My week in cheese.

Not long after I decided to pursue food seriously, I saw an ad posted on Craigslist. Seems my favorite cheese store was hiring, so I made a call. A few conversations and a handshake later, and I was the newest employee. I was excited, I was nervous, and in the back of my mind, I was pretty damn unsure. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of cheese or that I didn’t think I could do the job, I just had no idea what it might be like to step back behind the counter, interacting with customers, something I hadn’t done since college.

And the first couple days it was great. I was exhausted by the end of the day from eight hours of being on my feet, in a good way. I made sandwiches, I talked about cheese, I sampled cheese, I took advantage of my 20% discount. I found myself drawn to the meat counter, eager to help people pick out and sample from all the great cured meats we had to offer, hoping they’d want to sample some Iberico so I could snag a little slice too.

Despite my brother’s overt wariness (“margo? Customer service?”), I really liked engaging with the people who came in. They were in the store because they liked good food. The same reason I was a customer there, the same reason I became an employee. I set myself a goal: if someone comes to the meat counter, see if I can get them to walk away with one more type of charcuterie than they came there for. It was fun.

But there were other parts. Retail means when you’re working, you’re working. No email, no internetting, no writing during downtime. I didn’t like being told when to take my (unpaid) break, especially when the wage itself was pretty meager. And then the hours themselves were the opposite of everyone elses. I was to work evenings and weekends, my off-days were broken up during the week.

It wasn’t working. The bads were quickly outweighing the goods, and I had to make a change. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I inadvertently stabbed myself with a knife and got four stitches in my hand.

On the day I had planned to chat with my boss about reducing my hours, I was making a sandwich for someone. While pitting an avocado, like an idiot, the knife slipped around the pit and between my first and second fingers, essentially slicing open the webbing between the digits.

Yeah. It was as bad as you think it was.

So I was out of commission. Stitches, workers comp, the whole thing. And even now that my hand has healed, I’m not going back to the cheese shop. Maybe on call when he needs me, or maybe if he needs marketing help, or maybe if he ever takes me up on my ideas to make the meat counter even better.

So, just like that, I’m going back to advertising. But it was a nice little sabbatical. To see how the other half lives, and to know that right now, it’s not for me. I miss the office life, the regular hours, the people and the work. I love food, and I’m going to love keeping it as my hobby. But for now, if you know of anyone looking for a copywriter, my pencils are sharpened. But not too sharp. I’ve had kind of an accident-prone year.

Porcine musings

I've got something to admit, blog audience. And it's better if I just come out and say it. I'm cheating on you. I'm writing for another blog. It's true.

A few months ago, I met some guys from Portland who run the bacn.com site. They liked what I had to say and I liked what they had to offer, and well, one thing led to another and here I am. Writing about pig.

I think this can work though. I can keep both relationships going. All my bacony thoughts can live there and my sporadic writing about my CSA or cooking life can live here. Click on over. I've got a piece up about bacon presses and my father, and one coming up about the magic of greens and bacon.

Add http://blog.bacn.com/ to your RSSing or just click there every day to see if I've written anything new if you're my mother.

enjoy.

It's time for a little change

A lot can happen in a month. This time last month I was packing my bag for a trip to Portland and Montana, where we traveled by bike and train only. It was a hell of a trip that included Praline-bacon and a familiar faces at Screen Door in Portland, eating and drinking chocolate at Cacao, meats from my favorite charcuterie, food on a train, buffalo burgers, a run at Bison Bourguignon and a sighting each of a bat, a mountain goat and a bear.

Like I said, quite a trip.

Then I came home to a day of work followed by no work at all. The day after my vacation I was let go from my job. Riding down the Embarcadero on my bike, I felt little more than relief. I was free. Free from anxiety about my job coming to an end. Free from trying to muster true passion and enthusiasm for video games. Free from the four lunch places in a two-block radius I’d been lunching for nearly two years.

I went home and immediately fixed myself a lunch of Prather Ranch steak and Yukon Gold mashed potatoes. And I haven’t stopped cooking since.

