Add a grilled chicken or steak for protein.

For an extra cool twist I like to slice green beans thin at a perpendicular angle so they are more tender. Cut corn right off the cob so the pieces stick together and form chunks. Green tomatoes can also add a nice crunch to your mix.

Soon I was in the kitchen, on the line with my new coworkers. Three pantry cooks, me, Gerald and Armeda, the saucier Jose, the rostier Deana, and Bernard the entremet. Along with a floater, Louise. The cook training me was Gerald. He was a British Guiana immigrant. He had a sort of Jamaican/ Spanish accent. He was knowledgeable, but it soon became clear to me he wasn’t a classically trained chef. So he would value work over knowledge.

When I meet aggressive people I  give a nervous first impression. But I work hard and that impression whether it lasts or not soon is disregarded. But for now I remember Gerald turning to Charlie when he got frustrated with my clumsiness, and saying “where’d you get this guy?” But Charlie was alert to my performance and he said confidently “Don’t worry bro he’s gonna be good, I can tell”  Gerald was looking for a worker. Charlie saw the big picture, luckily for me,  and saw me as his new apprentice whom he could teach everything and which incidentally (I learned years later) makes his life a little easier.  One of the jobs of a chef is to teach. You must pass on the finesse it takes to make beautiful, tasty food. While learning and doing this you are sort of doing the chefs job.

Gerald Got to like my work ethic regardless of our obviously different personalities. We got along fairly well, as long as I was cool with him being the boss, or as I saw it the senior cook. Because that was ALL he was. I mean, we were both working in the pantry station. The lowest of the line cooks. The only thing less admired was a salad girl (as we called it back then) or a prep cook down in banquets.
I can’t remember if it was the second or maybe third day. Charlie was supervising my training with Gerald, and he decided to start giving me a hard time to see what kind of metal I was made of. To a chef there is no greater trainee than an Intern or strait out of school cook. They are eager to work and make a living, eager to learn new things and awed by the vast knowledge of a well traveled chef. Charlie was putting on the pressure! “Help Gerald finish his Mis en Place! Make carrot juice for the entremets special! hurry and Peel thirty pounds of Steamed shrimp!  You need to clean your station!  Hurry up and finish the shrimp because I’ve got some work to do in the butchers shop and yooouur helping me!” This last bit was a treat, he was giving me a nice thing. He was going to show me how and then let me butcher some fresh fish with him. Maybe something cool like Dover Sole or even Abalone.

Gerald all this time is getting pissed off. He has finally got a new cook to train and Charlie has taken me away to do HIS job. Me, I was thrilled! I was busy and tired but learning and absorbing a lot and doing what I know which was cooking. “So you think your gonna come out of school and be a chef huh? You think you can walk in here and be the man? Your just a Pussy arse! You ready for the real world?” “Yeah Chef!” This is how you anwser. I would smile and go faster because I knew this is how Charlie gets going. He was a great chef but he was very excitable. He would get going and not be able to stop. Most Chefs are this way. There is a lot of pressure and a need for urgency when you dealing with hungry guests and hot food that needs to be served. It takes a lot of steps to do this and there are a lot of different personalities in a restaurant. A Chef must control them all to achieve a well run kitchen. Back then and there that was how it was done.

Charlie was famous for being an arrogant ass whom would not admit a flaw or mistake ever occurred. He was rude “Here you! Is this  your first day?”  I remember one day leaving the butcher shop, he had me cornered, and was going on about porch monkeys and Hitler and bitches. I think he thought since I was a white boy from Maryland I was a farmer or something. He would often call me a farmer when I did something that looked sloppy.

I can understand where Charlie came from,  I know why he acted this way. The Executive Chef, Chef Doug McNeil was an Old School chef from Scotland and just as hard and mean. A monster even. But a master at the craft. Once Charlie told us of a Christmas Eve where the chef had screamed at him all night. Charlie really got it good and he left without telling the chef Merry Christmas.

