Workplace Culinary Exploits: Part 1

Jack, Chris, Marcus, and I happen to be pretty big foodies; the fact that we all work together in a restaurant/bar is rather conducive to this shared interest. A few weekends ago, we decided to formalize our impromptu series of late-weekend-night culinary experiments--based initially around the application of Jack's homemade habañero sauce to various, inexpensive proteins purchased from the grocery across the parking lot--into a more serious competition of sorts. [We're quite a competitive bunch, but more on that in a later post...]

It's a simple concept: whenever it's your "turn," you supply the recipe and enough raw ingredients to feed everyone--including bussers and bartenders--and you just try to out-do the last guy's dish. I was off on Friday night, so I missed out on Jack's bourbon-marinated, grilled pineapple porkchops (which I heard were excellent), but my turn came up next, on Saturday. I fell back on an old standby of mine: seafood steak with homemade mango salsa.

I started the salsa first so its flavors could get all nice n' comfy together for a few hours before the meal:

4 mangoes, peeled, cored & roughly diced
3 fresh jalapeños, finely diced w/ seeds still in
1 medium red onion, finely diced
Fresh chopped basil
Juice of 1 lime

The store was out of my first choice in proteins, Mahi-Mahi, so I settled for some nice looking Swordfish steaks on my friend Flip's recommendation from behind the seafood counter. About an hour before grilling time, I threw the Swordfish into simple marinade of soy sauce, white pepper, and the juice of a couple limes. Right before the steaks were ready for the grill, I prepared another sauce of mayonaise, honey, white pepper, and the juice and zest of one lime. After draining the first marinade liquid from the steaks, I lightly applied some of the mayo/honey mix to the outside, and immediately grilled for roughly 2 minutes per side. After letting them cool a bit, I covered each steak with some salsa, dressed the plate with the rest of the mayo/honey sauce, and served with a side of flash-steamed, sauteed asparagus.

There were 8 happy mouths that night. There will be more to come.

Ed's Birthday Pie

Reason #58 why I love my job: Not even our boss/owner is immune from the traditional birthday pie to the face. This is my workplace.

More from the douches at work department...

Dear Guy Whose Non-Resident Indoor Tennis Bubble Membership Query I Just Fielded,

Guy, I'm sure you really didn't really mean any harm--at least, not to me--when you said it...

But when you compared the injustice of having to pay $4 more per hour than our Resident members for the privilege of reserving an indoor tennis court to, as you called it, "slavery-status"...

The only thing that kept me from reaching across the front desk and breaking your fucking nose was the fact that I kinda like this job.

Love,

Adam

Pearls before swine...

OK.

So I'm well aware that my reputation as a "music snob" precedes me in certain circles. And I used to have a problem with people perceiving me in such a way; but have you ever noticed that the people who throw around the term "music snob" as pejorative are the same folks who get their jollies to Avril, Nickelback and the like?

Isn't that kinda like the pot calling the kettle...spoon?

At the gym where I work, we have a corporate policy which limits the satellite radio stations we're allowed to play over the P.A. to essentially 3 stations whose names consist of various combinations of the words 'hot', 'hits', 'contemporary', and/or 'new'. Imagine a consistent, bi-hourly dose of "Hey There Delilah" for about 5 straight months of workdays and you're pretty close to an accurate rendering of the purgatory this grudgingly self-avowed "music snob" is forced to endure. Day in. And day out. And so on...

So in the interest of staying sane (see quotation in blog header), I began three Sundays ago to deviate from the 3-stations-only policy and to play instead the station labelled "College Rock." If I were in charge of satellite radio station naming, I'd have called it "Indie Rock." A minor semantic difference, but I digress. You catch my drift: the station plays a pleasant mix of Spoon, CYHSY, Rilo Kiley, BSS, Rogue Wave, Feist, etc. Granted, this doesn't match my musical tastes perfectly, but it's as close as I can get with the limited options at hand; and--hey! "College Rock" hasn't played a single Nickelback song in a month! Several Sunday regulars have even thanked me for breaking up the monotonous dirge to which they've no doubt become accustomed. But not every one's been so appreciative...

I'm sitting here at my desk in the back office. Guy walks up to the front desk and I overhear him requesting that Janie, our lovely and awesome front desk attendant, please change the station. Guy complains that the music sounds like--and I quote--"Something a snobby 19-year old college freshman would listen to while sitting in a coffee shop."

I bite my tongue.

Janie in her syrupy, Southern lilt: "Well, you know what, sir? It says here that this one's called College Rock..."

He, interupting: "See! See! What'd I tell you!?"

And I'm thinking: OK, so douche correctly identified (A): that college students--at least, the snobby ones--happen to enjoy the Rogue Wave, whose song "Every Moment" happened to be playing at the time, and (B): some satellite radio focus group somewhere decided to connote this type of music with the word 'college'. Brilliant work, Brother Seamus. Just brilliant.

Alas, the customer is indeed always right. Janie asks the man what he'd prefer to hear instead, and he says, "Oh, you know. Whatever the stuff is you all usually play..."

Janie: "Allllllright sir. I'll go ahead with Hot Hits Sweep." Immediately the strains of--you guessed it!--"Hey There Delilah" filled the air, and our douche, sated, was on his way after a parting Ahhh, that's better. This is a great song.

So whatev. Different strokes, I guess. Call me "snob". Call me "elitist". Call me "pretentious", even. I don't give, as they say, a damn.

In this instance, at least, I'd rather be on the side of the 19-year-old coffee-house-dwelling college freshman than on the side of 14-year-old bedroom-pining, TRL-swilling girls everywhere. As I write this, "Holland 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel is playing on College Rock and my nipples are hard.

LONG LIVE THE SNOBBERY!