In addition to taking up racquetball and compulsive craigslist searching, being unemployed has also put me in the kitchen a lot more. Last Friday’s lunch was a kick-ass Patty Melt with carmelized onions, Everett & Jones BBQ sauce on Langer’s rye. Earlier in the week was a salad of Little Gems, strawberries, basil and burratta. And I’m finally indulging my pizza impulses and I’m doing it from scratch. Bagels are next up on my list.

But it’s not just my kitchen I’ve been spending time in. A friend asked me to help in her’s catering a wedding reception. I had the opportunity to be behind-the-scenes cracking eggs and washing dishes for another friend’s pop-up Izakaya. I was on my feet for 10 hours at a clip and it was great. I liked the sound and movement of the kitchen. The instant comraderie. The buzz at the end of the night that kept me up past my bedtime. And I wasn’t even really cooking.

So I think it’s time for a change. To step away from the day job and into a different one. To indulge my indulgences. To see if I can make it in the food world. Because there’s a reason I end up talking about chocolate stores at job interviews. Or why when someone asks what I did over the weekend I end up detailing my meals. Or why I will always find myself in the kitchen, no matter the occaision.

I figure I’ve got a little bit of time to see how this can go. To do what I did when I got into advertising. Talk to anyone and everyone about the industry and how they got their start. To read and write and meet people and get into any kitchen that will let me. I’ll volunteer at soup kitchens and network for catering gigs. To cook every damn meal and subject the contents of my fridge to all kinds of knifework drills. My apologies in advance, carrots.

I’m excited and nervous. I’m anxious for all kinds of reasons, good and bad. Wondering what path I’ll find, what flavors I’ll discover, how I’m going to pay rent. It’s all exciting and scary at the same time, which is a pretty fun thing to feel. Wish me luck, and if you know of anyone looking for help in the kitchen, get in touch. Seriously. I could use the experience.

Thursday Sweets!

It’s Thursday, which means for no apparent reason, it’s another installment of Fun with New Candy. Instead of taking the Walgreen’s route, I decided to class things up a bit and tag along with some of the work crew over to RJ’s, a fancy little market tucked somewhere between Secret Deli (aka Paul’s) and just before the Stairs of Doom (aka Coit Tower stairs, which I subject myself to running up and down [and up and down] once a week or so).

The market is slightly on the expensive side, and I’ve usually hit my lunch-spending limit with fun bottled sodas and exciting chips long before I make it to the check-out line. Unfortunately, that’s where all the candy is. Last time I was there, I spotted these little guys hanging out by the register, but thought the better of picking them up.

But today, with lunch taken care of and impulse control waning I went for it.
Back at my desk, I took a good look at the packaging. Simple and clean, old-timey and brisk. It had a lot of good going for it, beyond the little bricks of brittle inside. There were a lot of good words huddled together: chocolate, dark chocolate, peanut brittle, bites. But what was lurking under that price tag? Something Nutty.

Oh. Coco Nutty. I see what you did there. Food pun. Great. And somehow, even though I could clearly see the candy through the viewpane, I hadn’t registered the coconut bit. Sometimes I’m not good with details.

Unwavered by a momentary onset of anticipatory disappointment in the brand, I soldiered on and opened the box.
And look! No extra packaging. I like that. Open a box and get right to the food. Simple. Ok, Jer, you’ve redeemed yourself.

While flakes of coconut fell to my desk like Ally Sheedy’s dandruff in The Breakfast Club, I took my first bite. A good thick robing of dark chocolate gave way to a solid piece of peanut brittle, though I’d be inclined to call it more toffee-like composition. Lotsa sugar, not a lot of nuts. And true to the name, it was a little brittle, to the point I was worried for future dentist visits and that my coworkers think I might be snacking on rocks.

Though I only intended to have one (as I haven’t actually made it up the Stairs of Doom this week yet), but as the day continued on I found myself opening up the box three more times until all the bites had been bitten and my desk was littered with coconut.

I turned over the empty box to see what else this Jer character offers, and was again disappointed to find that all four of the candies in his collection of flavors are rife with food punnery, but if I find myself at RJ’s with an extra $3 to throw down, I might just throw it his way.

