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bohemianrhapsody86 · 6 years ago

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200 Things About Me (originally 200 Things You Can Put In My Ask)

I got this off of @rami-malek-trash - don’t know who the original poster was, sorry if it’s you. I’m bored and cramping and no one usually sends me asks anyway, so I’m just going to answer all of these myself

200: My crush’s name is: Drew (Now boyfriend, but he was my middle school crush) 199: I was born in: 1986 198: I am really: cool 197: My cellphone company is: T-Mobile 196: My eye color is: green 195: My shoe size is: 9.5/10 194: My ring size is: 9/10 193: My height is: 5′6″ 192: I am allergic to: Nothing 191: My 1st car was: 2001 PT Cruiser 190: My 1st job was: Server at a local pizzeria 189: Last book you read: Startalk: Everything You Ever Need to Know About Space Travel, Sci-Fi, the Human Race, the Universe, and Beyond by Neil DeGrasse Tyson 188: My bed is: Not very comfortable. I need a new mattress, but I need a job first. 187: My pet: A siamese cat named Chico. 186: My best friend: Amanda 185: My favorite shampoo is: I like using Aussie 2-in-1, I also like using Shimmer Lights occasionally so I can keep my gray hairs nice and shiny. 184: Xbox or ps3: PS3 183: Piggy banks are: Cool. I have one that counts my change lol 182: In my pockets: Nothing because they hate putting usable pockets in women’s pants. 181: On my calendar: I marked where I started my period yesterday, and my boyfriends 32nd birthday is next Tuesday. 180: Marriage is: Something I want everyone to have the option for if they want it. 179: Spongebob can: use his imagination 178: My mom: is amazing! 177: The last three songs I bought were? Cool and Sucker by The Jonas Brothers, Don’t really buy many singles, just albums if I’m interested and their cheap. 176: Last YouTube video watched: Brooke Candy - Paper or Plastic 175: How many cousins do you have? Too many to remember 174: Do you have any siblings? Yes, an older brother and older half-sister. 173: Are your parents divorced? Yes, they divorced back in 1999 172: Are you taller than your mom? Yes. We used to be the same height, but gravity has taken a hold of her and squashed her down. 171: Do you play an instrument? I used to play the trombone in middle school, but that was 20 years ago. I’m sure if I ever got my hands on one again, I might remember a scale or two. 170: What did you do yesterday? Went around town job hunting and then bought a maxi dress at a local craft store. [ I Believe In ] 169: Love at first sight:Yes 168: Luck: Yes 167: Fate: Yes 166: Yourself: Sometimes 165: Aliens: Yes 164: Heaven: Yes and No 163: Hell: We live there now. 162: God: No 161: Horoscopes: Yes 160: Soul mates: Yes 159: Ghosts: Yes 158: Gay Marriage: Yes 157: War: No 156: Orbs: Yes/No 155: Magic: Yes [ This or That ] 154: Hugs or Kisses: Kisses 153: Drunk or High: High 152: Phone or Online: Online 151: Red heads or Black haired: Black haired 150: Blondes or Brunettes: Brunette 149: Hot or cold: Cold 148: Summer or winter: Winter 147: Autumn or Spring: Autumn 146: Chocolate or vanilla:Chocolate 145: Night or Day: Night 144: Oranges or Apples: Apples 143: Curly or Straight hair: Curly 142: McDonalds or Burger King: McDonalds 141: White Chocolate or Milk Chocolate: Milk Chocolate 140: Mac or PC: PC 139: Flip flops or high heals: Flip Flops 138: Ugly and rich OR sweet and poor: Sweet and Poor 137: Coke or Pepsi: Always been a Pepsi girl 136: Hillary or Obama: Obama 135: Burried or cremated: Cremated and turned into a tree or my ashes made into a vinyl 134: Singing or Dancing: Singing 133: Coach or Chanel: Neither 132: Kat McPhee or Taylor Hicks: Katherine McPhee 131: Small town or Big city: Small Town 130: Wal-Mart or Target: Target 129: Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler: Ben Stiller 128: Manicure or Pedicure: Mani 127: East Coast or West Coast: East Coast - never been to the West Coast 126: Your Birthday or Christmas: Birthday because it sometimes falls on Thanksgiving. 125: Chocolate or Flowers: Chocolate 124: Disney or Six Flags: Disney 123: Yankees or Red Sox: Neither, Cubbies til the day I die. [ Here’s What I Think About ] 122: War: Pointless 121: George Bush: Better than the asshat in office now. 120: Gay Marriage: If I can get married to my boyfriend, the my friend Jerry should be able to get married to his boyfriend, Josh. 119: The presidential election: I hate that orange buffoon. 118: Abortion: I’m pro-choice. 117: MySpace: Always had trouble figuring out my Top 8 and what background I wanted to use. 116: Reality TV: Only thing I really watch are cooking competitions. Those are the only ones that matter. Not a fan of the Kardashians or the Bachelor/ette bullcrap. 115: Parents: My mom is amazing, my ‘dad’ was never really there. 114: Back stabbers: Asshats 113: Ebay: Hardly use it. 112: Facebook: Good to stay in touch with people you want to/some of the groups on there are awesome. 111: Work: Don’t have a job as of yet. *keeps fingers crossed I hear back from someone soon* 110: My Neighbors: Loud AF and nasty. I live in an apartment and the neighbors upstairs have so many kids and animals up there it’s ridiculous. I wish they’d leave. 109: Gas Prices: Ridiculous, but not as bad as I’ve seen it before. 108: Designer Clothes: Meh, not my style unless I find something in my size at Goodwill. 107: College: Been there, done that. Not really for me. Never graduated. 106: Sports: I like watching them, mainly baseball and basketball. The NFL can go fuck themselves. 105: My family: Love my blood relatives and my chosen family. 104: The future: It’s so bright, I gotta wear shades. [ Last time I ] 103: Hugged someone: last night when my boyfriend came over and brought me my phone charger. 102: Last time you ate: An hour ago. 101: Saw someone I haven’t seen in awhile: At my bestie’s baby shower. 100: Cried in front of someone: Sometime last week 99: Went to a movie theater: When Endgame came out 98: Took a vacation: 2010 97: Swam in a pool: A few summers ago 96: Changed a diaper: 2007? 95: Got my nails done: 2007? 94: Went to a wedding: 1999 93: Broke a bone: Never *keeps fingers crossed* 92: Got a peircing: 2012? 91: Broke the law: I probably broke the speed limit yesterday at some point. 90: Texted: about 2am this morning. [ MISC ] 89: Who makes you laugh the most: My bestie Amanda and boyfriend Drew 88: Something I will really miss when I leave home is: my cat. 87: The last movie I saw: Ant-Man 86: The thing that I’m looking forward to the most: getting a job 85: The thing im not looking forward to: Interviewing for a job 84: People call me: loyal 83: The most difficult thing to do is: finding a job 82: I have gotten a speeding ticket: Yep, 77 in a 55. 81: My zodiac sign is: Sun - Sagittarius, Moon - Leo

