Duke is on spring break this week, which means my restaurant has been closed and I’ve been a day worker at our catering shop, getting food ready for various catering gigs and also doing some other prep, or background, work. The shop is quiet, too, so our crew there has been small: our pastry chef,…

Thanks to a gift certificate I’ve kept since Christmas, I added to my cookbook library this week. I bought The Improvisational Cook by Sally Schneider. To call it a cookbook is to sell it short because the author is really asking the reader to think about how he or she cooks as much as giving…

I had a chance to see Richard Thompson in concert tonight in a solo acoustic performance. His songs were well crafted and beautiful, his stage presence was engaging, and his guitar playing was magnificent, evidence of someone who has spent his life determined to be a great guitar player. He has accomplished his goal. Watching…

What crossed my mind this morning was a scene from a movie. Probably several movies. The scene is from Home Alone and comes at the end of the movie (I think) as Kevin is reuniting with his family he sees the scary old man that ended up being not so scary when he met him…

tonight we will playwith the clocks,springing forward,saving daylight,acting as thoughwe could tell timeanything at all we spent the daylightwe had this afternoontaking the topoff the Wranglerand winding our waythrough an earlyspring afternoon who needs clockson a day like todayor tomorrow —as we gather at churchwould we couldmuster the sameabandon for worship laying aside our ticksand…

Today was going to be a day to get some stuff done around the house, but the cold I’ve been fighting for most of the week set me down for the better part of the day – well, the cold and the Theraflu. As I dozed in and out, I caught up on a week…

Tonight was our last night of dinner service before Duke students go on Spring Break and we’ve had a rather spirited discussion about what to expect from the evening. My boss and I were looking at it from two very different vantage points: she didn’t want to buy food that would then be left over…

I’m tired. This has been a busy week at work and I’ve been working hard to finish the ten gallons of soup for Empty Bowls tomorrow night, which meant I spent every spare moment of the last couple of days chopping and dicing until my hands are rough and cracked. Though dinner went well tonight,…

Part of my job everyday is to make soup. For our lunch buffet for the faculty at Duke we always have two soups (one of which is vegetarian) and the selection changes daily. On Fridays,, we always serve New England Clam Chowder, but the rest of the week is wide open. One of the favorites…

When I walk into work everyday, I do so to the soundtrack of Spanish radio. And part of that soundtrack, which appears to be in heavy rotation, is this percussive-techno-yodeling thing that is infectious in that certain way only a percussive-techno-yodeling thing can be. Long after evening service has started and we’ve turned off the…