Malawry

Dinner is over, and the folks have gone to the place they're staying for the night. (For some reason, they don't like to sleep on my old futon when they visit. ) We had a great time. I started off my afternoon with some duck prep. First I broke into the whole birds and cut them into pieces. I cut off whatever excess skin I could and set it aside for rendering. These ducks each cost me about $9 from Han Ah Reum. I love the sight of duck parts with the light streaming through the window. This normally would have taken me about 10 mintues, but my husband called in the middle of my elite cutting action so it took me closer to 30. The Ziploced bags of carcasses go into the freezer, and then on a rainy day I make duck stock out of them. I don't bother messing with the wings, so they become part of the stock. The various innards, the neck and the wishbone get roasted in the oven until cooked through. Then I deglaze the pan with red wine and scrape up all the good bits on the bottom. I added veal demi-glace (duck demi would have worked well, if I'd had it) and reduced to sauce consistency. I then strained, stirred in some Maille mustard from France, and added some perfect brunoised onions sauteed in duck fat. I finished the sauce with butter at dinnertime. The cabbage is shredded in the Cuisinart and sweated down in a pan with a thinly sliced onion in some duck fat. Meanwhile, the duck skin renders into fat in another pan. I add vinegar, wine, chicken stock, bay leaf, fresh thyme. When it comes to a simmer, I cover it with a cartouche (parchment circle) and stick it in a moderate oven to cook gently for about 40 minutes. Result: Dad's favorite Rochelle vegetable. This is the old batch of confit from the fridge. I pulled out the two legs and discarded the fat--it was time for a fresh round. The meat got shredded and crisped in the oven, and then plated under the fresh seared duck breast for the entree. These are simple: pecans with five-spice powder, cinnamon, a tidge of salt and sugar, and butter, all sauteed together. Everybody loves these in salads or in a bowl for snacking. Mom and Dad finally showed up. We started the evening off with a cocktail: Dad just had to sample the Pyrat rum Busboy, Mrs. Busboy and Hillvalley gave me back in November. I had a Campari and soda. Mom stuck to caffeine-free diet coke. I like to think of my bar selection as limited but reasonably useful. After happy hour, we moved into the dining room. We started off with the salad: butter lettuce with cranberries and the pecans. The vinaigrette was made with Hediard sherry vinegar, some interesting nut oil from Fauchon, a touch of Maille mustard, s&p. Mom really liked it. The plated duck breast and confit with braised cabbage and the mustard sauce (on the plate). Dad was practically beside himself. Like me, he loves duck. A very simple dessert of sauteed apples with spiced fromage blanc. We all try not to gorge on sugar and fat, so this was an appropriate ending to a lovely dinner. Dad was messing around with the camera, and he took this picture of my mother. He took this picture of me so he could play with the zoom function. After dessert we cracked into the calvados I brought back from France. Mom didn't care for it as she isn't into brandies in general, but Dad and I loved the brandy/apple sensation--the heat in the throat and the full fruit flavor in the mouth. A fabulous ending to a great dinner.

Cabbage competed. Sherry-walnut vinaigrette emulsified. Pecans spiced. Table set. Wine chilled. Cranberries rehydrated. Fromage blanc spiced. Prep dishes washed. Duck necks and gizzards roasting in the oven for sauce. Confit ready for shredding. Breasts ready for searing. Parents still not here. I love cooking for friends and family. I even like the before-arrival, I-think-I-did-all-my-prep, where-are-they moments. It's such a different rhythm from work. I think of more details when I'm at home, and I cook at a much more leisurely pace. I'm more careful in how I trim the duck breast, how I slice the onion, how I whisk the vinaigrette. Mom just called. I think it will take them about 45 minutes to get here from where they are.

I am unclear on the regulation of my kitchen. I was told when I started that eventually the health department would come by for inspection. I try to behave every day as if they're going to show up any minute. But I haven't seen them yet. I am a certified food-safe handler, and I follow "best practices" as much as possible. I wear the gloves more because of my skin condition than an interest in hygiene--my hands break out easily, and it happens more often if I wash my hands constantly. Wearing gloves means I don't have to wash quite as often. (Of course I still wash after eating, using the bathroom, touching my hair, taking out the trash, etc etc. It still adds up.) I wear gloves most of the day.

The budget for food, and the budget for my salary, are two very separate budgets. I've asked for help and been denied. Even if I could get somebody into my kitchen for two or three hours a day, it would make a huge difference in what I could do for the girls. I'd love to have them do some prep work, some of the deep cleaning I don't get to as often as I'd like, some dishes. If it was somebody interested in such things I'd gladly teach them. Stewart's girls are a lot pickier than mine. He makes a LOT of egg white omelets for them. But then they'd eat dessert every night. ("It's like a fucking bat mitzvah over there," he told me once.) I don't think I could cook for girls like you describe, Ruth. I was cringing just thinking about what you went through there. Such a terrible experience! Wow. I'm glad it didn't keep you from cooking for others later in life, because that sort of thing could turn off the most enthusiastic person after a while.

So now it's a little after 4pm. I wrapped up at work for the day around 2:30pm. There's no dinner service Fridays, so Friday is a short as well as an easy day for me. I did finish cleaning the milk fridge. I also scrubbed out the trap on my griddle, cleaned down the griddle thoroughly, and wiped out the steam table. I learned a long time ago that it's much more pleasant to return from vacations to a clean house--and I treat my kitchen the same way when I leave for the weekend. My parents are coming into town soon, and spending the weekend with us. I always cook for them when they come in. They're good eaters (hell, they raised me!) and my dad especially is proud of his chefly daughter. I've got great parents. Here's tonight's menu: Aperitifs Butter lettuce salad with dried cranberries and spiced pecans Seared duck breast on a bed of shredded duck confit, with a mustard sauce and braised red cabbage Mulderbosch South African sauvignon blanc 2004 (Mom doesn't like red wines much ) Sauteed apples with spiced fromage blanc Poire william eau-de-vie, calvados My parents (specifically my dad) taught me most of what little I know about alcohol. Dad's always been an enthusiastic connoisseur of whiskeys especially, and he loved explaining how different alcohols are distilled back when I was in high school. (We start early in the Myers household.) At Thanksgiving, the only real questions are when we start drinking (adults) or when we open Hanukkah gifts (kids) (we don't gather in December, so we exchange Hanukkah gifts at Thanksgiving). I picked up the calvados and the poire william in France, and am eager to crack into them with my dad. So far, I've cut up two ducks. The breasts are scored and resting in the fridge, the legs are curing for the next batch of confit. The old confit has been dug out of the container I keep in the fridge--I had two legs left. The fat was almost a year old and was starting to look a little squirrely, so I decided to pitch it instead of reusing it. I'm rendering fresh fat from the skin off of today's two ducks. I've also gotten the cabbage going: Shred in the Cuisinart. Slice an onion thinly. Sweat off onion and cabbage in some duck fat. Add chicken stock, old zinfadel rattling around the fridge, zinfandel vinegar, s, p, fresh thyme, a bay leaf. Top with a cartouche (parchment circle) and cook in a medium oven, stirring occasionally, until done. Dad is exceedingly fond of my braised red cabbage. His birthday was last Tuesday, so tonight is a sort of a birthday dinner for him. (Hence all the Dad-centric favorite foods and beverages.)

(12:10pm) Ahhh, Friday. How I love thee. I usually don’t come to work until 10:30 on Fridays. I don’t make a special Fridays—I put whatever’s left from earlier in the week on the menu. (This way, I have a lot less food waste. And the girls don’t seem to mind. Plus it spares me from having to come up with more lunch ideas.) Stewart came by to chat and borrow some ice this morning and ended up hanging out for 20 minutes, talking about what we’re doing this summer. (My plans are still up in the air, workwise.) Fridays are a fairly slow time, so I often catch up on little jobs I haven’t managed during the week. Today I’m cleaning the milk fridge inside and out, including scrubbing out the little drip tray underneath. I also finalize the next week’s menus, and finish working up my next week’s order list. (Monday morning is too busy for me to write it then, and I often don’t even glance at it before Beth shows up to take my order.) Fortunately, there are no special events next week that require my involvement (though it sounds like a fraternity is coming over again the subsequent week. I should watch out!) Here’s next week’s menus: Monday L: Creamy spinach soup, tuna salad sandwiches D: Lasagna—spinach or beef, garlic bread, sautéed mushrooms Tuesday L: Creamy spinach soup, proscuitto/roasted red pepper/provolone on sourdough bread D: Jumbo lump crab cakes, stuffed portabellos, rice, sautéed spinach Wednesday L: Thai coconut-chicken soup, Italian turkey sausage subs D: Herbed roasted chicken, vegetarian chili, baked potato bar, broccoli Thursday L: Thai coconut-chicken soup, taco salads (beef or bean) D: Greek-style night: Lamb or veggie skewers, spanakopita, rice, slow-cooked green beans with tomatoes I don’t expect any of this to put me out, and it should be fun to make for the girls.

