the dreaded marigold christmas kitchen party

every year during the week before christmas, i traditionally take the whole kitchen staff out for dinner and a night of festive holiday drinking. this year, we decided instead to have a party at my place. what you see above is a picture of some of my absolute favorite people in the whole world and the reason that i believe that i'm the luckiest chef in cleveland. i consider myself so fortunate to be surrounded by so many great cooks who, even more importantly, are great people and my closest friends. as an extra treat this year, i managed to concoct the deadliest holiday punch of all time. recipe available on request. it went especially well with the keg of great lakes christmas ale. yikes! happy holidays, everyone, and our wishes for a truly fantastic new year.

here comes the flood...

photo and article reprinted from the cleveland plain dealer and cleveland.com

CLEVELAND — A crowd gathered at East 38th Street and Lakeside Avenue this morning. Police and flooded roads kept them from getting to get to work.
Holly Brennan, 23, of Concord Township, is an event planner at Marigold Cafe & Catering. She tried walking across the flooded street and made it only two steps before being forced back.
"I think it's pretty crazy," she said. "It's really making our day pretty behind. We had several events today. We are definitely behind. I'm worried about it. We need food to be delivered in about a half hour."
She had seen a television broadcast about the break, but "I had no idea it would be this bad," she said. "It's very cold and its deep."

just so everyone knows, the follow-up to this story is that we did in fact get all of the food out to our events thanks to a lot of hard work from joan, holly, roseann, mike, gary, and our drivers: brandon, wyatt, allen, and james and everyone lived happily ever after. joan finally made it back to her car somewhere in cleveland. roseann was appointed to head up FEMA by the new administration, mike and gary were signed to a two-man cooking show on wadsworth's public access channel, holly ended up marrying the second fire fighter from the left in the above picture, and the drivers will be working on the next season of discovery channel's storm chasers.

for more flood related fun, video footage, and the full version of holly's big on-camera interview, visit:

http://vimeo.com/2555842

coming this january to an unexpected location near you...

tis the season...

ah yes, the holidays are finally upon us. here at marigold, our elves have already been busy getting ready for all of the wonderfully festive parties that occur around town in the next few weeks. we have one giant weekend of events under our belts and we're looking forward to dropping some more catering magic down our clients' chimneys really soon. the shot at left comes from the galleria this past saturday night. apparently santa was away from his big green chair, so i decided to fill in for him for a minute. ryan's been a good boy all year (more or less) and stopped by to jump somewhat heavily onto my lap....i don't know how santa does it. anyway, i hope that he and all of the other good little boys and girls at marigold get something wonderful under their trees this year and always.

something big is coming soon...

ha! even though no one reads my blog...or at least no one admits to reading my blog, i'm throwing in this teaser post announcing news to come. we've cooked up a really cool idea that's currently taking shape in our evil lair. i'll post more when all of the details are firmed up, but we're calling the idea ben and greg's renegade lunch project and we're incredibly psyched. oh boy, doesn't it just make you wonder?

the boys take on the fabulous food show

so, this past weekend, we somehow ended up doing a couple of things at the fabulous food show. on friday, i got to be a "celebrity" judge for the time warner cable "twc eats" pumpkin recipe cook-off. the winning entries were all wonderful and it was nice to find out that everyone else is still a better baker than i am. on saturday, ryan, mike, and i handed out samples of marigold fare at the taste of the neighborhood booth. we served grilled black bean raviolis with chorizo and cilantro creme fraiche. we also had the good fortune to share the booth with chris, jason, and danny from tremont tap house, one of my favorite bar/restaurants in the city. between the bunch of us, we managed to have a bit too much fun and a couple of beers, but isn't that what this sort of event is all about? well, regardless, that's what it was about for us. apologies to anyone who may have gotten the plates on which i wrote "this is poisoned" or "e.coli rules" before returning them to the pile to be used the next day. like i said, too much fun.

