Busy Busy Busy

I am currently in the process of providing a lil' more ownership over this blog to a few of my lovely partners in crime. I am a firm believer in people getting credit for all the work that they do.

I work with some of the best people that I have ever had the privilege of working with. I would love for them to be able to post about all of things that we are currently trying to accomplish from their perspective. the blog will prolly change to "The Misadventures of a Bunch of Dorks That Love Food Too Much". This title is tentative.....the more I think about it, it's kind of lame. I would love some suggestions if anyone has any.

The restaurant is pretty busy. This exciting for all of us, as being busy means that we are hopefully doing something right.

I got to meet Susie Heller last week(she has authored some of the most important cookbooks in the last 10 years). Susie is incredible and has loads of funny stories about Julia Child. I got to talk to her about the cookbook idea that I have pitched to Doug. It will be exciting to see how this takes shape. I would love to be able to to participate in a project that really demonstrates how far we have come as a restaurant.

Melissa Lavinc Smith, who helped me become noticed for my goofy obsession with food tattoos, has a book coming out called Inked Rogue Chefs. This book will be an incredible "coffee table" style publication that is dedicated to chefs that are tattooed up and will also offer up recipes from the chefs featured in the book. I'm lucky enough to be one of the chefs featured in the book and feel like I am not nearly cool enough to be featured in this magnificent publication. I also want to thank Melissa for even considering me to be someone in the book.

This week, provided my seeds come in on time. we are gonna plant Kale and clover(instead of Crimson and Clover........cue the Shondells). The kale we hope to use throughout winter. We are optimistic that the kale will be big enough to justify planting it this late. We braise it, so size doesn't really matter that much. The cold will make it nice and sweet. The clover we plan to plant as an organic alternative to commercial fertilizers. Clover stores nitrogen in its root system, and we should be able to use this to our advantage.

We have decided on some of our "staples" for next year. We are also trying to narrow down
some of the heirloom varieties that we want to plant. George, Phil, and I have talked about planting cardoons, and artichokes to see if they thrive in our climate.

THE CARDOONS WERE GEORGE'S IDEA AND I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT HE GETS CREDIT FOR IT!!!! There dude, you happy? lol!

The cardoons and artichokes can provide valuable shade to some of our crops that are a little less than tolerant of full sun. When we get our half acre(courtesy of Killbuck Mushrooms/Tom and Wendy Wyant) fully functional, we hope to able to produce some of our own livestock. This may be a distant dream, but we will see.

Things, all in all, are pretty exciting right now at the restaurant. We have a bunch of dinners planed for the month of Rocktober as well as a menu change for the fall season. I hope everyone is stoked for the new menu. I know I am!!

Please watch the following video and begin to understand how important it is that we start show the animals that eat more respect. This video is part of an underground investigation in England. I doubt that our industrial farms are any better. I love pork, and I love to know that the animals I eat are not mistreated. It's sickening to know that most people in the "civilized world" could care less about what happened to the animal they are eating while the animal was alive.

pig abuse/intensive farming

I won't preach anymore tonight. If you have ever taste meat from a farmer that actually card about the product that they were producing(Aaron and Melissa Miller), you would know the difference. Animals that are raised in poor conditions TASTE like it.

Bacon and Stuff

Earlier this week, Curtis and I decided to create "the world's greatest savory martini". We started experimenting with agar agar clarification.

I decided that I wanted to do a bacon/blue cheese cocktail. Don't make that icky face just yet!!!!!
so, Curtis and I decided finally upon blue cheese infused gin with a bacon infused dry vermouth.


The blue cheese infused gin turned to be a great success. We decided to use a cheaper gin because we were afraid that infusing/clarifying the gin wouldn't work. IT WAS AN INCREDIBLE COMBINATION!!!!

We are also able to save the blue cheese that we use for the infusion as a garnish for the drink.

I want to invite the owner of Velvet Tango Room over to try this drink when it is finished. I hope Paulius will come over and try my tribute to their Manhattan. I loved theirs so much, that
I had to come up with my own!!!

We is farming now, Pa!!

Myself and 2 of my employees/friends have recently decided to venture into farming. This project started a couple of months ago. I spoke with Tom Wyant from Killbuck Mushrooms about using some of his property. We then started talking about how much land we could honestly grow stuff on. This, in turn, led to the decision of leasing a half acre to grow on.

We started late this year, so we only had time to plant garlic. We planted several 125 foot rows of garlic. Tom has been gracious enough to allow us to use all of equipment(including his sweet antique tractor) for free.

Next year, we will really get into gear. I plan on planting all of our spinach, tomatoes, melons, herbs, and other staples that we use at the restaurant.

I believe this is the next step for us to become more of a self sustaining/ self reliant restaurant. I really hope that by the end of next summer that we will have a greenhouse built to extend our growing season and we will be able to supply the restaurant with a steady supply of fruits and vegetables that we grow ourself. It will be nice to be able to say that most of our produce is grown by us.

I hope that this project inspires other members of our community and even the crew at Fire to take be more involved in the current "farm to table movement" that is currently at the forefront of modern cuisine.

Tom and I also think that this will be excellent cross promotion for both of our businesses. I can't thank him and his wife enough for all of their help and allowing us to use their land.


So, here's to tractors, corn cob pipes, and overalls!!!!! YEEEE-HAAW!