Welcome to my garden of 2005

Or garden-wanna be! Well it is my patio but I am trying my best to turn it into a gardening area, since we rarely use it for anything else.

As you can probably tell from the photos there is a tomato tree, a mint plant, a lot of basil, parsley, and a few other pots with lots of green sprouts coming out of them. These are flowers and radishes in the making. I am holding my breath to see how many radishes I will actually harvest since I crammed so many in such a tiny tin box. For those of you who know the song, I may well end up with radish that "I will pull and pull and not be able to pull it out".But I am happy with the progress of my green thumb so far. I never really thought I could do it, since I had many a failing experience with plants and animals in Lebanon, but now I have mustered enough heart to try it again.

The tomato started with a tiny plant and we have replanted it three times already and bought an iron cage for it. It has numerous flowers making their way into actual fruit, and one green baby tomato still making its way into prime time. I will surely let you know what it will taste like when I finally harvest it. I am planning to make tabouleh someday from my garden, or patio. That will be the day!

Other than enhancing my gardening skills I am working on my people skills. I am expecting a group from Turkey on 9 July and that should be interesting. We will be going to North Carolina, New Jersey and New York. An interesting assortment of places, wouldn't you say? But why complain, a free trip is a free trip even if it was on business.

Speaking of trips, what are you guys up to this summer? Any trips? How about a trip to your keyboards to drop me a note....

Write soon.

~Ranya, the gardener

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something." - Plato

La Sandwich

Ah! La Sandwich! What a marvelous creation. What a simple yet fulfilling concoction of bread embracing many layers in-between its extremities. Who would think that a wonderfully soft piece of perfectly baked leavened flour combined with the befitting ounces of meat, dairy, and vegetables comes out to be not only a most satisfying meal, but also one of the most popular items on any menu?

Well, that is the truth, if not the whole day, at least during lunch hours. Let me tell you, I crank out more sandwiches in one day than I could possibly eat in a month! Is it a wonder how these things come together one, two and three at a time while orders for more keep piling up on the ticket hanger! That is when the rush of working the sandwich station comes flowing; how many “correct” orders can I crank out at in an acceptable time frame? After all I do not want to leave the customer waiting too long for the meal and I certainly do not want to mess up an order. But my! did I mess up orders and had to re-do them. It is one thing to read that the customer wanted mayo “on the side” but then another to remember to do that when you are wired up to build a sandwich in a pre-set way: bread, mayo, lettuce, filling, tomatoes then more bread. Good thing I had a well-trained sandwich person looking out for me, and for the orders, or else we would have had some pretty unhappy customers during some days!

It is fun though; trying to remember what goes into each and every sandwich. Good thing there is a guide posted on the wall for instructions; cause let me tell you some of these sandwiches are not that obvious. And with the several types of bread and dressings that come into play, it is tough to keep them all straight at first; buttery alpinette and pesto mayo for this sandwich and Parisian baguette with horseradish for that sandwich. And then you have the regular mayo, the honey Dijon mustard and the regular mustard, the house dressing and the Caesar dressing,,,, it can get messy!

Remembering the sandwich fillings is much easier though. Many, if not most, of the fillings are preset and stored in the refrigerator below the counter. Now, that is another thing I practiced doing; preparing sandwich presets while minding the correct weight of each item; so many ounces of beef, turkey and ham, so many slices of bacon and cheese, and so much zucchini, squash, mushroom and red peppers. You would not think there was so much to making a sandwich; just slap on a few things and voila! Well, that is at home but not here, and probably not in most other restaurants. Things are so meticulously prepared and organized to the minutest detail.

Let’s hope I get the hang of “all of this” before any of you decide to visit me one busy day. “All of this” still involves a few stops along the way. Next stop – Sauté Station. Turn up the heat; Gas stove here I come!

They make it all seem so easy on TV

I have been an avid viewer of the Food Network since we moved to Washington, DC and subscribed to cable. For over a year I have followed some of the most popular, and not so popular, shows both during the daytime and in the evening. From Rachel Ray’s 30-minute meals, a show and a host who compete for my “Least Favorite” category with Emeril Lagasse and his various shows, to Alton Brown and Paula Dean, both of whom are among my "Most Favorite," I am hooked to channel 54 on our TV set, the preset channel for Food Network. I do not even need to click away looking for shows to watch when in front of the TV, I simply speed to 54 and there I am in front of a cook whisking something or the other in the bowl and making recommendations to do this and not do that in order to ensure the success of this and all other future recipes.

Watching these people "perform" cooking techniques in front of a camera, sometimes in real time, I was brought to believe that I am certainly capable of emulating the professional grasps of utensils and the nonchalant mixing of ingredients. I sincerely believed I was capable of the creating the perfect icing on a cake and the perfect food presentation on a serving plate until yesterday when I started Part Two of my training.

With the tossing of the first, then the second, éclair into the garbage, and the unhappy facial expressions of my trainer, I came to understand that the term "piece of cake" actually refers to eating rather than making the cake. I could never have thought that the simple act of icing a caramel cream puff or dusting tiramisu with cocoa was really not simple at all.

It was fun, though, trying my hand at the different tasks it takes to put out a caramel cream puff and a fruit tart on the display tray. I learned patience while assembling more than 20 individual fruit tarts one fruit piece at a time and attention to the minute details while creating the lemon tarts and then the crème brûlée, some of which I torched away!