If you're heading to Vienna and want an interesting meal, you may want to check out Sunflower Vegetarian Restaurant. It's a Taiwanese place. The menu is hit or miss, but we always loved the Sunflower Satisfaction dish, with gluten and Shanghai cabbage and ginkgo nuts. I think it's worth a shot, especially if you have vegetarians in tow with you.

Individual sisters pay dues. The dues schedule includes room and board for those living in the house. It includes enough money for two meals per week for those who do not live in the house. Nationals doesn't give money to the chapter--the chapter gives money to the nationals. Dues also includes money for social events, recruitment, some of their t-shirts and other swag, supplies, etc etc. I think sisters are hit up in addition for some events, but I believe almost everything official is covered by that dues check. (You still have to shell out for appropriate attire for the various dances, parties, recruitment and official events. And gifts for your little sister. And dinner Friday and Saturday nights. And...) Dues pays my salary, my boss's salary, Launchcoast's fee. I don't know the dues schedule, or the fee schedule for those living in dorms. But I understand that the portion of fees that covers room, board, and pay for the three employees is less than room and meal plan in the dorms. This is a major selling point for ZTA. Plus the food's better, of course.

So, while I was at the Silver Spring, MD Whole Foods Market, I took some photos. This way you can compare and contrast with Han Ah Reum from earlier in the thread. Whole Foods produce: Very pretty. Very expensive though. Decent selection but not overwhelming. (Ask JPW about the Silver Spring Whole Foods and fennel sometime if you want to be shocked.) Han Ah Reum produce: Almost as pretty. Extreme cheap prices. Mind-boggling selection of produce you may not recognize unless you've cooked in Vietnam, Thailand, China, Japan, India, and at least a half-dozen Latin nations. Plus they sell durian. Whole Foods fish: Very pretty. Reasonably fresh, though you should insist on seeing things before buying them. They get it for you every time and you have to take it the way they sell it unless you make arrangements in advance (this usually means filleted and deboned). Expen$ive, but you guessed that. Han Ah Reum fish: Fresher and much cheaper than Whole Foods. And they have a list of 8 ways they'll prepare it for you--just gutted, gutted and fins clipped, totally filleted, etc etc. A lot of the fish is out and you just grab it yourself with tongs. Plus they sell some live fish, including catfish which I used for my final in culinary school. I also took some photos of my home kitchen for your perusal, since there's only about 5 of you who have seen my kitchen in person... This is the area immediately to the right of the door when you enter the kitchen. I think the diagonal sink is a cute idea but not a very practical use of a corner. Dig the 1987 cabinets and the "dusty rose" backsplash. The coffee pot is in heavy use. I prefer wood cutting boards, but I use the white plastic NSF one for raw meat. Wusthof knives, wedding gift. My trusty Jenn-Aire range, gas cooktop with electric oven. Works great, but the grilling attachment is worthless and sometimes I wish I had a superBTU eye for boiling pasta water quickly. Those little spices in front are cool pepper-herb-flower blends I bought in France in January. On the shelf above is some sherry vinegar purchased in France and some champagne and zinfandel vinegars given to me by JPW and Mrs. JPW. I love the built-in shelf for cookbooks, but I've long outgrown it. We still don't have a solution, so they're stuffed in the other bookcases in the house. The basket contains my bread, various nuts, Splenda for coffee, and other stuff. Notebooks next to the microwave include my official L'academie de Cuisine perfect-score graded recipe book. There's a small jar of pickled eggs from a Louisiana farmer's market next to it--I meant to open them at a party in November but forgot about it. The door on the CD player doesn't want to close any more. It currently contains a Supreme Beings of Leisure CD that I wish I could play. (I have an MP3 player I listen to while cooking, and we use this mostly to tune in to NPR mornings and weekends.) Hjshorter gave me the mandoline. My mom made me the needlepoint on the wall, which reads, "A house without a cat is not a home." We are owned by three cats in our household, and we have a roommate just so we can maintain the 1:1 feline:human ratio. (Well, and for other reasons, but y'know that's a big one. Can't have the cat lobby outnumber the human lobby.) I have a chest freezer. It desperately needs to be defrosted. And all you can really see are CarbSmart ice cream, IQF chicken wings and some homemade stocks. There's more interesting stuff underneath. The side-by-side freezer contains more interesting stuff since it's mostly small things I don't want to lose in the big freezer: passionfruit Ravifruit puree, organic chicken livers from a vendor at the Dupont Circle farm market, and pork belly from Han Ah Reum that I need to cook at some point. The fridge doesn't usually look this bad, but it does right now. My roommate just got back from some travel and has loaded up her shelf, third from top. I have two ducks defrosting in there for dinner tomorrow night. We have some typical roommate fridge problems like two kinds of milk, two cartons of eggs, two bags of celery. The wine in the door is dirt cheap shit we use for cooking and not much else. Good wine is normally drank promptly in this house.

If any of them does, they haven't whined to me about it yet. This particular batch of girls just doesn't look to cook generally. I am familiar with Albert's. But I have a hard time meeting Sysco's minimum some weeks--I don't have enough business to spread it around. I must get produce in weekly, so I couldn't easily alternate either. I ask girls as soon as they get past rush to tell me about any allergies. I had a girl my first semester who was very allergic to peanuts, so I didn't do Thai style food or anything for them at that time. She graduated, so it's peanuts for everybody now. Nobody currently in the house seems to have a life-threatening type food allergy. One says she is allergic to pork though. (I wonder, is she really allergic to pork, or just nitrates? Who knows, she doesn't want to eat it. She has company with some of the Jewish kids and the two vegetarians, and she's amenable to almost anything nonpork so she's not an issue for me at all.) Are you kidding me?!?! Seriously, this is fun, but it's a buttload of work. I'd rather not keep going after this weekend, thankyouverymuch. When I talked to Stewart this morning I vented briefly about how much work this is on top of an unusually busy week. But I also told him I'm going to move on from this job eventually and back towards writing and teaching more, and eventually there will be a 3-year-old kid and no energy to cook for my family. And then I'm gonna come back and read this blog and wonder how in the world I managed to feed 34 girls every day. It's pretty amazing when I step back and think about it.