Against the Grain: Kasha

I’ve had this book on my desk at the office for awhile, and when people see it, they think it’s a joke. And by all means, it should be. The cover, the way the author suggestively, yet goofily samples the dish in front of her, though the presented chicken legs surrounding a floating island of rice doesn’t seem to have any room for her food prop. They ask if I won it on ebay, or had it shipped from 1972 (copyright is 1981, as it happens) or if I’m planning an ironic retro cocktail party.
None of this is the case.

I then ask them to pick it up, flip the pages, and let it fall naturally to an open page. What they’ll find is one of the first meals I ever cooked on my own. At 13, armed with the knowledge of how to read a recipe and how to send my mom off with a shopping list, I tackled the “Special but Inexpensive Dinner for Three” that spans pages 93-95. I think it might have been for her birthday.

Somewhere in my how-to-cook education, I read somewhere that a good cook should have battered cookbooks, that they should have food splattered on them, that they should have notes in the margins. This is why I made a note to myself to “cut oranges in 1 more section than said,” so when I made this Special Dinner again in the future, I’d know better.

Though I haven’t felt compelled to make the Orange Chicken again (and looking at the recipe, I can see why) the Kasha Pilaf is something I come to time and time again. I have kasha kicks throughout the year. I made huge batches of it in High School, so there’d be enough for me and enough for Gary to poach some (whole grains!). It served me well on a student’s budget in college and a Bay Area resident’s budget now. And when I lived in Russia, I found comfort in the familiar grain. In fact, my host mother was a pretty awful cook, and though she always offered more, the only thing I’d take her up on was some kasha for breakfast every day.

And though I’ve made this kasha pilaf a few times a year for the past, say, 15 years, though I’ve pulled the same ingredients out of the pantry and fridge in the same amounts, and though I’ve followed the same steps again and again, something compels me to go over to the shelf and let the book fall open to page 94 before I can begin heating up the pan.

There’s something inherently comforting about the dish, and not just in the final product, but in the preparation. The words are soothing like the repeated words of a children’s book you haven’t read in 20 years. There’s an unexpected poetry in the prose, a rhythm I come to rely on. “Slice celery thinly. Chop onion coarsely.” Though the other measurements are inexact, I always make sure the ratio of kasha to broth is just right, and I’ve never understood why the author went to the trouble to implore us to spoon off one teaspoon of the beaten egg, like that extra bit would somehow ruin the pilaf.

Though I’m trying a lot of new things in the Great Grain Experiment of 2009, it’s nice to know I’m not in entirely new territory, that I’ve been down the dark path of grains before, and that year after year, it leads me to this page, to this old world taste. To comfort and familiar. To a warm bowl of kasha pilaf.

Against the Grain: Quinoa

The more I delve into this wide world of grains, the more I’m finding a disconcerting trend in the recipes I find. While one might conventionally praise an ingredient for its taste, how it can balance a dish, even for its luscious texture, grains are often lauded for something entirely different. Their nutritional benefit. I haven’t found this to be true with any grain more so than with quinoa.

Did you know it’s the perfect protein? It’s got vitamins in it! Oh, the fiber, my god the fiber!

Great. It’s good for me. So is most everything else I eat after I swore off HFCS and got into my CSA. And if it’s something that’s not ‘good for me’ in a conventional sense, like, say, a bacon cheeseburger from Taylor’s Automatic Refresher, I assure you, it’s good for me in a whole host of other ways. I’m much better for having eaten that burger.

Right, so quinoa. It’s good for me. Solid. What else does it do?
Well, unlike the treacherous wheatberries, quinoa kinda rocks. Preparation is impossibly easy. It’s like slow couscous. 15 minutes of a slow simmer and it’s done. And there you have it, a blank good-for-you canvas that, supposedly is good for just about anything.

I gave it a trial run mixed in with some sautéed leeks, peas and langoustines, which, in all fairness, was such a killer combination, it’d be hard for any grain to fail. Still, quinoa held up, balancing the buttery leeks and shellfish with an earthiness that didn’t get in the way. They’ve got this fun little snap to them too. A texture that is, dare I say, cravable.