the big apple

in my seemingly neverending quest to pack as much human experience into life as possible, i took the opportunity afforded me by a saturday off from marigold to spend halloween weekend in new york city. to the right you can see the crappy aerial photo of manhattan that i took out of the plane window on the way in. halloween night was a blast in and around time square with everyone (yours truly included) dressed for the holiday and the bars jam-packed with revelers. our hotel had a huge party that went until 4am...i know, i stayed to make sure it was true. : ) saturday meant a long walk up to central park, the metropolitan museum of art, some (very little) shopping on fifth avenue, lunch at bouchon bakery, and a very touching visit to strawberry field, the john lennon memorial in central park. in times like these, it's interesting to think back to a time when someone so famous would put so much of his reputation on the line to support love, peace, and understanding. that night, we went to see mel brooks' "young frankenstein" on broadway, apropos of the weekend, and finished with some late night outdoor dining at pastisse in the meatpacking district...i'm always a sucker for french bistro food. sunday saw more beautiful weather, a great brunch at a place called simply "eatery", apparently a local favorite in hell's kitchen, a visit to moma, and a final stop at a hole-in-the-wall bar to watch a little football before heading off to the airport. travel is important because expands your view of the world and yourself. it also teaches you how reasonable drink prices are in cleveland.

happy halloween!

hey everybody! have yourselves a fantastic all hallow's eve. i'll be heading to take a bite out of the big apple and spend a few days of dining, drinking, and just wandering around the big city...you know, autumn in new york and all that jazz. anyway, i hope that this evening brings you either the tricks or the treats that you want. remember to have your parents check your candy before you eat it and stay away from that old house at the end of the street.

one last note of birthday thanks...

thanks to my years in college spent uselessly studying medieval history and literature so that i could become a cook, i have a pretty keen interest in any number of things from the era between the fall of the roman empire and the rise of the renaissance. to anticipate the first question that may have come to your mind, no, i'm not one of those people who dresses up in tights and pantaloons and runs around some field every summer. i do, though, have a healthy interest in medieval weaponry and warfare practices (as well as studying how the philosophies and beliefs of the medieval church profoundly effected the evolution of modern civilization). for pure excitement, nothing from the medieval arsenal beats the trebuchet. more refined and advanced than the catapault, a trebuchet uses ropes, pulleys, and counterweights to fling a projectile accurately over great distances. seige engines, such as the trebuchet, were used to batter down the walls of castles so invaders could directly attack a well-fortified enemy, rather than continuously having boiling oil, excrement, and goodness knows what else dropped over their heads from defenders atop the walls. where all of this is leading, though, is that last february i told the kitchen boys about my interest and enthusiasm for trebuchets and even milled over building one. today, pete gave me this small, fully-functioning model, which hurls grapes and small wooden balls a good 20+ feet. the things itself is super cool, but what's even better is that i have a friend who listened to me, remembered something that i liked, and took the time and trouble to get it for me. thank you, petey. by the way, this is the second trebuchet that pete bought for me. he memorably confessed to having broken the first one playing with it a few days before my birthday. ha!

thank you boys...

years back, i started the tradition of decorating the various kitchen boys' stations for their birthdays and giving them odd and/or fun gifts (legos, light sabers, etc.). i think that it's easy as we get older to stop thinking of our birthdays as fun and exciting, just as the joy and wonder that we held as children seems to dissipate in all of the other areas of our lives. i think this is sad. all too often, as adults, we focus so much of our time and energy on grown-up things that we tend to forget about how wonderful the world can really be. i've always tried very hard, with varying degrees of success, to put a little of that fun, wonder, joy, and even mischeif into the lives of the people that i love. this world is a beautiful place, but only if you choose to make it so. sometimes, i wish that more people would try harder to positively effect those around them...we each have the power to within us to shape our surroundings and either brighten or darken the days of those who we hold most dear. anyway, enough of my soap box, love is the answer rhetoric (even though i do think love is the answer). i can't begin to say how happy i was when i walked into work on my birthday and found my office decorated as seen here. i can say, though, how truly, deeply grateful i am to everyone who made my special day so much more so. by the way, the inflatable male "love doll" sitting in my chair is named bandit. he's been a fixture in the kitchen since he showed up at jason's birthday three years ago. although he's been in storage since receiving a puncture wound a few months back, i was especially glad to see him make a special birthday appearance for me. thanks again, everyone. "in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." paul and john had it so right.

some of my favorite fall things...

october is one of my favorite months of the year...always has been. i suppose it started when i was a kid. my three favorite days of the year were christmas, my birthday, and halloween, pretty much like every other kid more or less.

lucky for me, though, two of those days fell in one beautiful fall month. in many ways, i haven't changed much since i was a lad. i still love fall, my birthday, halloween, and christmas and do everything that I can to celebrate them as enthusiastically as possible. these shots are from a fun day that i spent with friends and family walking through the cuyahoga valley metro parks and stopping at szalay's sweet corn farm to enjoy some roasted corn and general seasonal joy...though i couldn't muster enough enthusiasm among my compatriots to attempt the corn maze. boo! strangely, i also ran into dan gallo, his lovely wife, and their dog at szalay's. dan is one of the chefs at spice of life catering, our on-site chef at thorncreek winery in aurora, and probably one of the funniest people that i know. it seems everyone had the same fall fun on their mind that day. we ended the afternoon with a trip to sarah's vineyard in cuyahoga falls and sat outside in the warm late fall sun. somehow, i always feel like food and wine taste better outdoors and with winter coming soon, it's great to be able to get a few more chances to enjoy some alfresco dining and drinking. now if only i could finally get to see the great pumpkin...