(11:20am) This should be a much easier day than the rest of the days this week. No extra people coming over for dinner, nothing too labor-intensive, just easy fun cooking. When I came in this morning, there was a note with my name on it taped to my kitchen door. If you can believe it, the girl who orchestrated the fondue party Tuesday night left me a thank-you note! How ultimately classy is that? Nobody’s ever given me a thank-you note for doing my job before. It feels great. The note read: “Rochelle, Thank you for getting all the food and chocolate cut and melted for Tuesday’s crown event. The food was great and all of the girls had fun. Thank you also for your help in the past, especially with the chocolate-covered strawberries for preference. Thanks again!” Background: Back when this sister asked me to do the fondue event, I explained the problem with not having enough chocolate. She asked if I could get it from somewhere besides Gourmeco, but I told her that I refused to chop enough chocolate to make that much fondue by hand (I hate chopping chocolate, and it’s not very safe to do anyway—the knife slips easily, even for somebody like me with decent knife skills). Whole Foods does sell some pistoles, but they totally rape you on the expense. So I ended up paying the delivery charge to get the pistoles delivered from Gourmeco. Her reference to “cutting chocolate” goes back to this conversation, even though I didn’t cut any chocolate at all. As for the “preference” reference: This is usually the last party before bid day, when the sororities officially invite girls to become members of the organization. It’s called “preference” because girls who prefer a particular sorority usually attend this party to show their preference—or is it that the sorority invites the girls it prefers to come to the event? I’m not sure. I made 250 chocolate-dipped strawberries for preference during rush earlier this semester—the same sister who orchestrated the fondue party also organized preference this semester. This morning has been fairly routine so far. I had the cheeseless soup from yesterday, so I just had to heat that up and add cheese to it to finish it off. Today’s special is club sandwiches, so I cooked up some bacon for them. Mmmmm, bacon. The Sysco bacon is pretty high-quality; my boss often comes by for some when it’s on the menu. I get applewood smoked bacon, and it’s cut into thicker rashers than supermarket bacon (a fine quality in my book). I tried frying it on the griddle once, but it made a huge greasy muck of everything, so I’ve fried it in pans on the stove since then. At least that makes it easy for me to dump the grease into an empty can. (Grease has its own dumpster for disposal, so I save clean empty cans for disposing of it.) You've seen bacon a million times before, but I personally want you to see it again since I can't feed it to you directly. I did realize that I was out of shredded mozzarella, so I went and borrowed a bag from Stewart. (Sometimes I’m a little embarrassed at how much I rely on him. But then, he borrows from me often too.) We chatted for only a minute this time because we both had to finish setting up lunch service. Sometimes I spend 45 minutes hanging out with him if I don’t watch myself. I normally start planning next week’s menus around Wednesday night or Thursday morning. I only plan a week in advance. This makes it easier for me to be flexible, it allows me to better take advantage of price fluctuations from Sysco and seasonal changes at the farmer’s markets, and it means I don’t have to come up with too much at a time. Usually the soups and dinner menus come quickly and easily to me, but I often find myself doing some research to get lunch ideas together. Ideal lunch menus don’t require too much of my time, use up odds and ends in my kitchen, and don’t necessitate a trip to the supermarket. (Fat chance of that!) I try to have next week’s menus ready by Thursday night, and then I finalize them on Friday morning for posting before my departure Friday afternoon. I get menu ideas from all kinds of places. I try to survey the girls once a semester, and if I’m lucky these surveys will provide me enough ideas to keep me going for a while. Sometimes girls come to me and ask me for something—I love it when this happens, and I try to oblige as quickly as possible. Sisters’ requests led to my carrying Yoplait yogurt, fresh fruit, muenster cheese, raisin bread, tater tots. They sometimes request soups, which led to potato and broccoli-cheddar ending up on the menu regularly. Nowadays they request that a dinner menu come back again more often than they request a unique menu. I got some requests recently to bring back fried chicken, which I made once last semester. It was a lot of work, but frankly produced the best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten. (I’m modest, too.) I promised to bring it back after Spring Break, when the Lenten period is over and everybody who might enjoy it will be able to dig in. And sometimes I just focus-group them—I’ll ask a group of girls eating lunch what they feel like eating next week, or I’ll just ask individuals as they come by what they wish I’d prepare for them. Finally, I read a lot of cookbooks and sometimes poke around eGullet, just looking for ideas for dishes. I get a lot of ideas from Joy of Cooking alone—probably the most useful book I own for this job. (2pm) So, here are the things I want to get rid of in next week’s menu: I wasn’t 100% thrilled with the red bell peppers I got in on Tuesday, so I’d like to get use them up and get some new ones in. If they were truly bad I would have rejected them outright, but I needed them and they weren’t awful—just not great. I have some chicken leg quarters taking up room in my freezer that I’d like to move out. I have a lot of starchy baking potatoes that need to be used before they start sprouting on me. I was supposed to make jumbo lump crab cakes for dinner this Wednesday night, but because of snow and the resulting menu madness, I moved them to next week. So those have to go on one night. I have some sour cream that’s about to turn if I don’t use it. Some things mostly take care of themselves. Obviously, special events require one of a limited range of mass-produced menus. If the event is not at mealtime I make something simple that day so I can devote extra time to the festivities. Every Monday night is “pasta night” because the whole chapter eats in the house that night, and I serve dinner earlier than usual on Mondays. Often it’s simply linguine or penne with an assortment of sauces, but I try to shake it up sometimes by offering ravioli or a baked pasta dish. I ordered ricotta cheese this week so I can make lasagna for them next Monday night. And on Thursdays, I usually do some sort of ethnic or regional American night. These are probably the most fun I have with the menu, and the girls love those nights best of all. (They’re also normally the most work of any menu I execute during the week.) I’m already about 85% there on next week’s menu—I need two lunch entrees, but that’s it. As I write the menu, I write the next week’s order list using the menu as a guide. There are things I order routinely every week or every other week. Here’s what I have so far: OJ, skim milk, eggs, ground beef, broccoli, baby spinach, sliced mushrooms, lettuce, cucumbers, lowfat cream cheese individual cups, 6oz chicken breasts, Italian turkey sausage, scallions, celery, onions, frozen green beans, frozen spinach, shredded mozzarella, tortilla chips, some kind of lamb for skewers, strawberries, cantaloupe, granny smith apples, red grapes. (3:10pm) Here’s tonight’s menu: Assorted antipasti and fruit Flank steak with rosemary and garlic Roasted potatoes with thyme White beans with fried garlic and sage Tiramisu This is supposed to be a sort of Italian-style menu. If I had a grill, I’d grill the steak to make it a little more Tuscan-like. Since I don’t, I’ll be searing it off on the griddle and then finishing it in the oven. I’ve already trimmed the steaks and started marinating them with the garlic, rosemary, some EVOO and Kosher salt. I just slid the potatoes in the oven. The secrets to crisp-edged new potatoes: plenty of olive oil, don’t move them except to shake them lightly for the first 45 minutes at least, and don’t overcrowd them in the pan. I roast the potatoes in two pans but serve them in one—using two pans keeps them in a single layer for the most part, much more effective for crispy edges. I put together the antipasti right after I took my break earlier. Since I was ordering the chocolate from Gourmeco already, I decided to order a couple of goodies for tonight’s menu. So there are cieglini, little cherry-sized balls of fresh mozzarella, which I spiked with assorted herbs and a tiny bit of cayenne. And there are beautiful long-stemmed marinated artichoke hearts. I also threw some hearts of palm and Divina black olives on the platter. Another platter has assorted Italian meats: proscuitto, sopressata, genoa salame. I planned to wrap some of the proscuitto around cantaloupe, but decided some girls might like cantaloupe without meat. So instead I refreshed the lunchtime fruit platter with some additional red grapes and some cut cantaloupe. If I was a sister in the house, I personally would be very excited by this dinner. The tiramisu is mostly done. I need to chop down some pistoles of chocolate in the Cuisinart and add them to the top. I am thinking of making whipped cream and adding that too—some of the ladyfingers sort of “floated up” through the mascarpone custard, and now the top of the tiramisu doesn’t look so nice on its own. I’m not huge on presentation here (it’s impossible when you serve and plate off a steam table in front of hungry girls), but I try to make everything at least look somewhat attractive. Today feels like the first time this week I haven’t been working behind the 8-ball. Sometimes I like that sensation, but it gets tiring after a while. I like to have at least one day each week when I am not too busy. It gives me a chance to go bounce ideas off of Stewart, or to do some deep cleaning, or to run to Costco and not fight the crowds. Today, it’s giving me a chance to sit down and relax for a few minutes—and to keep up this blog, besides. (5:10pm) Now this is how I like to go into dinner service: All the prep dishes are done, the oven is off, the griddle has been scraped. Everything is ready and set out, including dessert. I’ve even cleaned and put away my knives and my cutting board. The dishwasher is on and ready to receive dirty dishes. My ponytail is tightly tied and my nails are clean. It’s dinner time! (8pm) My boss Kathleen came by to say hi right after I wrote that last paragraph. Kathleen works full-time for the university in the Department of Residence Life. As a former resident assistant, she reminds me a lot of the folks I worked with when I was a college student. She’s very cool and I love that she trusts me to be a professional and do my job well. Since she does not enjoy cooking, she tends to stay away from the kitchen. I fed her some of the dinner potatoes. Some weeks I don’t see Kathleen at all; other weeks I see her almost daily. She’s there if I need her, though. By the way, if you've never done steak for 34, here's some advice: Buy large pieces of steak. That way you, if you're skilled, you can work it so they're medium-rare towards the center and well-done on the outside. Sear them off in batches so the pan (or griddle, in my case) stays super-hot. Arrange them on racks if you have them or in a single layer in a pan and finish them in a hot oven. Pull them out and let them rest for 15 minutes. Slice thinly against the grain--thin slices look attractive and are easy to manage with cheapass foodservice knives. It will sit on the steamtable, covered for heat retention, for about 45 minutes with no major quality loss. I finished mine about 20 minutes before service. Dinner was popular, as I suspected it would be. One of the girls brought a male friend by, and he made a point of coming by and telling me dinner was good. “No, seriously, it was really good,” he said. The tiramisu seemed to be rather challenging for some people—one girl shied away because it contained a tiny amount of rum, while another (picky one) asked me directly, “Will I like this?” (I should have said “no” just for kicks.) A lot of the girls also didn’t recognize the artichoke hearts and cieglini, which surprised me. They all knew steak and potatoes, though, and most of them gamely tried a couple of new items. One girl who studied in Italy last year told me she had not consumed fresh mozzarella since her return to the US. I’m about to head out and start on tomorrow night’s dinner by shopping. My parents are coming into town because my husband’s choir is performing this weekend—they usually come up once a year for a concert. So of course, I will be cooking dinner for them. I am still working on the menu mentally, but it should be fancier than what I cook at work—plus I’ll actually plate everything. Stay tuned...

