Feeding My Passion

Although I’ve been doing a few of the 98.3 The Coast “Cooking with the Diva” radio/video podcast shows recently, it’s really Watty’s (that’s what most everyone calls Chef Tom Watson) show, and he’s been nice enough to let me do it. Last Tuesday, he was feeling very poorly, so he asked me to do it. Not exactly expecting it and I froze for a second before stammering out “Sssure!” Fortunately the recipe was very simple, a delicious tomato gratin with toasted hazelnuts, thyme and fresh mozzarella. It turned out pretty well, I even had time to go back to the Port to do some research on the best wine for this dish and grab a couple bottles of what we had at the restaurant. During one of the commercial breaks, I looked up the origin of the word “gratin” (on my super cool new Samsung m800) and was able to talk about that before the end of the show. Excellent!

The story about the gratin is interesting, so I’ll tell it soon.

Video after the jump.

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Last week, after working half of my (long) week at the front of the house, I’m back in the kitchen. I’m still pulled out of the kitchen to help servers at the front of the house. I’m also a de facto assistant manager when Brandon and Amy (the assistant manager) aren’t at the restaurant, which lately has been quite often. So when the servers need anything, like change from the cash box, or need something discounted, or need a manager to talk with a guest, or a vendor is making a delivery and needs to be paid, or or or…whatever. So I can get pulled out of the kitchen a lot, and that’s got to drive Tom a little crazy.
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Brandon is going to a wedding this weekend, and he wants to get most of the tiling done at Tulips before he goes, so I’m covering for him at the front of the house…A LOT. I’m praying Amy, the other FOTH manager, is scheduled a lot as well so I can get back into the kitchen or just have a break.

I attended an 8-hour food safety class with Tom, Brandon, Jeff, and Tim, and we took a test to get our ServSafe certification. (We’ll find out in 2 weeks, but we’re all pretty confident about it since the instructor was great, the fairly easy test, and the pass bar set fairly low.)

Yesterday I didn’t need to be in until 4p, but I volunteered to come in at 9a so Brandon could get started early on the tiling. I was there until 10p.

Today, same thing, 9a-10p.

Tomorrow, 10a-close (11p).

Friday, noon-close (11:30p).

Saturday, 3p-close (11:30p).

Sunday, 3p-close (11p).

Then on Monday I have a Tulips tasting at 3p.

And then I would like to pass out until the afternoon of the next day.

The Krasl Art Fair was weekend before last, and we were pretty damn busy then. I think we were busier than during July 4th weekend, and I’m very glad I left fairly early since many of my kitchen-mates stayed up late to party at the restaurant and suffered at work the next day. It was definitely a fun and intense weekend.

But then there was the Venetian Fest last weekend. Read more »

I’ve got close-to-open shifts today/tomorrow and again Monday/Tuesday, and potentially Tuesday/Wednesday and Wednesday/Thursday (This means I could be working from open to close Tuesday-Thursday.). Then I’m working 4 to close Friday and Saturday, off Sunday. Total hours for the week will probably be about 63 hours.

The other interesting thing about this week is that I’m going to be training at the front of the house. Read more »

This is my first day off since last Friday, so 7 days in a row. Not all of them have been 8 hour days, but it’s been a little while, like probably since March, that I’ve really worked in a kitchen, and since late last year at the Buddha that I worked close to 40 hours a week.

I know Jeff, Tim, and Dan have all worked  7 days a week at Port 412, more than 40 hours a week, and that Brandon and Chef Tom are exhausted with the number of hours and jillions of things they have to think about everyday during this time of the year.

And I know this is only the beginning of the madness. Once Tulips opens, I’ll be there 7 days a week, all day long, getting my butt handed to me, every single day, for probably the first couple of months.

That being said, I’m tired, and I hope you forgive me for all of the typos and grammatical errors I’ve made. What I really need is to do some yoga, rehydrate, and run some errands, chief among them being a trip to Staples or Office Max to get a day planner since my schedule has gotten much more complex than a simple list of the hours I’m supposed to be working. And I need to drop laundry off. Luckily my apartment is pretty clean as I had anticipated craziness once I started working for John, so I spent a full day finding stuff to donate, tossing a lot of stuff out, and filing all of the stuff I needed to file. It was the first time in a loooooong time I’ve actually filed papers. Amazing, isn’t it! I was tired of stressing about it, always thinking that I needed to do it and needing to know where all of my papers are. Aaaaah, feels really, really good, and it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. Cleaning up and getting organized never is.

It’s been a very interesting week so far with the cooking radio show/video recording on Tuesday and the cooking class at the St. Joe library last night. Port 412 was doing a breast cancer fundraiser last night, “Burgers for Boobies,” a very fun and tongue-in-cheek way to raise money for the cause. Those who donated at least $2 got a full Port 412 hamburger, which is quite delicious, let me assure you. So the place was packed to the bra-strewn rafters and the kitchen was pumping out burgers like mad. Read more »

Servers and cooks have difficult jobs. I’ve hosted at Brewster’s in New Buffalo, Mich., which is a very busy restaurant, so I’ve dealt with the public and the servers a lot. But I haven’t really ever been a server, so I won’t pretend to know and understand more than I do. I’ve spent much more time in the kitchen, and I know that one of the things that drives me and every other cook I know nuts is when hot food sits dying in the “window,” ready to be picked up but cooling off, or just sitting there under the lamp.

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Chef Tom is very busy these days, over committed actually, so he’s asked me to do some of his things, mainly the public-appearance sort of things. He usually teaches a cooking segment for 98.3 The Coast, which is based in Benton Harbor. Every Tuesday, DJ Robin Van Dyke does a live broadcast from Perennial Accents in downtown St. Joe, just a couple blocks from Port 412. It’s a beautiful kitchen and homewares store, and they have a nice demonstration kitchen where Tom and Robin do the cooking segment from.

While I taught cooking classes before, about 4 so far I think, being live on air, and with someone making a video recording, made me a bit nervous. Read more »

While it may not seem like a coincidence after such a crazy-ass weekend at the front desk and then working 3 days in a row of the front desk and baking thing, which is exhausting, mostly because it completely screws up my sleep schedule and I start getting a wee bit cranky at the front desk (never a good thing), I gave my 2-week notice early Sunday morning before I went home after baking. Sorry, that was a long sentence, but I don’t think it was a run-on.

Anyway, I wrote 3 nice letters, Read more »