I myself had a Thanks giving Day with the Chef. One of my first Holidays at The Four Seasons. The Chef called Charlie and told him to send down a case of Anjou Pears. So guess who went down to the Banquet kitchen? I got down there and the chef sent the pears back, screaming they were to green. The next case was given to me by receiving and my dumb ass didn’t check it, and it was Bosc Pears. Charlie was running down the hall ( the chef had called upstairs and screamed at him) with my third case to meet me ” I thought he said they were the wrong kind. I can’t understand the fucker” He had a very heavy accent.

I got in the banquet kitchen with the case of pears and set it by the chefs table for him and turned to head out. But when I turned around  ” Here! where are you going! Do I look like a pear pealer to you? Hey Chef Richard Do I look like I peel pairs for a living?” ” No Chef ” with a smile. I turned around and the chef calmly turns to me gets me a Chinese mandoline and calmly shows me how he wants the pairs done, half peeled and jullienne and half jullienned with the peels on. I set to work “no problem Chef” knowing that upstairs Gerald is waiting and I’m supposed to be helping prepare and set up for what could be one of the most important and busiest nights of the year.

I however was in heaven as far as cooks go. I was working one on one with THE chef. On his specials for tonight, Thanksgiving! Upstairs they knew there was nothing they could do. I was called by the chef and one thing the chef had taught them was to always be prepared for a wrench in the plan.

That was how it went for about two more years, until I finally got out from under the new guy stigma. There was plenty of new people after that and I was expected to do my job with no oversight needed. I had been trained in the ways of Chef McNeils kitchen and I should be able to handle anything. That’s the thing. I worked for two Monsters. I could have left. I tried to leave many times in my four year span there. Nothing seemed to be as good as The Four Seasons. There were other big time restaurants in town. I didn’t want to go to another place where I’d have to prove my self to a bunch of egotistical artists again. I felt I had done some good time and I wanted to be a big part of a sucessful team. Not just another New Guy.

First. Eating Local, Support local businesses, farms, stores, well anything. Stop shipping everything from other places far away that takes all sorts of resources to get it here. And for what? So we can have kiwi whenever we get the urge? Half the time it’s not even good anymore, it’s out of season and doesn’t really taste good anyway.  Eat seasonally and that won’t be an issue. Just be happy basically with what you got. Once the majority of civilization has stopped shipping all the BS we can go back to importing some specialties that will actually be special again.

Second, Going organic. To me this means a combination of going back to the old methods that worked and using some new technology that has been proven to work. I don’t like the idea of pushing Genetically Modified Crops until they have had a proven history of being sustainable and non-evasiveness. I think that instead of planting a ton of one crop that needs an over abundance of water and fertilizer. We plant smaller crops in different areas with a more diverse mix so farmers  could stick to what works locally and go to old methods like manure mixtures for fertilizer. Farmers could expand to more areas of farming like live stock. flowers, trees, some exotics that work locally, etc. Raising animals in a more organic, humane, environment. There they can develope immunity to natural infection and grow strong and lean. Build green houses with warm whether plants.   It’s hard to tell a farmer who’s making money to not plant or expand. They do however need the support of local people, restaurants, etc.

Third, people have to realize this is good for us. One of the greatest things is waiting for and then making a winter root veg soup, braised bitter greens or cooking a duck with cranberry cream sauce. Then in Spring some fresh peas and morels in a garlicky pasta followed by a Summer tomato basil salad with fresh and I mean fresh mozzarella. That’s  good stuff.

Communities may move toward (as they already have) a more localized economy. A place were one can work, live, eat, play and recreate.

But I have a concern. I have noticed in the past year or so since the election. When I have really been reading and studying current affairs. There is a call to the old values of the past. A return to the simple practices of the days when America lived in small towns with lots of family, friends, small businesses and good futures. You know “Mayberry”

Well the problem is that is not reality. There never was a Mayberry and there certainly won’t be again. Except maybe one created by a wealthy developer, which I’m certain would be contrived and almost Step ford like.