This is just a quick note to let ya'll know I added photos to my blog posts from Tuesday and Thursday (starting on page 3 of this thread). So go back and take a peek. Thanks.

I am really enjoying everybody else's food-and-college memories, BTW. Keep them coming! Fauxtarga: The restaurant selection by the sorority is somewhat lacking. There's Lupo's, which is all right and is where most peoples' parents take them out for a steak or a decent plate of Italian food. There's Marathon Deli, which has great gyros. Next door to Marathon is a new Kosher Israeli-type deli, with falafel and spit-grilled meats. The independent Bagel Place actually has some of the best bagels in the metropolitan area. And then there are chains: Potbelly, Applebee's, Chipotle, Noodes & Co, California Tortilla, Boston Market, the sandwich bar at Wawa. There's a few little independents and bars masquerading as restaurants, but that's about it. It's not hard to convince the girls to eat with me most of time.

Have you talked to Barbara at L'academie de Cuisine? It might work, you never know. (I got my current job indirectly through L'academie, but then I'm a graduate.)

I have thought about it, actually. Sysco's duck legs are surprisingly cheap. I asked about them on a whim once and was so surprised at the low cost that I called Stewart and told him about it. He later bought and prepared a case for his girls. But I forgot about it. Maybe I'll see about doing it sometime right after Spring Break. I can afford IQF or cryopak breasts, I'm sure. Sure, you can put away my Sysco order when it comes. Special job for special grads! Girls are technically allowed to bring one guest to one meal one time a week. (This is only those who live in the house--if you live outside the house, presumably it's tough noogies.) In reality, some people bring their boyfriends by twice a week, while others never ever bring anybody over for food. It equals out. I can talk to my boss about it if somebody abuses the policy. The two girls who most often bring their boyfriends over go eat in their boyfriends' houses at least once a week, so it doesn't bother me. (Plus, they're nice guys, which helps. One of them usually sticks around to chat with me for a couple of minutes after he places his order.) Menu planning: I plan to address this more in tomorrow's blog, because I do it every week and I usually start it around Wednesday night or Thursday morning. I wish I did--I bet some of my girls would be fun to drink with! But there's a strict no-alcohol policy in the house. I doubt it's followed, but it's definitely not flaunted. They mostly party at the fraternity houses or at the cheap bars near campus. I'm not supposed to have alcohol AT ALL at the house for cooking or anything. That doesn't mean I don't bring it (I did make tiramisu today, remember), but I keep it on the DL when I have it around and I don't submit for reimbursement when I use it. The catering service that used to have my house's food service was interviewed by the campus newspaper once. When the article came out, it ran with a photo of the company president deglazing a pan with bourbon at ZTA's house. He knew they weren't supposed to have alcohol in the house, so why he let this photo be taken I'm not sure, but apparently it led to all kinds of drama with the ZTA advisors. It may have been why they didn't renew his contract. I don't know the whole story.