that's a lot of lettuce!

i took this picture at a plated dinner last weekend. the event was for the golden barristers at cwru's law school over alumni weekend and went very well. anyway, the reason i took the picture was that it put me in mind of one of my favorite things. from the day i started in this business until now, i've had this really odd aesthetic fascination with the way it looks when you've got hundreds of identical plates all lined up and waiting to be served. somehow, the sight of this has always spoken to me and, i suppose, the fact that such a thing would somehow stir my soul is a good indicator that i was meant to be doing this for a living, instead of being a lawyer or professor as i'd initially planned. that's kind of one of the funny things about this business. i know and meet so many people who were on their way somewhere else in life and got side-tracked into a restaurant job, only to find that it was meant for them. obviously, these stories range from wonderful to wondefully depressing, but, i think especially for those of us in the kitchen, we each found a place in this world that made sense to us in a way that nothing else really did. my buddy mikey uses the catch-phrase "live to cook", which i believe is true. i think it is equally interesting, though, to realize how many of us were simply born to do so.

shrooming!

last night was the spice of life fall forage and f&b plated landscape dinner at killibuck valley mushroom farm. for those of you unfamiliar with s.o.l.'s plated landscape dinners, throughout the summer and early fall, ben and co. host incredibly unique multi-course plated dinners on some of the farms from which we source our locally grown foods. the killibuck valley dinner is the benchmark by which all of the other dinners are judged. the setting is absolutely beautiful, listening to tom and wendy, the owners, discuss the actual science and method behind growing mushrooms is truly fascinating, and, like the other dinners, the whole experience feels like it was dipped in some kind of magic. our dinner for this lovely, cool evening was staged in an open-sided barn and a great band played quiet classic rock throughout the evening...with guests at the table tearing up quietly when one or another particular piece seemed to touch their hearts and bring even more power to this uniquely memorable event (the beatles always get me). the seven course meal was, of course, fantastic, even though ben began the evening by pointing out to all of the diners that they were lucky enough to be eating with a food network star...a little embarassing and mostly untrue, but funny. after basking in the glow of the wonderful setting for a while, the wine and beer started to take hold and the generally festive atmosphere became even more so. our end of the table was, as usual, loud and really, really jokey. i honestly don't remember the last time i laughed so hard or well. my very good friends who i don't get to see as often as i would like, michael and nicole, joined us to celebrate nicole's birthday and really helped to amp up the laughfest at our end, with the rest of the table stealing glances from time to time to see what was so incredibly hilarious. for me, the real stars of the show were ben, jess, chris, dan, and ryan from spice of life, my much-loved friends with whom i dined, and karen small, one of cleveland's very best chefs and owner of the flying fig, my favorite restaurant in town. the whole experience was like catching lightning in a jar and a reminder of just how beautiful and perfect life can be. thanks to everyone involved for a truly memorable night...and, of course, the staggering hangover that's followed it today. ha!

the other woman in my life...

david, our on-site event manager at park lane villa, just sent me this forgotten photo from a p.r. shoot that my partner, joan, and i did last year. after taking a hundred shots of she and i looking enthused with our platter of food, i decided it would be nice to capture us also looking bored and melancholy. in reality, we're rarely bored and only occasionally melancholy. mostly, we're pretty happy and jokie. joan founded marigold eleven years ago and worked like crazy to grow the thing with a rotating cast of chefs in the kitchen. when we met, it was some version of love at first sight and here we are five years later, still working like crazy, but having just been voted #1 caterer in cleveland and bagging top three rankings and a couple of weatherhead 100 awards for being one of the fastest growing companies in northeast ohio over the last couple of years. i'm immensely proud of what we've done and built together here at marigold and can't wait to see where the future will take us. that said, this entry is more of a love letter to joan, my business partner, true friend and confidant, #1 fan, and, no matter what girl i'm dating, my official lifelong 'other woman'. thanks for making me part of your life, rosenthal.

holy hanna!!!