This belief leaves out the fact that there is a big world full of different people out there. Not to mention that the previous yearning probably is basically an old white mans dream. There are many different people and religions in the world. There are, regardless of religion, many different cultures and ways of living. To some of these reg’ ler Americans mere difference in dress is a major turn off that would cause separation just because they would not understand the need to dress different. “When that’s how everybody else dresses so why can’t you”

But we need to remember one thing. We invited all these people here.

We said send your tired, your hungry, your poor. We didn’t say send your strong, well raised kids whom have been taught proper American manners. We invited them. So they are here. They need our resources. The ones Americans fought hard for. To make a great country that will support a free people that can flourish and grow.

My point is I think it is important to keep your core values. America is probably one of the best places to be free. But we must remember that it was started by immigrants. Not Hollywood.

On reg’ ler Americans.

One of the first permanent buildings built in the new world was Harvard University. Why, because our founders wanted Education to be the most important thing we could do for our children. Then we were farmers. The new world needed food and there was plenty of land for it. So we taught and we learned and we reaped harvests. Sounds pretty good to me. But one thing I have always tried to remember as an employee is to not get jealous at the ones who are not at the hoe. They may have soft hands but somebody has to write the records and teach the kids and learn medicine so we can continue our work. I may be a worker now but I will mature, and one day I will be an old white man who wants respect too. But hopefully I will have lived a decent life worthy of adoration of others about me.

Next, Food Evolution.

So what I’m saying is I like arugula, a lot. I am also a bleeding heart liberal who eats good food. So not only am I growing lots of Arugula and other herbs, vegetables and flowers. But I am doing it for  definite symbolic  purpose. Not only is it Arugula but it is a two dollar and fifty cent Heirloom, Organic, heritage seeds saved and sold to me in a recyclable resealable bag from a farmers co-op near me in Frederick MD. So, put that in your salad spinner. mmm! I love freedom.

Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his antique commode?

(Now I get why a $400 payment I recently sent to pay off my Citibank Visa was mistakenly applied to my sister-in-law’s Citibank Mastercard account.)

The “Citiboobs” — as The New York Post, which broke the news, calls them — watched as the car chieftains got in trouble for flying their private jets to Washington to ask for bailouts, and the A.I.G. moguls got dragged before Congress for spending their bailout on California spa treatments. But the boobs still didn’t get the message.

The former masters of the universe don’t seem to fully comprehend that their universe has crumbled and, thanks to them, so has ours. Real people are losing real jobs at Caterpillar, Home Depot and Sprint Nextel; these and other companies announced on Monday that they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as consumer confidence and home prices swan-dived.

Prodded by an appalled Senator Carl Levin, Tim Geithner — even as he was being confirmed as Treasury secretary — directed Treasury officials to call the Citiboobs and tell them the new jet would not fly.

“They woke up pretty quickly,” says a Treasury official, adding that they protested for a bit. “Six months ago, they would have kept the plane and flown it to Washington.”

Senator Levin said that the financiers will not be able to change their warped mentality, but will have to be reined in by Geithner’s new leashes. “I have no confidence that they intend or desire to change,” Levin told me. “These bankers got away with murder, and it’s obscene that close to nothing is being asked of financial institutions. I get incensed at the thought that a bank that’s getting billions of dollars in taxpayer money is out there buying fancy new airplanes.”

New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, always gratifying on the issue of clawing back money from the greedy creeps on Wall Street, on Tuesday subpoenaed Thain, the former Merrill Lynch chief executive, over $4 billion in bonuses he handed out as the failing firm was bought by Bank of America.

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on CNBC, Thain used the specious, contemptible reasoning that other executives use to rationalize why they’re keeping their bonuses as profits are plunging.

“If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise” and they’ll go elsewhere, he said.