Today has been even busier than yesterday was, if you can believe it. It’s now 3:15pm and I only just now had a few minutes to start blogging today. I had one of those mornings where I barely manage to get it all done in time. Mornings are tough in general, because I only arrive 90 minutes before the beginning of lunch service—and I have a lot to accomplish in that time. It didn’t help that I set the menu I set today. The most labor-intensive soup I make is a broccoli-cheddar soup. It’s also one of the most popular. I only put it on the menu two or three times a semester because it takes so much work. And of course, I put it on the menu today. I started it off as soon as I arrived at work this morning, by making a pale brown roux. I then added whole milk to make a béchamel-type sauce. I ran and set up my cutting board, quickly hacked up a large onion and a cleaned bunch of celery, and sweated those veggies off. When the béchamel was complete, I turned it off. I added 2 quarts of water to the sweated veggies and added a bunch of broccoli florets and plenty of salt. Once the broccoli was tender, I pureed the veggie mixture, and then I added the béchamel. (The blender inner-cap—the clear thing you can remove to feed items into the blender while it runs without removing the lid—fell into the soup while the blender was running. Dammit! I had to strain and discard the batch in the blender at the time, because part of the inner cap shattered and the shards were too tiny to pick out on my own. I added a little bit of instant mashed potato to thicken the soup up a little since I lost some of the solids to this little accident. Cook’s secret.) Then I had to wait for the soup to cool enough to add the cheddar—I monitored its progress with a thermometer. (I pulled half the soup out and chilled it immediately. This soup does not reheat well after the cheese is added—it has a strong tendency to split.) At 11:30, when lunch started, it was still too hot to add the cheddar, so I added a little ice to speed up the progress. Finally I worked in some shredded cheddar, stirring constantly to incorporate it. (It was still too hot to add the cheese when I took that last image. I thought ya'll would appreciate the "Action shot" though. ) It's hard to tell (except for the excess cheese on the spatula handle, that is), but the cheese is in there now. In between all this, I cranked my oven, threw in the chicken wings for today’s lunch special, and started working on the salad bar. Eventually the wings crisped up, and I added just enough of Sysco’s finest BBQ sauce to lightly glaze them. They went onto the steam table. And then I started lunch service. Today was very popular for grilled cheese on whole wheat for some reason. I think I made 8 of those, half or so with tomato inside. The wings were moderately popular—two boyfriends of sisters were here for lunch, and both of them made a significant dent in the wing supply. Everybody snarfed the celery sticks I cut up to go with the wings. I also set out some red grapes, which vanished in short order. They love their fruit here. (8pm) I had very little time for writing today, as you can undoubtedly see. I only got in the few paragraphs above because Jacqueline was cleaning my floor. Jacqueline works for Launchcoast, a contracting cleaning service that cleans several houses on Fraternity Row. We used Launchcoast when I started, but then we hired a dedicated housekeeper at the beginning of this academic year. She quit around mid-semester, and her replacement only lasted two weeks. So we went back to Launchcoast. Jacqueline is the third person Launchcoast has sent to clean our house so far. I’ve learned to be super-nice to any cleaning person, but not to get too attached to them since they may change quickly. Jacqueline is super-nice, but she speaks only about four words of English. My Spanish is only marginally better than that, but we usually converse in Spanish so I can practice. I usually enjoy working out my Spanish muscles like this, but today I just didn’t have the mental capacity. When I was eating my lunch, she came by to talk to me and asked me a question I couldn’t understand. I normally would have worked around it (possibly referring to my Spanish-English dictionary), but I just didn’t have the energy today. I told her in my halting Spanish that “tengo mucho trabajo, y mi cabeza no trabaja normalmente ahora.” (I have a lot of work to do, and my head isn’t working normally today.) She seemed to understand and let me eat in peace. Later, when she wanted to clean my floor, she came prepared with two notes: one asked, “Are you happy?” And the other read, “Can I sweep your floor?” I don’t think I realized it until right then, but Jacqueline is awesome! So lunch service was somewhat ordinary. During lunch, I made tomorrow night’s dessert: tiramisu. I’ve not made tiramisu since I finished culinary school, but I had bought some mascarpone and ladyfingers from Gourmeco that I needed to use up so this seemed appropriate. It was fun to assemble, and I tasted the components so I could verify their yumminess. I ate some of the chicken wings and a mess of celery quickly for lunch, and then got back to work. I cut up some tofu, skewered it and put it in a marinade I’d made Sunday, and then I did the same thing with some chicken breasts. I’m very proud of my ability to handle tofu appealingly, and it makes me happy if the girls eat it. (Not many of them do!) I used to buy tofu from Sysco and freeze it as soon as it arrived, since freezing helps firm up the texture. This trick only works with the fresh, water-packed type of tofu. Then Sysco stopped carrying water-pack tofu and started stocking aseptically packaged tofu instead. The aseptic stuff doesn’t freeze well, so now I have to buy my tofu at the store and bring it in. I started cutting and stir-frying vegetables for dinner—I’d have the next veggie prepped at the same moment the last vegetable finished cooking. When I make a vegetable stir-fry at work, I stir-fry each vegetable separately with oil and salt, and then I make a sauce and pour it over all the veggies at the end. Tonight’s stir-fry included Shanghai cabbage, snow peas, broccoli, shiitake mushrooms, and a gingery sauce with mirin and sesame oil. Stewart called me around midday. He said, “Hi, it’s me. What are you doing?” (long pause) Me: “I want to say something witty, but I can’t come up with anything. I’m working. Why?” S: “Nevermind.” Me: “No, really. What’s up?” S: “I have some extra hamburger buns and wondered if you wanted them for anything. Sometimes I use them for bread pudding or something, you know?” Me: “I get 2doz fresh ones from Ottenberg’s every Monday so I’m good for now, and I only make bread pudding once a semester or so.” S: “Me too. But if you want some…” Me: “Thanks.” An hour later, I had at least a dozen witty retorts for “What are you doing?” My favorite one is, “Wanking.” Since I work alone, my kitchen humor has dulled somewhat. When I was in school or working at a restaurant, I had my repartee honed razor-sharp. Oh well. And then I started the MEP for tonight’s entrée. I lined every ingredient up in the order in which I added it to the pan, and I spent about an hour standing over the stove keeping two pans working. I fired up my griddle and cooked off the skewered tofu and then the chicken. And then I made the sauce for the tofu and chicken at the very last minute, because I just hadn’t had time until then. So here was tonight’s menu: Chicken or tofu satays with peanut sauce Shrimp or vegetarian pad thai Stir-fried vegetables I had initially planned this Thai-style menu for last Thursday as a regular ethnic night. But then it snowed Thursday, and I ended up ordering the girls dinner and coming home early. So I rescheduled Thai Night for Monday, since I already had all the ingredients. But then it snowed again Monday, so I made the casseroles for them instead. I couldn’t do Thai Night last night with all the boys coming over. So I ended up doing it tonight. As it was, my bean sprouts turned, and I ended up just not using them rather than going to the supermarket YET AGAIN to buy more. I had planned jumbo-lump crab cakes for tonight’s dinner initially, and I had to push that menu off to next week. (There I go buying luxury foods and eating up the budget, sorta.) It turned out that there was a new member meeting tonight, so all 15 of the new pledges came for dinner. Fortunately I had enough food for everybody. I served on foam plates because I hadn’t had time to clean up any of my dinner prep dishes before dinner service. On a good night, I finish making everything for dinner by 4:15 or so, and I have an hour to clean up and maybe prep for tomorrow before dinner service begins. This has been an unusual week on many levels, but I like to challenge myself every so often so it’s not a big deal. Nobody complained about not getting their dinner on a ceramic plate. At least I was able to leave work right on time today, and hit the gym for a game of racquetball with my spouse before coming home. It feels good to sit down. Edited to add photos.

Not really. I put everything away when it comes in, I wash the dishes, I scrub my stove and my griddle and my grease trap and my vent hood filters. There is a housekeeping service for the girls, and they take out my trash and sweep and mop my floor daily. Which is a big help--they didn't back during my first semester, and it made it hard for me to leave on time. I've never run two events in a single day before, so yeah, it was a big deal for me too. One of my girls saw me about 4:45pm and asked if I was excited about tonight yet. I asked, "Does abject terror count as excitement?" But I wasn't terrified really--not even that anxious. I knew what I was doing and had laid my ducks out so they were simple to pick off. Organics are wonderful, and I eat a lot of organic food at home. Sysco does not carry much organic food, so I'd run into the problem of self-sourcing, money and time if I made them a priority. However, when the farmer's markets start to get going here, I do try to buy some produce for them there. Most farmers cut me a deal for buying two flats of strawberries or couple cases of asparagus. I can do a lot more in the early fall--we had a lot of BLTs with organic heirloom tomatoes, organic pepper-and-onion fajitas, etc when I started back. Then I started getting a bunch of organic apples and pears when they came in. One of my girls is the daughter of an apple farmer, actually. So she brings me his apples sometimes, after she goes home for the weekend. They're FABULOUS. He finally came down and had lunch with her a few weeks ago, and I went and cornered him and told him how much I appreciated the apples he sends. We talked a little shop about apples and cooking, and he told me a little about farming them. What a nice guy! That night, after he'd gone back home, his daughter came and told me he was really impressed with me and appreciative that I came over to talk to him. I told her to tell him he's welcome to come by anytime--though I imagine his days of leisure are pretty much over again for the season at this point.

In addition to being extremely averse to food waste, I am averse to spending money just for the sake of spending money. So yeah, the $25 delivery charge from Gourmeco bugged me. But the only way around it was to order much much more than I needed. So I bit the bullet. I'm not flogging myself about it or anything, don't worry. Sometimes I am frugal to a fault though--I finally allowed myself to buy a fine-mesh chinois this semester because I was so sick of cloudy stocks. I should have bought that ages ago! You know, all these high-end food concepts are amazing ideas. There are two major problems with them: 1. It's very hard for me to source these things. I basically have to go buy them myself on my own uncompensated time, and get reimbursed. I just don't have hundreds of dollars laying about for oysters and microgreens to float the sorority on a regular basis. 2. These girls want simple foods for the most part. They're busy studying, participating in extracurricular activities, organizing stuff for the sorority. They don't want to be confronted with the truly outrageous at dinnertime, they just want a satisfying meal. They'll stretch out some, sure, but I don't think foie and truffles would fly very well. When you cook for others, you always have to consider your audience after all. They didn't hire me to run a fine-dining operation.