this past saturday night was a big one in the life of marigold catering. we were fortunate (and talented, i like to think) enough to be chosen to take care of the catering for the gala opening of the newly and beautifully remodeled and re-imagined hanna theater. the event, which was for 580 guests, was absolutely one of the highest profile shindigs that we've ever done and, thanks to everyone's hard work, it went just about perfectly, something that's almost scary in the catering world. our event planner in charge of the event, phil, did a great job of organizing all of the details and performed with true grace under pressure throughout the evening. to your left, you can see a shot that i took of the tent which was placed right on the closed-off street in front of the theater. passed hors d'ouevres and cocktails took place inside the hanna itself, followed by plated arugula salads and gazpacho, a buffet dinner, and miniature desserts inside the tent. there was a cool band that played a lot of motown covers and our kitchen tent was set up right next to starbucks, so i was able to throw down a few iced venti quad lattes to keep me going. it's always wonderful when an event goes well. you leave feeling like you can do anything in the world...like a rock star, as they say. the best worst part of the event, however, came the next day when tony brown from the plain dealer's metro section gave credit for the catering to the hanna deli, instead of us. nice research, buddy! you could have asked anyone involved in the event and gotten the right answer, but assuming works well too... that aside, it was a great night, we heard a lot of really enthusiastic comments and, at the end of the day, we got to continue to be the biggest, best-kept secret in cleveland catering afterall. oh well, if we keep treating so many people in the city to such memorable nights, eventually someone will remember our name in the morning.

best place to work...ever.

so, as any frequent reader of this blog knows, the kitchen staff at marigold/spice of life has its own sort of super fun, practical joking, chaotic kind of anti-culture culture. i won't use names, but someone came up with the idea last week of blowing up a locally grown watermelon with a smll pipe bomb. a couple of days ago, one of the boys rushed into my office around ten in the morning and said excitedly, "it's time". never being one to miss a moment of fun and mayhem, i hurried out to the back alley. the camera was set and we had about ten seconds of fuse to run for cover. what you see above are some of the great resulting shots. how awesome! what a great way to start the day. i really do love this place and my merry band of cooks. there are the occasional days when being in the food and beverage industry beats having an office job hands down. p.s. blogger's system for uploading photos is medeival.

back to the hamptons

somehow, the event scheduling gods smiled on us over labor day weekend and the kitchen staff was lucky enough to get three days off in a row. yay! being adventurous and insane, i decided to take the opportunity to drive up to the hamptons with a friend to visit timmy and douggy and send the summer out in style. leaving after work on friday put me there at around 4:00 in the morning, but a short night's sleep had everyone primed for a good day of vacationing. less than favorable weather, however, killed any ideas of a day at the beach. this gave us the chance, though, to go exploring. we drove up to montauk, went to the lighthouse, hit a few bars and restaurants in town and along the way and had a really awesome day getting to enjoy being tourists. after a week spent working at the meetinghouse back in july, it was really nice to finally to get some free time up in the playground of new york's rich and famous. the highlight of the first day, though, was absolutely an awesome restaurant called the surf lodge. we sat on their giant patio overlooking the water, drank really expensive margaritas, listened to a fantastic female r&b singer, and watched the sun come out, promising good weather for sunday. the place itself is a perfect example of hamptons shabby chic and apparently the chef was one of the contestants on top chef, though we didn't eat having filled up on fried food and montauk's coolest dive bar earlier in the day. by 6:00, however, we were pretty much completely drunk and tired so we headed home for a short five hour nap. ha! one of the nice things about amagansett (and the hamptons in general) is that the bars stay open until four, so you can start late and end late. anyway, we enjoyed a post nap dinner at the meetinghouse and then headed over to talkhouse, the strangest dive bar i've ever found...great bands, low ceilings, pictures of nude models and all of the famous bands who've played there over the years, and the creme de la creme of new york's rich and famous partying their butts off make for an interesting setting to say the least. sunday turned out to be a beautiful, sunny day so we headed to the beach after brunch (again, at the meetinghouse). in observance of a hampton's post beach tradition, we drove up 27 to a place called cyril's and had a couple of their signature drinks, called bbcs, a particularly formidable concoction when you elect to add an extra shot of rum floating on top. we did. it was nap time again. that night was once more to the talkhouse with all of our friends and another 5:30am bedtime. we got up and drove home around 12:30 the next day and i was home safely by 11:00 monday night. it was an awesome, memorable weekend. (ps. that's tim and his son, gus, enjoying our day at the beach.)

are you ready for some football?

