Entry 009 I'm Here To Taste the Soup

I once had a chef who quoted an old salt he worked with in a previous catering kitchen. The old salt would mutter in his brogue, "This caterin', tis a whole heap of trouble." Ours is a gypsy's life. We have to act fast, re-act fast and transform to fit the situation. Client tastings are an example signaling we are a special kind of retailer. Clients sample our wares.  We create representations of what things will look like.  Say Mrs. GotRocks wants a taste menu for her Pockets of Seattle Wealth Necklacing the Coastlines of Seattle  (PSWNCP) Holiday Party. Absolutely, our pleasure. Actually, it is pleasurable for us.  Cynthia, our sales manager leads the tasting from the front of house side. Clients love her. Really, they LOVE her. She listens, she calms, she negotiates, sometimes she calms some more and lastly, she promises.  Chef Pidor rolls her eyes over the more esoteric menu items we have pulled from our you know whatsits. But then she whips out enticing small plates of pure style that leads to some serious lip smackin'.

Table for one?

I did a tasting on Friday for a very nice lady doing her first fund raising dinner. First fundraiser for the group as well.  Her group has a great keynoter, Rick Steves of travel fame and a great award recipient, Bill Gates Sr. These two should bring in interested guests. Not only is it the first event for the group but they have a first time event budget. Low. Low even for non-profit. Cynthia listened and calmed and now we are at the tasting step in which I am starring. The idea Cynthia created was a robust vegetarian soup as entree. Elegant salad, table shared cheese board, some nice chewy bread polished off with a wine poached apple in rum caramel sauce.  Affordable. Different. Brilliant.

African Squash Soup with plantain crisp garnish

pumpkin seeds, lime and cilantro for soup garnish

  Chef rolls in 35 minutes before the client is due. I have raised the DEFCON level from green to blue.


 

But Chef is not sweating it. She empties her shopping bags at her station and begins her mojo. She peels the squash for the soup, an apple for the dessert and a pear as well. I do not ask her about the pear. I do not bother her at all. I only take instruction. I get the table ready, flowers, linens place settings, ice water. Chef begins to whip the ingredients in almost a blur. She is like some Sorcerer's Apprentice with all this food flying in the air round her head, round the pots on the stove. Cubes of squash, plantains, bananas, pear, apple, rum, butter, wine, coriander, coconut, spiced nuts, greens, stone fruit for the salad, limes, fresh cilantro, toasted pumpkin nuts....all dancing

Cheese Plate with nuts and fruit

Dessert

All of it whirls around her head then separates, pulls out of the whirlwind to make perfect landings on perfect white
dishes. It is exactly 2 minutes after the appointed time and everything is ready and waiting.  I go back to Green on DEFCON. We wait for the client. Now its 10 after. Now 15 minutes late. I consider raising DEFCON to blue again but that is useless, because DEFCON is only for things we can control. Twenty minutes late and the chef is making guttural noises. I call Client. I get her 92 year old mother who is suspicious of me. I finally convince her I really have legit business with her daughter and Mother informs me Client is enroute.

Client appears.  There is supposed to be a second Client, but she is a no-show. Client is nervous and a little overwhelmed over the details of her event and she is having little Aunt PittyPat moments. She is utterly charming. I use Cynthia's technique of assurances and send out calming vibes to Client. Client sees beautiful food and exhales deeply. She is relaxing.  Chef is all smiles and helps me welcome Client. Chef explains food details and points out that apples do not poach well as they fall apart when peeled. Of course she knew this and that is why she poached the pear as well. Chef rolls her eyes at me and gives me one of her glances telling me that once again she has seamlessly compensated for my graceless ignorance.  At this moment, I love being a Caterer. Client coos over soup, wants pictures so Chef prepares new bowl of soup for some quick shots from my iPhone.
Client pulls out a little tupperware container and wants to know if she can have the rest of the soup for her 92 year old Mother. Chef fills the container. You can see the container in the upper left part of the first picture.  We also pack up some salad and pack off the Client. She is very happy. Sorry about the second Client no-show and she will try and find out what happened.
And that is how tastings work.

24 hours later,  the Chef is in the kitchen working mojo over a dinner party for that night when a tiny little voice says: "Hello, I'm here to taste the soup."

