, chef, may I have another

    The more and more I work in the restaurant industry the more I am dumbfounded by the unprofessional and down-right abusive behavior that goes on and is accepted by everyone as the way things are. Why is it acceptable for a chef to make abusive and even racist or sexist jokes, yell, or even throw

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  • Help Wanted: Executive Chef

    POSITION SUMMARY This position provides experienced culinary leadership, training and support to the BOH (back-of-house) staff while maintaining fiscal management over the entire Restaurant. PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES Job responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following: Leadership, Training and Human Resources Possess the exceptional patience to train, retrain and retrain again BOH staff on culinary

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  • The Tourist

    For 15 years I sat at a desk in an office. Working hard was nine or ten hours a day because of a work event or dinner, and I would come in late the day of or the day after to make up for it. I encouraged my staff to too because, after all, our

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  • Chef is always right, and yup, he fucking is

    Chef is always right, and yup, he fucking is

    I didn’t actually mention after my Green Than Neon post that the head chef offered me a job. I’m pretty impressed with myself that after my first night in the back of the house that I got hired! I shouldn’t get so cocky though, because he said it was not so much my prowess with a whisk,

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  • Children of the corn

    Children of the corn

    Despite being panned by Siskel and Ebert in 1984 when this Stephen King-adapted movie was released, I was surprised to learn that “Children of the Corn” made more than $14M (on a budget of $800k), and there were seven, yes seven, sequels! The original movie is terrifically awful, but more recently the title makes me

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  • Why do we cook?

    Why do we cook?

    I survived midterms, and with those tests, two of my classes actually ended. Food Safety class prepared me for a successful ServSafe Food Safety Manager exam. It’s good for five years, and allows me to take a management role in any restaurant nationwide. Not that anyone would give me such a job considering I have

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  • Fierce Jersey Pride

    Fierce Jersey Pride

    This is something I’ve been thinking about writing for ten years. I don’t give a fuck about messing or not messing with Texas. I’d be ok if you went ahead and fenced up your whole state. New Hampshire can live free or die – not sure if I care. Virginia, you’re great, lived there for

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