80: The first person i talked to today was: If you count texting my boyfriend at 2am, then him. 79: First time you had a crush: Sometime in Elemetary School. 78: The one person who i can’t hide things from: my mom 77: Last time someone said something you were thinking: yesterday 76: Right now I am talking to: myself 75: What are you going to do when you grow up: I have no clue 74: I have/will get a job: soon 73: Tomorrow: Never Comes 72: Today: Is the day 71: Next Summer: Not here 70: Next Weekend: I have no clue 69: I have these pets: 12 year old 17 lb cat named Striper. 68: The worst sound in the world: My cat hacking up a hairball. 67: The person that makes me cry the most is: myself 66: People that make you happy: my mom, brother, sister-in-law, boyfriend, best friend. 65: Last time I cried: sometime last week 64: My friends are: amazing 63: My computer is: pretty cool and loaded up with Sims stuff. 62: My School: I don’t go to school anymore. 61: My Car: gets me there. 60: I lose all respect for people who: disrespect me or my loved one. 59: The movie I cried at was: Endgame 58: Your hair color is: salt & pepper 57: TV shows you watch: Legends of Tomorrow, Worst Cooks in America, Any cooking show really. 56: Favorite web site: Tumblr 55: Your dream vacation: Somewhere away from my town 54: The worst pain I was ever in was: when I had that ovarian cyst. 53: How do you like your steak cooked: medium 52: My room is: messy 51: My favorite celebrity is: too many to list 50: Where would you like to be: in bed 49: Do you want children: nope 48: Ever been in love: yes 47: Who’s your best friend: Amanda 46: More guy friends or girl friends: About the same. 45: One thing that makes you feel great is: music 44: One person that you wish you could see right now: my grandma 43: Do you have a 5 year plan: I don’t even have a 5 minute plan 42: Have you made a list of things to do before you die: Kinda, not really 41: Have you pre-named your children: Nope 40: Last person I got mad at: The Dump, but that’s a daily thing. 39: I would like to move to: out of the US 38: I wish I was a professional: crocheter/crafter [ My Favorites ] 37: Candy: Butterfinger Cups 36: Vehicle: Don’t really have one 35: President: Barack Obama 34: State visited: Pennsylvania 33: Cellphone provider: Always been with T-Mobile 32: Athlete: Anthony Rizzo 31: Actor: Tom Hanks 30: Actress: Sandra Bullock 29: Singer: Freddie Mercury 28: Band: Queen 27: Clothing store: Lane Bryant 26: Grocery store: Aldi 25: TV show: Don’t really have one 24: Movie: Too many to count 23: Website: This black hole of a site 22: Animal: Cat 21: Theme park: Don’t really have one. I did enjoy Six Flags over Georgia when I went back in 2002. Dollywood is always fun but it’s been even longer than that since I’ve been there. 20: Holiday: Halloween 19: Sport to watch: Baseball 18: Sport to play: Nothing. 17: Magazine: Entertainment Weekly 16: Book: Harry Potter 15: Day of the week: Thursday 14: Beach: Virginia Beach 13: Concert attended: Jonas Brothers in VA Beach 12: Thing to cook: bacon 11: Food: bacon 10: Restaurant: Hmmm....don’t know that one. 9: Radio station: Classic Hits 102.7...hardly any commercials and they tell you the artist and song title after every song. 70s, 80s, and 90s songs. 8: Yankee candle scent: Don’t have one 7: Perfume: The scented oils from a local curiosity shop have some of my fave scents. 6: Flower: Iris 5: Color: Blue 4: Talk show host: Jimmy Fallon 3: Comedian: I’ve got several 2: Dog breed: Corgi 1: Did you answer all these truthfully? Yes.