we've finally made it to that special time of year that clevelanders hold so near and dear to their hearts. that's right, it's football season! last night, i was lucky enough to score some pretty sweet seats almost right on the fifty yard line courtesy of my friend brendan over at northern haserot. what began as sort of a rainy night cleared up and turned into a perfect night for football. the brownies looked pretty good all and all, though the opinion of our kitchen staff is that they're holding out until the real season starts next week. i hope that's actually the case. anyway, it was a fun night with a couple of drinks and some familiar faces on w. 6th and a couple of beers and some hot dogs once inside. we lost in the end, but it was still good to be back in the stadium and i'm getting ready for more games to come this season...now if i could only get these seats again, that would be something to cheer about for sure. go browns!

another fig wine dinner, another low point...

it all began with a wine dinner at the flying fig about two years ago. ben and i, prior to joining forces in spice of life, thought it would be very nice if we planned a special night out at our favorite restaurant with friends and our significant others. the food at the fig is always fantastic and we're good friends with lots of the people who work there, so we figured it would be a blast. well, that first dinner sure was a blast and set the stage for many more to come. what began as a polite wine dinner quickly devolved, at our table, into a loud, somewhat irreverent party, featuring off-color joking, minor food fights, way more wine than we were allocated (like i said, we know people), and even a slow-clap for ben as he polished off the last piece of bread. after a few more like this, we noticed that we stopped hearing about the wine dinners for a while and ben and i began to joke that we'd been blacklisted. nothing lasts forever, though, and we've been back on the fig wine dinner circuit for a while now. last night, karen small and co. had an anniversary dinner with menu items from when the eatery opened back in 1999. the night featured four courses of awesome food for $19.99 and a selection of wines for $19.99 per bottle. the food was awesome as expected and we sampled five out of the six bottles. also, as if it could have happened otherwise, we had a food fight, drank too much, stuck plastic stars to our faces, and then, once we were assured it was a rental, started drawing on the tablecloth. a small portion of the art that i helped to inspire is shown here. as i've said so many times, i don't know why i'm wired this way, i just am. we all work really hard in this business, so it seems to me that nothing beats a little irreverent fun in the face of our daily f&b grind. i suppose i also need to maintain my reputation for being awfully puckish and poorly behaved for a chef, food writer, and business owner. the night finished off with a few survivors making it to jonathon sawyer's excellent bar cento in the o.c. and the flying monkey in tremont. another great night.

the last days of summer...?

my sister, tracy, her husband, and my little nephew are in town for the next week visiting from south carolina. after spending a couple of days with my folks, they moved over to a house that they'd rented in downtown geneva on the lake. if you've never been to geneva, not only is it home to some of ohio's finest wineries, but the downtown area is a sort of america's vacationland from the bygone era when people could only afford to vacation in their home state. this was the time of airstream campers, little cottages by lake erie, and mom and pop amusement parks, put-put courses, and eateries. anyway, my family has always had a special place in our hearts for this faded little slice of americana, even with the incredible number of bikers who invade the place all summer long. a good wine buzz cures all though. tracy really loves geneva, so it came as no surprise that she would want to spend some time there. i took the time to join the family yesterday and had a great day filled with some headache-inducing wine from the firehouse winery and two, count 'em, two trips to eddie's grill. eddie's is a real geneva institution serving burgers, dogs, fries, and rootbeer in a setting that makes you feel like some greasers or girls in bobby socks and poodle skirts could walk in at any time. it was great to be there with people who are so close to my heart and, most of whom, i don't get to see as often as i would like. moreso, i loved the day, and especially my trips to eddie's, because it's just the sort of thing that makes me feel happier about the world. i like knowing that places like geneva and eddie's still exist...that everything hasn't succumbed to the seemingly endless wave of mcdonald's, applebees, and other chain places that have taken over so much of the dining landscape. admittedly, speaking of chains, i even found myself getting a little teary when the juke box played "unchained melody" by the righteous brothers...a song that i've heard a thousand times and that the movie "ghost" had almost ruined entirely. it finally seemed to have the impact on me that it had on so many kids back in the days of penny loafers, pat boone, and unbridled optmism about living and being in love in america. incidentally, since we were planning on having too much wine, there was also a sleepover at the rental house with the family involved. i'm including this picture of the sleeping quarters, just because i haven't had the opporunity to sleep in a red, metal matchbox car-themed bunk bed in, oh, i'd say, thirty years. sometimes it takes a few wierd things to really add up to the recipe for fun.

seriously?