Thanks for the compliments, Verjuice. I don't really see many of the girls struggling with eating disorders. Some of them do struggle with their weight, but they seem to have a healthy approach to weight management. They often go to the gym together in groups of two or three, and they ask my advice on eating healthily. I don't see a lot of neurosis, but I suspect the girls I don't see so often have more problems in their approach to food. These sisters are generally proud of being down-to-earth though. I once overheard one saying something about it being weird that several of them served on some eating disorders task force, yet none of them seem to have an eating disorder. It could be hard to hide anorexia or bulimia, considering that everybody has at least one roommate except for the president--the way to do it would be to stay away from the house. The bathrooms are shared, except for a single bathroom in the basement and another on the ground level. I've never heard anybody yarking in the basement bathroom. Ovens: I've tried calling them about it. It's apparently not a huge priority to get it fixed. I cannot purchase major equipment like a meat slicer with the food budget. If I could, we'd have two more residential-style fridges, one for the girls and one for me. They do have access to a toaster oven and a microwave. Bobolis are just better if I make them on the pizza stone, and it's usually not a problem to use one oven for that during lunch. (Today was the only day I've taken them off the menu since I added them in January.) Boboli shells come frozen and say "KEEP FROZEN" on the box, so I'm following directions. I have been adding more luxe foods to their diet in recent weeks, as you shall see later this week. But it's still a far cry from eating up the budget. Frankly they'd rather eat chicken most of the time! I love TJ's too, and buy a lot there for home use. I usually go to the one in Rockville, and go eat lunch at A&J (dim sum) while I'm in the neighborhood. There's one opening in Silver Spring soon, though, and once that opens I'll have a lot less reason to hit the Rockville Pike. I do feel proud of myself, Designchick. And it's not a total loss if I don't spend all the money. But I'd like to spend more of it. These are some fabulous ideas, and I will see if I can do anything with them. They don't really care for luxury ingredients. Honestly. Their suggestions are along the lines of "more fruit," which I'm trying to do for them. They rarely even ask for steak. Most of the prepared foods they get are brand-name, including all their cereals and snackies. I think they prefer that, and I don't mind doing it for them. I don't understand your first question, Snowangel. I don't know if it's more or less expensive to buy stock and chicken meat. (It's probably cheaper if you factor in my labor.) I am a frugal person by nature--I detest food waste, and try to make the most out of every purchase. Chickens for stock seems like a no-brainer. I have indeed introduced the girls to many new foods, some of which have become favorites that they request often. Yes, ethnic meals are a diversion from the ordinary for me, but most of the girls are genuinely curious eaters and willing to sample something different. Some things they ask for include tomato beurre blanc, pan-fried tilapia, pad thai, coconut-chickpea curry, yogurt-marinated charred chicken, pierogies, choucroute. They also love my real mashed potatoes, and they still ask about the fried chicken I made one time last semester. (I promised to make it again, after Spring Break and preferably after Lent is over so everybody can enjoy it.)

After leaving home and going to the gym, I realized I forgot a key ingredient for today’s lunch. The special today is roast beef sandwiches with horseradish mayo. I had some prepared horseradish at home that I planned to bring in, but I forgot it. So I had to leave the gym a little early and head to Shopper’s Food Warehouse, the nearest supermarket to ZTA. I normally detest Shopper’s—it’s the area’s big budget-style supermarket chain, and the customer service and product quality reflect the low costs. But this particular Shopper’s is actually quite nice, and it’s jumbo-sized with tons of services like an olive bar, in-house baked goods and a pharmacy. While I was there, I picked up some bananas and some skewers. The Sysco bananas arrive green and don’t stop at yellow as they fade to black, and the bananas I picked up at Costco on Sunday were long gone by the time I left work yesterday. The skewers were for tonight—I don’t know what kind of arrangements they have made for tonight’s fondue party, but I am sure the sorority doesn’t have fondue forks. They used skewers instead of fondue forks the last time they did a fondue party, but I can’t count on them to remember to get skewers on their own. So I bought some while I was out. There’s a Starbucks in the same shopping center as the Shopper’s Food Warehouse, so I stopped by and picked up a pathetic cup of over-roasted decaf coffee. I oughta know better, but that place sings some kind of siren song or something and I find myself stopping in. I got to work right at 10am—the latest I appear there, except for Fridays. My boss set out dinner for the girls last night several hours after I departed, and then at the end of the night she broke down the salad bar for me. She put the tongs, ladles, and a couple of empty canisters in the sink and loaded everything else into the fridge. So I had to set up my three-part sink first thing and wash those dishes before I could get the salad bar going. I think I had the salad bar completely set up at 10:45am. At that time, I defrosted more chicken stock to make extra chicken noodle soup, started baking some previously-made cookie dough off for tonight, and set up my mise-en-place (MEP) for the short-order service. I like to make my cookies pretty small. That way, you can eat more of them. Here’s the mise I require for the standard short-order menu. This is in addition to any mise for specials: Diced onion. Diced red bell pepper. Sliced mushrooms. Shredded cheddar. Shredded mozzarella. Pizza sauce. Sliced pepperoni. Breads: white, wheat, burger buns, dog buns. Sliced cheeses: American, provolone, Swiss. I set out the following items for self-service: Salsa. Sour cream. Sliced pickles. Mayonnaise. Big leaves of lettuce. Sliced tomato. Artfully-arranged sliced deli meats. Boboli shells, cooked chicken breasts, Boca burgers, Gardenburgers, and the vegetarian “chicken” stay in the freezer. I repack the hot dogs into Ziploc bags of 10 and keep one in the fridge at a time, the rest in the freezer. Eggs are also kept in the fridge. Because today is such a busy day, today’s lunch special is of the “condiment for an existing item” variety (roast beef sandwiches with horseradish mayo). The mayo is simply prepared horseradish and black pepper stirred into prepared mayo. Takes me 5 seconds to prep. I started writing the above at 11:30am. In between writing, I served the following to girls: Two chicken breast sandwiches, a chicken breast on a plate without bread, a hot dog without the bun, two fried eggs with American, a vegetarian “chicken” sandwich, a horseradish-beef sandwich on toasted wheat, a grilled chicken wrap with lettuce and tomato, a single bowl of chicken-noodle soup. I took the Bobolis off the menu today because I need to be able to use my ovens for cookies and starting tonight’s dinner—one girl already came by and left dissatisfied because she couldn’t have pizza. (She came back later for a hot dog.) 1:45pm: What a busy afternoon. I started making my late plates when I wrapped up what I wrote above, but I didn’t have time to finish them until almost 1:15pm. About 15 girls came downstairs for lunch right at the same time, and another 7 or so came down just as I was putting out those 15 orders. I told one ruefully, “When it rains, it pours.” Meanwhile, my Sysco driver Wayne showed up with this week’s order, so I was checking quality and trying to put the cold stuff away in between making all those lunch orders. Whenever Wayne shows up, I start wondering what the hell I was thinking ordering all this stuff and where on earth I’m going to stow it. Somehow, I always manage to make space somewhere. I put out a lot of things for the girls like fresh fruit as soon as it comes in, partly to spare myself from having to fit it in the fridge. Can you believe I fit all that in my fridge? I got all the cookies done (Wayne swiped a sugar cookie) and wrapped up all the late plates. Finally, 1:30 rolled around and I was able to break down my lunch stuff. I immediately began assembling the eggplant parmigiana for tonight while I cooked food for my own lunch—I normally take a break around 1:45pm. I said something earlier about “mailing it in” sometimes. Today is definitely one of those days. I have a fraternity coming by for dinner at 5:30 tonight, which means all the girls (including pledges and others who don’t live in the house) plus about 25 boys. I am preparing food for 110 or so, but expect closer to 80 people tonight. When that many people come over, I have to compromise some on food quality. So I buy prebreaded eggplant and precooked, prebreaded chicken breasts. It’s the only way! I did make dessert from scratch at least: assorted cookies. When I am cooking for this many people I know at least a week in advance, and I can start work well in advance of the day they come over. I prepare dessert twice a week for the girls. So last week, I made enormous batches of sugar cookies and then chocolate-chip cookies another time. I baked off enough for that night each time, and then I froze the rest of the dough. Last Friday, I set up my mise-en-place for oatmeal cookies (measured everything out into baggies), and then on Sunday I made the dough and baked them off. (I also baked off half of the reserved chocolate chip cookie dough on Sunday.) Today I pulled out the rest of the chocolate-chip dough and the sugar cookie dough and baked those off. I finished getting dessert together around 1pm. There’s a big basket, spray-painted silver, that I like to line with napkins and fill with cookies when I do a big assortment like this. (I also use the basket for breakfast breads, or regular breads if I do a lunch sandwich buffet for some reason.) It gives a sense of plentitude, I think. After dinner, at 7pm, I am providing chocolate fondue with various dippers. I bought a lot of fruit, plus some pound cake, pretzels and marshmallows. I made the fondue mix yesterday, so I only have to melt it down and set up trays of dippers. Hopefully that will be fairly simple… I am done eating lunch now (it’s 2pm). I prepared a Hebrew National hot dog with lots of kraut, some Swiss cheese and a little bit of homemade 1000 Island dressing—sort of a Reuben dog. Later I’ll take another short break and eat a small salad. But for now, I really have to get back to work. My mental list of jobs to complete will just dog me until I hack it down to manageable size, so breaks aren’t that relaxing right now. (Which is why this was a short one.) (5:45pm) I must have been smoking crack when I suggested I’d have time to take a break and eat a salad. No such luck. At this point the fraternity is here, all the boys have food, and about half the girls have food too. (When they have boys over, they usually let the boys get their food first. This typically results in half the boys rejoining the queue to chat up girls and get more food.) I set up a buffet line for dinner since it seemed the fastest way to serve 100 kids. Tonight’s menu, for posterity: Chicken or eggplant parmigiana Linguine with red sauce Garlic bread Green beans Assorted cookies: sugar/chocolate chip/oatmeal After my too-brief break this afternoon, I got cracking on dinner. I set up 4 disposable hotel pans with layered chicken, sauce and cheese and tossed them in the oven. I put a huge pot of water on the stove and started the hour-long process of getting it to come to the boil. Then I started putting garlic butter in between the pre-cut slices of Italian bread I got from Ottenberg’s yesterday. I make the world’s simplest garlic butter: I just buzz cloves of garlic in the Cuisinart with Kosher salt, and then I add room-temp butter and run the machine for 5 or 6 minutes. Voila, garlic butter! While I was making more butter for the garlic bread, the carpenter for Fraternity Row came by. I’d never met him before, but he said he’d heard of me. He replaced my door handle with one that includes a deadbolt. His name is Frank. Nice guy. Says his wife loves garlic bread. (The rest of this, I’m writing from home at 8pmish.) After I had all the bread ready, I cooked a bunch of frozen green beans in my now-boiling water (to which I’d added a hefty shot of Kosher salt). I use frozen green beans mostly because I can’t stand trimming beans, and because haricots verts are not sold by Sysco (and those are the only beans I think are worthwhile fresh). Then I dumped the water, rinsed and refilled the pot, and put it back on the stove to come back to a boil. This second pot of water was used for boiling the linguine; the pasta sauce just came from a can and was heated in a pot on the stove. While I waited for the pasta water to boil, I assembled the trays of dippers for the fondue tonight. I cut up some pineapple and cantaloupe, sliced pound cake from Costco into chunks, and arranged pretzels and marshmallows on four trays. Around this time, Stewart came by to drop off a check for me. Stewart is the chef for the sorority next door, and he’s become a good friend of mine. I called him to ask about the check earlier, and when I said hi he responded, “Hey! What’s for dinner?” We’re always asking each other what we’re cooking, to glean menu ideas and compare notes. I told him my brief tale of woe: fraternity over for dinner, fondue party, head up my ass so far I haven’t seen anything but poop for hours. (It really wasn’t all that bad in retrospect, but my back is sore and it was a loooong day.) I mentioned a gourmet food supplier earlier. When I was asked to do this fondue party, I balked because I didn’t have enough chocolate to make the fondue. I don’t order enough from the gourmet food supplier (Gourmeco) to get an order sent free, so I place orders with them twice a year and drive out to pick my goodies up. They’re all the way out in Sterling, VA (near Dulles Airport), and they keep regular business hours, so I can only go there when I’m not working for the day—during a break, in other words. Sysco only sells bar chocolate, and it has their label on it, which doesn’t bode well IMO. So I buy Noel chocolate in pistole form (64% dark) from Gourmeco at the start of the semester and use it for brownies, chocolate sauce, and whatever other needs I have. Fondue uses a buttload of chocolate when you’re making it for 60 people though, and I only had about 3lbs of chocolate left. So I had to place a special order, and bite the bullet and pay $25 for delivery. Ouch! I didn’t really need anything besides the chocolate, but I picked up a couple of goodies which I’ll use later this week, and Stewart ordered some treats for his girls too. (This is why Stewart needed to give me a check.) I could have bought block chocolate and chopped it, but the very thought exhausts me. I hate chopping chocolate, I will go way out of my way to get pistoles so I won’t have to deal with it. Anyway, seeing Stewart always cheers me up. He called my fondue dippers “pretty.” When I asked if I could take his picture he wanted to pose with a pineapple. He’s such a great guy—I really value his friendship. By the time Stewart went back to his kitchen, I was so busy I wasn’t thinking much. Cooking can get rather rhythmic after a while. It’s meditative—I just know what needs to happen when, and I don’t have to think about it. Chicken parm came out of the oven, and eggplant parm and garlic bread went in. I moved a table close to the kitchen and set it up for buffet service. The cookies got arranged in their basket. Extra lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber got cut up and the salad bar was refreshed. Pasta was boiled, sauce was heated, and they were combined. I changed into a jacket (I normally wear a t-shirt, chef pants and a bistro apron at work, but I keep clean chef jackets around for “formal wear.”) I rolled the bus cart where dirty dishes are deposited into my kitchen because I planned to serve on paper (I don’t have enough dishes for 80 people), so the cart was an unnecessary eyesore. I finished setting everything out at 5:20 and started washing dishes. The boys appeared at 5:30 sharp. Some of the guys seemed really interested in who I was, what my kitchen was like, and what I did there. They apparently don’t have a kitchen in their house, and there’s no big meal service. Some of them pay to use the catering company that used to run my house’s food service, and the rest of them eat out all the time. One guy told me that they had sinks like mine, but “they’re always full of shit.” (I told him I’d freak out if that was my sink. “Who took a dump in my sink?”) Another thanked me for the green beans and the salad bar: “Wow, like I never eat vegetables!” They were enthusiastic about the food, especially the cookies, and some asked if they could come eat with me again. (I told them to be nice to the sisters and we’d see.) There was plenty of food—enough that the guys took some extra chicken parm back to their house with them. While they ate, I warmed up the fondue in a bain-marie. The sisters purchased two $9 mini-crockpots from Target to use for fondue tonight, so I unpacked them and washed them out. Then I made the late plates from dinner, broke down the salad bar, and slowly packed and put away everything from dinner. I washed all my dishes and scrubbed down the salad bar. I set a small pot of water to boil on the stove and used the hot water to fill the empty crockpots. Then I dumped out the hot water, wiped the interiors dry, and filled the pots with hot fondue. I pulled out all the trays of dippers and sent girls upstairs with all the fondue goodies. And then I finished cleaning things up and happily locked my new deadbolt on the way out. Right now I’m feeling really glad I went to bed at 8:30pm last night. Phew! Edited to add photos.