Sunday I was off to see Wilco at the Greek in Berkeley, and in an effort to contribute to the picnic and bring some whole grains into the picture, I sautéed some shallots with prosciutto and peas and incorporated the quinoa. Again, success. While in my distracted state I might have over-seasoned, co-workers dug into my leftovers Monday offering, “There is nothing not great about this.”

Nice to hear.

Getting home late on Tuesday, I was not in the mood to cook. It happens. I was a stone’s throw away from ordering thai, but, remembering my commitment to the granular cause, I fired up some quinoa instead. One of my favorite weeknight dishes is sautéed cauliflower with bread crumbs and a little pancetta over oreciette. Something about the redundant whiteness of the dish makes it seem perfectly indulgent, even though cauliflower delivers vitamins and fiber like any other veggie. So, ditching the pasta I subbed quinoa and it totally worked. Dare I say, it was better. I finally get this whole ‘heartiness’ thing everyone’s been touting.

Somewhere between Sunday’s picnic and Tuesday night dinner I realized, save for the porky bits in these dishes, I’m cooking Gary food. Brown food with veggies. Quinoa is working for me, and I managed to finish off the box in a week and change. Unlike, oh, wheatberries, I believe there will be a repeat purchase in my future. Onward, to Barley!

(there were going to be more pictures, really, but I've run into some technological bad luck lately. But I know you don't just come here for the picture, do you.)

Against the Grain: Wheatberries

I didn’t realize what I was signing up for when I picked up some wheatberries. But something about the smugness of the grain vendor at the Temescal Farmer’s Market should have tipped me off. Maybe he was bitter because his stand wasn’t as popular as Prather Ranch or Happy Boy farms, or maybe he was bitter because he had to explain his pricing over and over to each potential customer, or maybe, just maybe he was bitter because he subsists on a diet of whole grains, wheatberries being one of them.

Nevertheless, I took a 2 lb bag to add to my fun purchases (goat feta! Donut peaches! Pluots!) and brought them back home. I put them in the pantry, half-convinced that’s where they were going to stay until I move someday.

But once Sunday dinner decision-time came along and I found myself considering pasta, I knew I’d have to face my own challenge. One new grain a week. So I got to prepping.

Sources conflicted one another on simple prep. Some said they needed a 24 hour soak, some said boil for an hour, my mom said even that was too long. So I decided to follow Alice Water’s advice, and put them in to simmer, then check on them every 20.
About 50 minutes later, the hard berries had softened into something toothy yet palatable. Nutty, earthy and brown. And bland as fuck.


So I turned to my instincts. Started sautéing some onion and garlic in olive oil. Salted, but then saw it would end up not looking too interesting. Threw in some zucchini for color and summery flavor, and then tossed it all together. Not bad looking. But still looking discouragingly like health food.

The goat feta! Genius. Something to brighten it up a bit and adding another element. And it worked. The supple give of the zucchini balanced the starchy berries, the tang of the cheese matched their earthiness. It all worked well. I even brought some the next day for work.


But still, even after using up a full 2-3 cups of cooked wheatberries, I still had a cup or two to deal with. There they were, cold and unfeeling in my fridge. Guilt fuel. They were cooked and waiting and destined to be Tuesday lunch. But what to do with them cold? My CSA had saddled me with a whole lot of green beans, so I got to steaming some of those, put together a simple dressing of lemon juice and olive oil, and crumbled some more goat cheese for flavor. Because god knows, these little guys would need flavor.

Come lunchtime, with tempting offers of walks to the deli for Tuna Melts or Chicken Sandwiches, I stood firm and mixed up my lunch. Berries and beans met dressing and cheese.

I’m no stranger to failure, and while I wouldn’t call what I threw together an out-and-out disaster, it wouldn’t be something I would make again. It tasted just like what I feared whole grains would taste like- healthy. Good-for-you. And not in a fun way. Like, I’m on a low-sodium diet, I need to eat this food or they’re going to start amputating limbs kind of way. Gary would love it.



I’m not totally giving up on wheatberries. I think the next batch might find their way into baked goods, once I’m ready to venture there. But for right now, I’m glad to move on to another grain. Next up? Quinoa.