is it always darkest before the dawn? boy, i hope so. due to various factors, i haven't been having the greatest time all of the time over the last few months, though there certainly have been some really great things, too. that said, i've had a particularly crappy and challenging couple of days this week. just when i was starting to feel better, i came out of work yesterday to find this. i'm not sure how familiar you are with the toyota fj cruiser, but you should be looking at a rear-mounted spare tire on a big, shiny 17" aluminum rim. that's right. between 1:00 and 5:00 yesterday, in broad daylight, with people coming and going from our offices, someone actually stole the spare right off of the back of my truck. to add insult to injury, i'd just had a flat on friday that couldn't be fixed, so there was a brand-new $180.00 tire on the now-missing rim. sometimes i have no idea what's wrong with people. between the new tire and the full replacement of everything, i'm looking at around a grand for all of this fun. really? i'm hoping that this is the final sign before my universe begins to right itself again. cross your fingers for me, folks.

ben's revenge

the smiling, cheeky bastard that you see to your left is my partner in spice of life catering co., ben, who has certainly appeared elsewhere in this blog. last night before leaving work, i decided to cover ben's desk with silly string, because, well, i had silly string and ben has a desk. for those of you who've never had the pleasure of working in a kitchen, it's important to know that practical joking is to a cook's life what furry hand-cuffs are to the s&m crowd: fun, somewhat irritating, and ultimately, inescapable. the problem with kitchen pranking, though, is it tends to escalate pretty quickly with a mixture of amusing and horrifying results...ie. mussels or blue cheese hidden in people's cars, freezing guys' street clothes in fish water, etc. i came into the office this morning to find that, in retaliation for the silly string, ben had resorted to one of the cook's oldest weapons: large scale plastic wrapping. in my days, i've seen cars, work stations, and even people end up wrapped in the stuff. today it was apparently my desk's turn, as well as my chair which ben wrapped onto one of the posts in the office's hallway. i think the high point of the event, though, was that i had about twenty minutes in between meetings to catch up on e-mails and take care of a few other office duties. i can't say that this didn't slow things up a bit. now, one question remains: to retaliate or not to retaliate. in case my special friend reads this entry, i believe i'd rather keep my answer to myself for now. see how fun an office setting can be when you put non-office type people into the mix?

only on a monday...

it was about ten o'clock this morning when our dishwashers beckoned me outside and told me to take a look in our grease barrels. not generally being much of a morning person, i sort of drowsily wandered out to see what was amusing them so greatly. peering into the first, i saw nothing, but woke right up when the second barrel contained a seriously trapped and irritable racoon, staring back at me and growling. so, obviously, we couldn't leave the thing in there, both because we're good-hearted people and the idea of getting it out promised some fun early monday chaos. to address the problem, i gathered up ben and ryan, my ministers of mayhem and they set to work attempting to solve the problem. retrieval was solved by utilizing a combination of a giant prop chinoise (you can see the handle sticking out of the green barrel in the background) and a trash can containing a good amount of dawn dishwashing liquid, as ben figured the little guy would be badly in need of a bath. as the bravest of our staff looked on, ben scooped the angry racoon out of his greasy predicament and ryan caught him in the trash can, as shown here. we added some warm water to the dawn detergent in hopes of helping to get off some of the grease, swished him around a bit, and then set him free with one more bucket tossed over him for good measure. hopefully, he'll be able to clean himself up from there and his little racoon friends won't make too much fun of the way he smells. i'm still not sure what sort of omen this must be for the week to come, but i'm sure we'll find out. best of luck out there little buddy and i hope this has taught you to look before you leap.

what a thoughtful boy i have

hello everyone. this is pierre. sometime back, my son henry, when visiting me at my house, became somewhat attached to a sock monkey named garvin, an attachment that seems to have given rise to an ever-expanding sock monkey collection. it helps that i've always been pretty accomplished when it comes to inventing amusing voices and personalities for inanimate objects, his various toys being no exceptions...i think i can do almost all of the star wars characters by now, as well as sponge bob, patrick, and an array of more comic voices that work well for things like, well, sock monkeys. henry found pierre on ebay and used some of his allowance to buy him for me as a congratulations gift for my appearances on dinner:impossible. i can't begin to say how touched i was by the gesture. he's a wonderful and very considerate boy and i'm blessed to have him as my son. needless to say, pierre is already developing his own distinct personality and strange high-pitched french accent, laiden with comic condescension and insult, without the rage and irritability that you find so often in other, human french chefs. i've yet to see how his inherent flammability will effect the success of his chosen career. anyway, thank you, buddy, you're the best boy in the world.