Entry 008 I Don't Care What I Weigh Today

I didn't weigh myself today. 2 days ago I went 'shrooming with my buddies Mel and Kathie. Last night I fixed a 2 inch thick bone-in steak and about a pound of chanterelles. With butter. Sorry Doc. Not going to have mushrooms I harvested myself with 2 squirts of aerosoled canola oil. Then I had 2 yogurts instead of one. I don't think I went backwards on the scale, but I took a holiday. 24 pounds is a milestone. And in 31 days. May I just say YAHOO!! I am more active now. Went to the gym twice this week, planted 12 twelve foot evergreens in the upper pasture, walked up the stairs at work, ( I still hate doing that) went 'shrooming for 4 hours, all on foot and went for walks on all the other days.

The 'shrooming was a lot of fun. We bundled in my truck and bounced along dirt roads not too far from Mel's house. We took the dogs, Luc, the Catering Poodle and his sister Monaco. I think they had the best time. While we were foraging in and around fallen trees, thick ferns and mossy overgrowth, they were racing back and forth between the three of us. We stopped for some chicken strips I had grilled at home, some boiled eggs Kathie had made and some fabulous refrigerator pickles my co-worker had put up for me. Food after hard work is really more toothsome.

Mel is dreaming of sauteéd chaterelles in butter.

Mel mocks me because her harvest  is much bigger than mine.

A little socialism at work. Divide the spoils.

My buddy Kathie, mother to Monaco

Kathie had the biggest haul and the agreement is no sharing the spoils. I never heard of this rule, but Kathie said it was Mel's idea from the first trip that I was not on. I think she made it up but I am all good with that. These little fungi are very important to us here in the Great Pacific Northwest.

Kathie's haul.

Besides the mushrooms, I cooked up a slather of sweet onions. NO butter.

I am a huge fan of grilling. I cook outside all year round and this diet plan really lends itself to that. Now grilling is not to be confused with barbecue. Q is something done over very low, removed heat for many hours. It renders the meat to a state of "fall apart." It is harder to find good barbecue out of the South. Sorry. Its just that way.  Grilling is the often male method of rapid cooking over high heat. I have a three burner, with rotisserie, side infrared plate, a very hot searing burner and side burner for things like mushrooms and onions. It is my Cadillac. Gotta go. Have some sea scallops that need grilling.

Entry 007 NewbieTalk

My buddy Jackson is taking the plunge and has bought his Magical Oat Bran, settled on his True Weight and has pushed off. You can see Jackson's shining face under the Followers section of this blog. Jackson travels a lot. I mean, A LOT! His Regime Dukan is going to have to take some planning since he will be eating in restaurants for many meals. Luckily he is home for the first two weeks and can settle into a routine. That routine was important to me. Its when I get out there without a plan, no saddle bag full of protein, that things get edgy and a bag of potato chips looks stunning. I once had a spasm driving when I was hungry and saw a neon pizza. Yup. Just the glowing circle shape and the flashing word "pizza" overloaded my brain. Just for a split second.

So Jackson, bon chance, mon ami. For me, no substitutions and no expanding the rules worked best for the first month. Your brain is going to argue about details but if you follow the Doc's outline, you can't go wrong. The most significant advice I can give you is to not pay attention to portion sizes the first month. Use the free rein you have to eat all you want. It really compensates for all the things you cannot have. Like good baguette and great red wine. Merde. I would eat as much as 14 oz of beef at a sitting with some horseradish then be back slicing off more in an hour. Also, keep plenty of cooked meat nearby. Stash it under rocks, put it in the bonnet of your speedy auto, throw out the contents of your shaving kit and fill it with cooked meat. You'll look great with a beard. (here is said speedy auto starring Monaco, sister to Luc, the Catering Poodle)

Love and shower with praise your wife and partner in this, the lady Kathie.  She is going to keep you supplied and coached.  She is chapters ahead of you in the book of Dukan.  But don't follow her advice about portion sizes if you don't want to. I ate all I wanted in the first month. You know how much that can be as you have seen me eat dim sum and sushi. As of today, 1 month, I have lost 24 pounds.

entry 006 Routines

My cats like routine. If the food bowl has less than 50 tidbits of kibble in it, Little Timida (spanish for timid) sounds the alert. She talks, squawks, and all but points at the bowl "come on gato gordo, it's not like you are refraining from feeding yourself! Get with it, take the bowl and fill it up. NOW. Same goes for the water and the winter litterbox. (Until I light fires in the woodstove, they come and go through an open window in the laundryroom/cattery.) She likes a full bowl or food and water and she likes her litter box clean.