Oatmeal with Trader Joe's golden berry blend and more coffee to start the day. I went to bed at 8:30pm last night, I was so exhausted. A good thing too, because today will be a major challenge for me. There's a fraternity coming over for dinner, and then there's a fondue party later tonight that I'm furnishing. This means about 100 hungry college students, followed by about 60 sugar-buzzed college girls. Oy.

Those Polynesian hoohahs sound a little scary, Mizducky. That being said, I do provide a vegetarian entree at dinner every night, and sometimes it's a challenge to come up with something interesting that they'll like. They're generally not very into beans, but I think it's a shame for me to give them most of their protein from dairy and eggs--beans are so fiber- and nutrient-rich. I occasionally offer tofu, especially for Asian-style meals, and also sometimes chunked up in a pot pie or breaded and pan-fried with a BBQ sauce. They'll eat it every now and then. They looooove the coconut-chickpea curry (with coconut milk making up the bulk of the liquid). Abra, I can't fathom not making my own stock. Beth learned pretty quickly after I started my job that I like to do a lot of things the old-fashioned way, and she stopped pushing prefab foods on me as a result. Then one day her boss came in with her and was interested in why I was ordering whole chickens. When I told him they were for stock, he started going off on all the great "stock products" Sysco carries. Poor Beth was trying to look supportive of her boss trying to make a sale and me tuning him out at the same time. I don't know why I have so much budget left. I'm trying to get in better products for them, and I was lobbying for a soda machine but I don't think they want one at this point. (They can buy soda for 50 cents from a can-dispensing machine in the basement, but I wanted to install a fountain.) I am a little hamstrung by my lack of fridge space--if there was more room, I could offer more fresh juices and fruits. I get $36k a semester. Right now, there's about $46k left in the budget.

After a brief nap and an afternoon movie, I made some turkey burgers and a salad for dinner. Ya'll probably think I never make anything interesting at home, but I'll try to right that belief when my parents come into town this weekend.

My plan was for you to discover them on a day-by-day basis, as I prepare each item. (Perhaps I will post the full menu in a single post at the end of the week, though.) Anytime.