plush life

i took this picture at the harbor inn (my favorite dive bar in cleveland) on saturday as we all sat around soaking wet after spice of life's all-day gig at burning river fest. it was a good day and i think ben learned alot about festival planning. the raft of severe storms that rolled through at night, however, sort of turned the evening portion into a bust. we ran two concessions stands (pizza and pulled pork nachos) and ended up with a lot of food left over, as the band didn't end up playing until three hours late and most of the crowd had dispersed. anyway, it was still a bunch of fun and i was once again lucky enough to get to be around some of my favorite people in the world, with whom i'm also lucky enough to work. the plush animals in the picture are courtesy of jess andjeski, spice of life's event planner extraordinaire. apparently, jess possesses the splendidly useless, but endlessly entertaining ability to conquer big choice games...you know, the ones with the little crain that you control to pick up toys and gifts out of a glass box. she wins almost every time and once even emptied out an entire machine just to see if she could. at any rate, for less than a couple of dollars she won all of the little friends that you see in the picture. clearly they were thirsty after spending all of that time trapped in an arcade game. personally, i think the world becomes a better place when filled with people who have awesome, amusing skills with no real-world applications. yay jess!!!! by the way, the title of this post is an allusion to "lush life", the great jazz vocal standard about lost love, a wasted life, and too much drinking written by billy strayhorn when he was only eighteen and, apparently, wise well beyond his years. the polychromatic mouse that you see finishing off my vodka and soda threw up only moments after this shot was taken and then borrowed my phone to drunk-dial the stuffed monkey that he'd been dating prior to being trapped in the game. we think that the dragon and the yellow rabbit left together, but no one can be sure.

house of cards.

i was lucky enough to get to see radiohead put on one of the best shows that i've ever seen last night. a big part of the summer for me has always been attending as many concerts as possible by the bands that i love with the people that i love the most. this summer has been different, but certainly no exception. it was an incredibly powerful show and one that i'll probably always remember. blossom is one of my favorite venues and holds so many great memories for me..and not just because of all of the shows i've seen there. i worked for the f&b company for five years, from the time i was sixteen, moving kegs and moving my way up through the ranks. it's where i got my first taste of this business that would eventually become my accidental, but much-loved career. i also met a lot of great friends and perfected my beer-drinking and flirting skills. ha! anyway, the show was fantastic, the evening almost perfect, and the music a fitting soundtrack to a night that i'll always hold near to my heart. bye.

ohio wine fest and farm animals!

this past saturday, i was lucky enough to have a good friend invite me to wine fest in kirtland, ohio. i'd never been before and the idea of throwing down a few cups of ohio's finest viticultural products seemed like a pretty appealing curative for a weekend that had started on an incredibly strong down note. after spending the afternoon at the beach, we got cleaned up and headed over to kirtland, which, unbeknownst to me, is apparently the eastern hub of the mormon empire. i wonder how fond they are of having such a bacchanalian event happening within site of their town. who knows. anyway, it was a beautiful evening and, once i learned that you could avoid the long tasting lines by simply ponying up $5 to buy a full glass of wine, the night just got better and more relaxing. we ate some cheese, drank too much wine, and wandered down to the farm park part of the premises to look at some of the farm animals. the goat you see in the picture has three horns and looked pretty much like something from the cover of a death-metal album. unfortunately, it didn't photograph very well. still, a strong wine buzz plus good company plus farm animals is an almost surefire recipe for fun. the sun set while we sat by the pond, finished off another couple of glasses, and the fest closed up shop. on the way out, a little stand was selling local blueberries which were delicious and reminded me of how great locally grown produce really is. unfortunately, given my level of maturity, they also reminded me of how much fun throwing blueberries and, anything really, can be. the traffic was bad and i tend to be impatient, so we passed the time trying to throw blueberries into a wine glass on the hood of the truck (and at the occassional car...sorry if i hit yours) until the exit arteries began flowing normally again. the night ended with a trip to a crazy italian restaurant called dino's. attached to a days inn in mentor, it certainly gives a certain faded 70s/e coli outbreak vibe, but the food turned out to be some of the best old-fashioned italian that i've had since eating at a similar place in wildwood, n.j. before the dinner:impossible shoot that just aired a couple of weeks back. overall, it was one of the best nights that i've had in a long time and ended up stretching into a really great weekend where i hadn't expected one. it's funny what you miss when you're looking somewhere else.