Her best friend, Wally lets her do the negotiating even though he is always the first one to the food bowl. Wally really is the gato gordo (fat cat) but he is too lazy to manage me. He lets Timida do it. So this is their routine around food. I try and imagine how many 25 pound bags of kibble they have gone through on the 4 years I got them at the Used Kitty Lot. I can't even guess. But bowl by bowl, Timida has put out the cry, I have filled the bowl and Wally is the first to eat. Even if he has just eaten, if I fill the bowl, Wally will check out the new stuff. Wally and I are foodies. Well, I just looked it up in Wikipedia. I guess we aren't foodies Wally. "foodies want to learn everything about food, both the best and the ordinary, and about the science, industry, and personalities surrounding food." Being a caterer, I am very interested in food, and I do like both the best and the ordinary, but I'm not always on about it. you know what I mean? I think Wally and I just big eaters. We can pack it away. That is why this diet works for me. I never have to be hungry. I don't like to be hungry. I rarely wait until I am hungry before I eat.


So like the cats, I like routines but only here and there. Most times, I am more comfortable rambling along in my little world, dealing with what comes up, taking it as it comes. But in the morning, I like routine. I wake up at 7 every morning, jump out of bed. I never set the alarm. Well if I have to be up for an early breakfast gig, say 5:00 AM or before, I will set the alarm. But 9 out of 10 times I wake between 12 and 4 minutes before the alarm fires. Can't say why. But anyway, come morning, I don't want to have to figure much out. I want to travel well worn paths, padding along until I am in the car and turn on my "Things You Should Know" podcast.

I fill up my super red electric tea kettle and let her rip. I just found out about the beauty of these devices. They are quick, they shut off when done and don't whistle or carry on. They do not boil their guts out and lose half the water. They just do their job and sit in silence. No attitude. Perfect for my morning.

Now with this full kettle of boiling water I fill my coffee press 2/3 full after I have put in 2 scoops of Tony's organic shade grown coffee. (I have the same press as my buddies Kathie and Jackson, thanks for the idea guys)

I then take a pan down from the rack and pour 3 inches of boiling water in it and set it on the burner. I turn it on high. I get 2 eggs out of the fridge and put them in a small bowl and run very hot tap water on them. Warming them up for a few seconds means they will not crack when I spoon them into the boiling water. The water takes less than 2 minutes to return to full boil. Perfect timing. At the same time I put the water in the egg pot, I put in a scant half cup of kettle water in another pan. This is for my oatmeal. Really it is the Magical Oat Bran insisted upon my my guru Doc Dukan. He wants me to make galettes or crusty little cakes like he does. Let's see if I do. I'm going to be eating this Magical Oat Bran for the rest of my life so I ain't gonna say never on the galettes.  But I am not there yet.
Ok, so back to my routine. Sorry about that. I fire up the oatmeal water which takes less time than the egg water. I throw in 3 tablespoons of the Magical Oat Bran. Now I am only supposed to be eating 2 tablespoons in this phase, but I am not being willful or cheating. I just cannot get 2 measured out easily. I use a scant quarter cup of MOB and a scant half cup of water and the result is perfect. As soon as I put the MOB in the water, I take it off the heat. It does its own thing. Meanwhile, I take a third cup of non-fat milk and put it into the nuker.

My 3 minute eggs take closer to 5 for that perfect runny yolk but solid albumen state that I like the best. I take the eggs out of the water and put them in hot tap water while I whisk my non-fat milk into froth.  I build my latte. Two squirts of sugar free vanilla latte flavoring, fill 20 oz mug 3/4 full of coffee then dump in non-fat foam. Perfect fake latte. (if you like coffee flavorings, go to a restaurant supply place like Cash and Carry here in Seattle. there is sure to be such a place in your town. They sell 750 ml bottles of about 30 flavors for about one third the price of a much smaller bottle in the regular grocery stores.)

I crack open the top of the shell, scoop out the still very hot egg inside right into the small pan with the Magical Oat Bran. Why waste time putting it into cold ceramic bowl and there isn't that much of it so don't want to leave any in the pan. I salt and pepper and stir together.