Hello? They destroyed the franchise. Let’s call their bluff. Let’s see what a great job market it is for the geniuses of capitalism who lost $15 billion in three months and helped usher in socialism.

Bartiromo also asked Thain to explain, when jobs and salaries were being cut at his firm, how he could justify spending $1 million to renovate his office. As The Daily Beast and CNBC reported, big-ticket items included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a “Roman Shade” for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a “custom coffee table” for $16,000, an antique commode “on legs” for $35,000, and a $1,400 “parchment waste can.”

Does that mean you can only throw used parchment in it or is it made of parchment? It’s psychopathic to spend a million redoing your office when the folks outside it are losing jobs, homes, pensions and savings.

Thain should never rise above the level of stocking the money in A.T.M.’s again. Just think: This guy could well have been Treasury secretary if John McCain had won.

Bartiromo pressed: What was wrong with the office of his predecessor, Stanley O’Neal?

“Well — his office was very different — than — the — the general décor of — Merrill’s offices,” Thain replied. “It really would have been — very difficult — for — me to use it in the form that it was in.”

Did it have a desk and a phone?

How are these ruthless, careless ghouls who murdered the economy still walking around (not to mention that sociopathic sadist Bernie Madoff?) — and not as perps?

Bring on the shackles. Let the show trials begin.

Thanks for noticing

HOO MFKN RAY!

2# beef chuck or semi tough cut

1 cup each onions, carrots, celery, red potatoes

1 cup quartered white mushrooms ( my fav)

1 cup whole pealed tomatoes

1 cup merlot

1 to 2 tablespoons Kosher salt

2 tablespoons chopped rosemary

2+2 tablespoons blended oil

2 cups water

Its best to use a big braising pan or large saute pan with a thick bottom and a lid. I don’t like my large pot because it doesn’t have the surface area to brown the meat well, and sweat the veg without turning it to a soup prematurely. Dice all the veg in large pieces about the size of a nickel or quarter if you dare. Get pan hot almost to smoking and add oil. Dice meat removing excess fat or gristle.  Season with salt and fresh cracked pepper. Always use good salt and fresh cracked peppercorns. Add to pan and brown quickly on high temp. Remove from the pan and drain. In same pan sweat all the onions, celery and carrots with the oil at a medium heat until fragrant and half tender. Add the red wine to clean the bottom of the pan. Add all remaining ingredients and mix well. Put a lid on the pan and cook on low for two to three hours or until veg and meat are tender. Take a nap while you wait. When done mix again and it will probably thicken from the potatoes and other carbs inside. Check seasoning.

Serve hot with your favorite fresh baked hard bread.

A great variation is to keep out the red potatoes and serve the soup with fresh mashed potatoes on top in the bowl. Garnish with a big sprig of rosemary in the middle of the bowl.

Grab a glass of the Merlot you have left and enjoy!!!

I rarely say things in letters but I’m going crazy! What the F is Wall Street doing!? I’ve heard and would agree that Guantanamo Bay Penitentiary should be emptied of Terrorists and filled with CEO’s! Just think if That Duesch bag from Meriyl lynch (who cares if it’s spelled right, whats the point) had spent his time only redecorating instead of running the company he would have SAVED them money.  85% of the people in charge of destroying our economy are still in the senior rolls of all those companies. OMG I can’t stand it, there I go again!!

On a more positive note. Obama a Democrat is president. At least some of the values I believe in are represented now. I have been following and reveling in the changes Obama’s been making through Executive orders.

Close Gitmo

No torture

Putting science before crazy religious based policy (hoo MFKN ray)

Easier to sue corporations for unequal pay ( then pay equal pay)

Programs who allow age appropriate  abortion support are getting funds

Freeing of the Department of everything from incompetent management

Now can we get some inexpensive solar panels on our roofs? I mean this doesn’t sound like rocket science to me. Wind turbines anyone.