After hours of laboring in the pastry kitchen I proudly marched out with a sample of the products I assembled. Ah, yes! While I was not as successful in putting the final touches, I did well in creating the fillings for most of the pastries that day which was the easiest part; throw in a pound of pastry cream, add egg yolks, heavy cream and turn the industrial mixer on for 10 minutes and voila! the base for many of the tarts yet to emerge from underneath my still inexperienced hands!

Despite all the challenges, though, I must admit I have not had that much fun in the kitchen in a long time. That fun, though, faded in comparison to the fun I am to have in the sauté and sandwich stations. But that is part of another story. Stay tuned!

La Patisserie

Teta

The last time I saw my grandmother’s house was years ago. We were having lunch following her funeral. After that the house was closed down and only a selected few were allowed the keys to enter it. It became more sacred than it had been when she was alive to oversee its running.

I remember the evening she passed away. I do not remember the day, date, year or time, but I remember the sequence of events that eventually led her body to be stored in the cold until the Friday she was buried. Or at least I remember what I did that evening, things I am yet to forgive myself for.

Funny how I now think of myself as selfish. Funny because I had always known I was a little selfish, yet I never regarded myself as such in the capacities I now reflect on. Growing up makes one look back at things through different lenses and makes the reality different than what it was previously thought to be. To me this reality becomes much more real and much more harsh. Yes, I had been selfish, I had deprived those who now matter most to me from what matters most to them, love, attention and the benefit of the doubt.

The evening my grandmother was to pass away I was out with friends having fun. This is not unusual for the young girl I had been, or any girl of my age at that time. Grandma was most probably sleeping at that time, or getting ready to go to bed. I do not remember who was sleeping over at her house that evening, her children and grandchildren had worked out a schedule to always have someone sleep with her in the room to keep an eye out for her. She was an old woman and had many health problems. My grandfather had passed away years earlier and we did not want strangers sharing her house with her. Thinking long and hard, I believe there was no one with her that evening and it was her maid that took notice of the changes that had come about her.

I was still chatting in my friend’s car in the garage under the building that my grandfather had built over 26 years ago to grant himself and his male children independence and security of residence when I noticed the unusual things going on in the building. It was too late for so much activity and certainly my cousin was not called in from miles away if nothing of concern was happening. And yet I was so taken by the conversation that I brushed off the activity as insignificant and not needing my attention and continued to converse into the night. When one of my cousins approached me and told me that grandma was really sick I brushed him off too, I was all too familiar with grandma being “really sick”, after all I had spent many nights by her side.

When I finally decided that it was time to head up home, I thought I would at least drop in to check out what was the case with grandma. The door to her apartment was widely open and the house had an eerie silence to it. Both of my cousins were in her room and she lay there on the bed pale and yellow. One of my cousins then helped her up to a sitting position so that she can breath better. I exchanged a couple of words with my cousins and walked up the remaining flight of stairs to our apartment. That was the last time I saw my grandmother’s chest filling up with air.

The next I saw her she was lying still on white sheets in a hospital ward where they rested her until all her children were able to come in and bid her farewell. Still then I did not realize the gravity of the reality and thought that her departure was of no immense consequence on me. I was so wrong. And I had to wait years to find out just how wrong I was. If only I could turn back time I would not call on her to life again, that would not be fair to her, she was in a lot of pain and suffering. I would be more sensitive to what she was going through that evening and would have at least stayed around with her longer than the couple of minutes I thought were sufficient. Now I realize how lucky both my cousins were to be the last two people to feel her warm, I could have been the third, but I was too entangled in my own self. I failed to understand the importance of a human being who had been through 80 years of life and who deserved more attention that she had received.

Wake up at 4

I have always been a morning person, but I had never thought that my days were actually going to start with a 4:00am wake-up call which lead straight to a shower and an already picked-out uniform, black pants, either a black, burgundy or royal blue shirt and black flats, and work by 5:00am. This certainly is different! But, I sure am enjoying it, at least so far .

What I am actually not looking forward is when I do not have to wake up so early but rather stay up till midnight when I work the closing shift. I sure am not an evening person and I am praying that caffeine will accompany me as I try to win over the night.

Tomorrow I work from 5-3 and bring week 1 to a close. My day tomorrow starts with a solo morning bake and I am pretty nervous. While there are all sorts of charts and tables to help me along, I need to be ahead of the game and know the baking temperature and times, including rotation time, for over 20 items. I am also required to know the preparation method and the finishing of each of these products. I did a quasi solo bake today and it went well, with a few minor errors, but tomorrow is the big day!

The people I am now working with are pretty nice, considering the only method of communication between them and me is pointing, nodding and smiling! Almost half of them (if not more) do not speak English and I sure do not speak Spanish, at least not as of yet (maybe sometime down the road I will take Spanish lessons, if only to communicate with my pastry chef, my prep person, my saute lady and the dishwasher!). Some of the others are African and so I get to practice my French with them. One is Persian, with no common language area between us and another is Moroccan and so Arabic comes into play. The place is sure multi-national and multi-lingual but the clientele are almost a 100% American! They are a good group of clients, actually better than ones I would get had I been in the Georgetown location.

I am so far attempting to keep as much of my "normal" life as possible though I am falling behind on emails and talking to my friends and family. I am still motivating myself to exercise and cook at home and I hope this will continue to be as I delve deeper into the manager's responsibilities and come home with a number of work-related issues and headaches! Until then, though, Jeff remains a supportive marriage "associate". He wakes up with me every morning and drives me to work and then helps recite my homework in the evening. What more could a restauranteur-to-be ask for?

Ranya, a restauranteur-to-be

The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.
Jules Renard