Pot and mug in hand, I return upstairs to my library and cruise my internet spots for news headlines. No sense getting dressed to travel the 30 miles to work if Seattle was leveled by Godzilla during the night.

Entry 005 Four Bags Of Sugar

20 Pounds! 9.1 Kilos! I have lost 20 pounds as of this morning. Nice. And ya know, done with very little suffering or pining for things untouchable. I was in a drugstore yesterday rushing around the aisles trying to find a non-food related product when bam! I was confronted with a gigantic wall of chocolate.

I wanted to clutch my chest and fall to my knees...but that thought endured for a mere nano second. Hardly a blip. I scurried away resuming my search for the non-food related object. But it reminds me of how wired I am visually. I bet I could recall maybe 25 or 30 specific kinds of chocolate I recognized in that flash. But I am committed and remain unmoved. I really like this diet because it has very clear parameters. You can have this. You cannot have this. Makes it very easy to stay on course. Plus I have to reiterate that the "eat as much as you want" of the allowed food groups rule is the most satisfying part of Dr. Dukan's plan. If I am constrained by calories, my nefarious brain stem, the reptile part of things that run most of what I do immediately begins to plot and plan for override.  I cheat on myself. But this way I can compensate by volume when the going gets tough. Most times I am content to eat regular portions. But once in a while I feel like packing it in on the level of say Claim Jumpers. Instead of chicken fried steak with a pound of mashers and gravy I get a boggling heap of perfectly seasoned rare lean beef. I'll take it.
Yesterday I problem solved for others, got some business done, met with clients and generally had an easy day. No events and pretty much on my own. Chef was in the kitchen putting about 130 gallons of pancake batter together for the Swedish Center's monthly pancake breakfast. They do this as a fundraiser with an army of volunteers but we support them with professional expertise in ordering, preparing and augmenting their service staff. They will feed from 800 to 1100 people Sunday morning and it takes some organizing to get things to flow in a calm and efficient manner. So anyway, at the end of the day after a very busy September I treated myself to a long massage session. Then I headed over to my friends Kathie and Jackson's house for dinner. They possess the darling Monaco, who is half sister to Luc, the catering poodle. Kathie often keeps Luc during the day and the two pups do their best to wear each other out. A good thing. I had some flank steak marinating at work. I bought a bulk amount at Cash and Carry. I think it was 5 pieces, around 9 pounds total.  We have an inside grill top at work and it is very easy to flop one on the hot grates and get delicious meat in just a few minutes. Flank steak and its cousin skirt steak are desirable for flavor, not so much tenderness. That is why you have to either cook it very quickly to a medium to rare or you cook it slow and low for a long time. This breaks down the tough membranes and renders it to a tender state. I prefer the rare method. I cook one off at work, carve it up and the kitchen lions gather with me and we all stand around, slip steaming slices of rare beef down our gullets and gossip or laugh. This is my idea of team building.
We also do these wonderful antipasto platters with all kinds of sliced sausages, olives, some goat cheeses and these fantastic oven blasted vegetables. There was part of one left over from a party the night before and I got it out since this is a protein and vegetable day. I could not have the olives or meats but I could have the vegetables. So I set it out and had a few veggies. Then the Chef and I both started in and soon there was not enough for dinner. Now comes the fantastic part of being me. We just grabbed a bunch more fresh veggies from the walk-in reefer and sliced it all up. Tomatoes, asparagus, sweet peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, yellow squash all marinated in balsamic vinegar, a splash of canola oil and heaps of seasonings. Chef threw it on a large baking pan and into a very hot oven. The high heat caramelizes the veggies and creates a bounty of very wonderful tastes. To reach the sublime, she also cut up some leeks and no less than three cups of peeled garlic. These are roasted for a longer period of time. There is nothing better than spearing three or four cloves of oven roasted garlic on your fork and tossing it back. I give no thought to bad breath.
So I bring these veggies and my raw marinated meat to our small dinner party. Jackson and I take the meat out and throw it on a very hot grill, I microwave the veg to just warm and in minutes we are eating a remarkable dinner. One that is part of a weight loss plan. Kathie coos over the whole cloves of garlic, hesitates a little over the breath dilemma and forks a couple down. Breath be damned. I love this diet.
I visualize my weight loss with 5 pound bags of sugar.

So next time you are in the grocery store, go to the baking section and pick up 4 bags of sugar. That is how much weight I am no longer schlepping around. My feet thank me.