an important pig roast for a good cause

this past sunday, my pal, michael symon, hosted an s.o.s. (share our strength) benefit at lola that featured a bunch of the best chefs in the country who also happen to be female. to welcome them to cleveland and give everyone a chance to bond, mikey had a get-together for 40ish people the night before at his house. he called me to take care of the food for it, which was an honor, but a little scary too. cooking for some of the best chefs in the country? yikes! anyway, ben and i decided that a latino-style pig roast would fit the bill pretty nicely. you can see the star of the show at the right. anyway, we put together a pretty cool menu using all locally raised ingredients (except limes and avocados) and set about making our plans. besides the pig, we did a bluegill and roasted corn ceviche, shrimp, chantrelle, and l.e.c. bluma empanadas, jicama lettuce rolls, black beans, crawdads, and all sorts of other things. my partner, joan, set up a beautiful table and we spent the day smoking our little porcine friend and working on all of the prep for this special event. thanks to a borrowed smoker/grill/trailer, we were able to drive our piggy over to the east side still hot and finish him on site. the party went incredibly well and everyone seemed to enjoy the food...or at least managed to lie convincingly. Highlights of the event were michael and liz's dogs eating an entire wheel of manchego cheese off of the buffet and traci des jardins (sp? sorry!) pulling the delicious pig cheeks out with her hands. awesome! it was an all-around excellent event and i think mikey was happy too, which makes me happy. i met some new people and got to see a lot of friends from the business who don't usually get to make it out on a saturday night. i privately felt like someone was missing from the group, but that's another story for another time.

when is a vacation not a vacation?

so, i got to go to the hamptons last week. sounds pretty fun, right? well, it was fun, but not how you may think. my good friend, tim bando, is the chef at a restaurant in amagansett called the meeting house. this time of year, the hamptons are pretty busy and the quaint little restaurant that you see to your left is no exception. in fact, this place is incredibly busy...so busy that tim called a couple of weeks back looking for any help that he could get. being the swell guy that i am (and secretly hoping to get a little beach time in) i agreed to fly up for the week and loan him my sous chef ryan for the rest of july. we took off early on monday the sixth and landed by 10:30. a car service had us in amagansett by 11:30 and the week was officially begun. we had lunch, wandered around for awhile, i bought some long pants when tim informed me that i couldn't wear shorts to work, and got settled in. after lunch service, tim took me to his home...my home for most of the week...and we got changed and ready for work...and work we did. that night we got thrown into the mix with ryan working the grill and me on pantry, where i was trained by a fifteen year old who had only worked the station for a week. in spite of being greenhorns, i feel we performed admirably. the following days brought a lot more work, including some breakfast through dinner performances on my part. luckily, i did have a free evening to drive up to montauk and look around a little. i took a picture of the lighthouse, cleaned out tim's car, and bought a few souvenirs for the folks back home. next morning, i had my leisure until 2:00pm, so i made it to the beach for an hour or so. after that, it was all work (with some after-shift drinks on a couple of occassions). it's a funny place, amagansett. imagine an upscale new england version of mayberry peopled with some of the richest and most famous people in the world. chris martin from coldplay and julianne moore both ate at the restaurant while i was there and apparently the list gets longer from there. by the time sunday morning rolled around, i was really looking forward to heading back to cleveland. the car picked me up at 10:00 from the restaurant and dropped me at the airport a full two hours before my flight. evidently, you have to allow a lot of extra time for the trip as hamptons traffic can be terrible. with nothing to do and a generally relaxed frame of mind, i headed into the airport bar and managed to have a few to many vodka-sodas in the middle of the day. i slept like a baby until baltimore where we landed to drop off and refill the plane with more passengers (the southwest airlines way as i understand it). the plane filled and i prepared to again fall doze off, when the bad news came. a two hour delay. we were deplaned and what was estimated at two hours slowly became four. unfortunately, i was forced to again take shelter in an airport bar, this time a mexican place. i spent my time draining a few margaritas and talking to an amusing fellow traveler. in fact, i began enjoying myself so thoroughly that i nearly missed the plane leaving. i'll never know why they don't make those announcements in the bars, since that's where everyone who's stuck goes to wait...well, maybe not everyone. anyway, we finally took to the skies again and i dosed off until they announced that we were getting close to cleveland. bucking the rules of the sky, i decided to turn on my phone and take some pictures out of my window, as the day was clear and beautiful. there it was, our fair city by the lake. it was good to be home and i was happy to have helped an old friend and met some new ones. life is all about experiences, good and bad. some may shape us more than others, but it's always better to have done something than to have watched it on t.v.