I just got home--I left work around 2pm due to the weather. The menus are going awry all week because of this. I usually start my morning by getting the salad bar up and running. The salad bar is available all day—I usually refresh it around 4pm to be sure it’s stocked and has plenty of ice for dinner. I bought these little canisters and tongs from Sysco—they’re perfect for the sort of setup I have. There’s always lettuce, tomatoes, cukes, assorted peppers, shredded cheese, croutons, and five dressings. Other offerings vary—hearts of palm, parmesan, sliced mushrooms, shredded carrots make regular appearances. I used to make all the dressings from scratch. Then I started buying in Caesar dressing so it’d be more stable on the bar. Then they started asking for more variety and for a fat-free option. I experimented but they didn’t like the homemade dressings so much—they’re used to the gloppier, food-starch-modified commercial dressings. The vinaigrette was my last holdout; I’d make balsamic or a Greek-style vinaigrette in my blender for the salad bar. But then I got multiple requests for “a Zesty Italian” type dressing. I cried uncle, and now all the dressings are Sysco’s finest: ranch, bleu cheese, Italian, fat-free honey mustard, and Caesar. In between working on the salad bar, I get the soup going. Today’s is chicken noodle, and I prepped the vegetables for it yesterday so I only had to dump them in a pot and start sweating them off. I stirred every so often while chopping veg for the salad bar. Meanwhile, my breadbaker showed up with his Monday delivery. Charlene is my regular driver from Ottenberg’s, but she’s off for three weeks to visit the Disney Magic Kingdom with her extended family. (Charlene is really cool, and she works hard—she deserves this vacation!) So two guys I don’t know showed up to drop off the bread this week. I order my bread on Fridays and only get in one delivery per week. I like the Ottenberg’s product, and it’s fairly cheap to get their good bread in. They sell a lot of things I’ve never ordered like donuts and muffins. They sell some specialty breads like croissants and pita, but those are usually frozen products that they just bake off or repackage. (I still order those items from them when I need them, because it’s not like the supermarket product is any better—plus I have to go to the supermarket if I want the supermarket product!) The bars are because the door to the downstairs area (where my kitchen is situated) is at the bottom of a steep ramp. The bars are at ground level, to prevent you from falling onto the ramp. Breads this week include white and wheat for sandwiches, sesame seed buns for chicken sandwiches and veggie burgers, hot dog buns, and Italian-style bread for tomorrow's garlic bread. Today’s lunch special is chicken salad sandwiches. When I make chicken stock, I use whole chickens. I pull them out after about an hour of poaching, when they’re fully cooked, and I cool them and then pick all the meat off. The bones go back into the stockpot for more cooking, and the meat gets frozen for chicken salad. Like most of my food, the chicken salad is deceptively simple: meat, mayonnaise, mustard, walnuts, rehydrated raisins, celery, salt and pepper. It’s wildly popular among the girls. Here’s how lunch works at the sorority: I open at 11:30am and serve until 1:30pm. There is always a salad bar set up, and there are two fresh soups each week (one debuts on Monday for service Monday and Tuesday, the other appears Wednesday for service the rest of the week). There’s always a short-order menu available, little things that usually take only a few minutes to assemble and serve. Here’s what’s on the short-order menu: Egg and cheese sandwich (fried, scrambled) Chicken breast sandwich Quesadilla: plain, with chicken breast, with choice of onion/pepper/mushroom Cold cuts (always ham and turkey, often roast beef too) Boca burger or Gardenburger Vegetarian “chicken” sandwich (the Morningstar Farms product) Hebrew National hot dogs Grilled cheese Boboli individual pizzas: plain, onion/pepper/mushroom, pepperoni They can also get any combination of the above that they can dream up—grilled ham and cheese, vegetarian “chicken” quesadilla, etc. They rarely stray from the listed options, though. In addition to the soup, salad and short-order menu, there is always one or sometimes two other items on the menu. This is sometimes referred to as “the special” by the girls. It might be a gyro sandwich on pita with tzatziki, or it might be tuna salad, or it might be handmade turkey and beef burgers. Sometimes it’s a twist on one of the short-order items: chicken breast sandwich with pesto, turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce. Occasionally I bake tater tots and serve those with lunch—they’re very popular, but they require planning since they take about 45 minutes to crisp up in the oven. If you can’t make lunch—or any other meal—you sign up for a “late plate.” If you make a specific request on the signup sheet I do my best to fulfill it, but if you don’t make a request I usually prepare the day’s special for you. I’m proud of my soups in particular. I put a lot of love into the soups, and they’re beloved by the girls. I make my stocks from scratch, which takes time but pays off in deeper flavor and texture to the finished product. I probably expend more effort and time on soups than I do anything else for lunch. The most popular soup is tomato—we had that last week. Other favorite soups not on this week’s menu include potato, creamy mushroom, chicken with lemon and rice (a sort of variation of avgolemono). Sometimes I make egg drop soup or coconut-chicken Thai-style soups. I do a number of vegetarian soups—the creamy spinach is especially popular with one of the two vegetarian sisters—and sometimes I do bean-based soups like lentil (these are less popular). At least one of each week’s soups is vegetarian. (I wrote this at 10am) I just looked outside, and the snow is starting to really come down. So I guess this means I’ll be departing sooner rather than later. I’m changing tonight’s menu as a result: instead of pad thai with chicken and tofu satays, it’ll be chicken-rice casserole. Not as special, but it can sit in the oven all afternoon and then be put out by my boss at dinnertime. Every Monday, my Sysco representative Beth shows up to take my food order. I usually write it out by hand so she can enter it into her laptop while I work, but I love spending time chatting with Beth and normally spend a few minutes hanging out with her before handing the list over. Beth and her ex-husband used to run a restaurant, and she has an encyclopedic knowledge of Sysco’s products, so she is very useful to me. She also does anything for me—she’s been known to put something in her SUV and speed it to me when I made an order error, and she makes adjustments on the rare occasions when I am dissatisfied with food quality. Sysco gets a bad reputation in some foodie circles, but my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I buy mostly raw ingredients from them, not prefab stuff. Most of their business is clearly the prefab, but I’ve had very few problems with quality on ingredients and they almost always have what I need. The things they don’t carry, or only carry in enormous quantities, I buy on my own at a local market (hence all the trips to Han Ah Reum and Costco etc). I also use a gourmet food supplier for chocolates, fruit purees, and other specialty ingredients. Anyway. Here’s what went into today’s order: Breaded eggplant, portabello mushrooms, jumbo lump crab, scallions, lettuce, tomatoes (1 layer), Boboli shells, shredded cheddar, cucumbers, 1doz green peppers, full case red peppers, onions, baby spinach, pasta sauce, skim milk, OJ, 2 cases strawberries, cantaloupe, red grapes, 1 doz apples, 1 doz pears, 2 cases plates, 1 case each bowls cups forks and spoons, fresh rosemary, sliced mushrooms, sliced deli turkey (I don’t have a meat slicer), Oreo cookies, 1 doz oranges, 6oz chicken breasts, ricotta cheese, and three kinds of Yoplait yogurt (breast cancer is the official cause of ZTA, so they “save lids to save lives” and I do my part by making sure they have a steady supply). Tomorrow night, there's supposed to be a fondue party as a "crowning event." These are more casual events than those hosted during rush week, but they're designed in part to attract interested girls who may not have gone through formal rush. I made a big batch of ganache to use for the fondue today. I think the process of making ganache is fascinating, so I took some pictures: This is when I had just poured the cream over the chocolate. This is when the emulsion was just starting to grab in the center. And this is when the emulsion was fully formed. It should be a simple matter of melting this mixture and pouring it into fondue pots tomorrow night. While I was working over my ganache, I got a visit from my exterminator. (This is actually the father-in-law of the guy I normally see.) I have thankfully limited problems with insects due to these guys' diligent work. Soon it was 11:30, and I was making lunch. I saw most of the girls in the house today--they didn't have class, after all, so they had nothing better to do than come hang out and eat lunch together. Most were in their PJs and had clearly just awakened. I made a lot of egg-and-cheese sandwiches for them. They were all over the soup, too--it's soup weather outside. I'm planning to just relax most of the rest of today. I'm zonked even though it was a short work day.