#personal #200 things about me #bored #cramping #I need some sleep but can't sleep #period brain

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years ago

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What If Nothing But Chain Restaurants Survive?

Ruth just wanted to eat somewhere — anywhere — that wasn’t a chain

Their vibe had been great on the app, but for their first date, the girl suggested the Garden, and Ruth almost ghosted. It was the newest location, the one on York Boulevard that got spray-painted with anti-gentrification graffiti saying things like, “GO BACK 2 UR SUBURB” a couple weeks back; after cleaning it off, the Garden had made a big show of installing a community fridge. Honestly, Ruth wouldn’t have agreed to go if she couldn’t have walked there from her house. On a Saturday night, York was busy, the outdoor parklet tables overflowing at Torchy’s Tacos and Shake Shack and True Food Kitchen; people with laptops were still hunched in the Go Get ’Em Tiger, and tired-looking parents hauled growlers of beer from the Golden Road pub, maybe with a six-pack of Bud under their arm.

The Garden was the street’s newest addition, its glass exterior covered in long green vines, looking disconcertingly hip and inviting next to the local chain Thai Town, huddled in a former barbershop. The girl, Sierra, was waiting inside, perusing the menu projected on the wall in old-school Italian-joint cursive. She was shorter than Ruth had expected, and the ponytail peeking out from her trucker hat was bright pink. She greeted Ruth with a huge smile, and Ruth tried to act normal; meeting someone after messaging back and forth always felt so unbearable, even worse if they were actually cute. Sierra was cute. They bantered back and forth about whether the cauliflower parm would be good or a disaster, and agreed they could not not get mozzarella sticks. After ordering at the counter, they sat down and a runner immediately brought out a basket of warm breadsticks, the only reminder of the chain that had spawned the Garden.

The breadsticks were the best thing, soft and salty and comforting. Ruth’s cauliflower parm was soggy on the bottom, and Sierra’s vegan alfredo was like slurping nutritional yeast. Their messaging over the app had been playful and cheekily uninformative; now Sierra explained she was a storyboard artist on a kids cartoon about girl superheroes, airing on Prime. Ruth used to lead with her now-defunct Instagram ice cream business, or even her old restaurant in New York, the one that closed. But the endless grind of first dates had sanded down her pride, so she stuck to honesty: She was a corporate chef at Alexa’s.

“So we both work for Amazon,” Ruth said. “What are the odds?”

“Honestly, this isn’t the first time this happened on a date,” Sierra said. “Though you’re the first chef I’ve gone out with. And I brought you to a competitor!”

The Garden was not a competitor; Alexa’s did full table service, with good wines and produce pulled from the Whole Foods pipeline. Every dish was made by a person, at some point, from scratch. Ruth didn’t like how tightly she clung to this. “I appreciate Olive Garden’s way with breadsticks.”

“I was so pumped when this place opened in the neighborhood.”

“It’s not really my style?”

“Then on the next date, take me somewhere with better breadsticks.” She laughed, and Ruth decided she liked her.

Sierra came back to Ruth’s fixer-upper bungalow she’d run out of money to fixer-up, and they made out for a while. It was pleasantly awkward; neither quite knew why they liked the other yet, but what they stumbled onto was promising. Sierra said she’d be back for breakfast the next morning, a move Ruth honestly kind of appreciated because she’d worked a surprise double shift Friday and needed sleep. The next morning, Sierra let herself in with a bag of glossy chocolate Dunkin Donuts and sweet, milky coffee. Ruth asked if this was technically a second date, and Sierra slid her hands up Ruth’s loose T-shirt. The ice melted in the coffee by the time they got to it, but Ruth was glad for the doughnuts, even if they were a little stale.

Both she and Sierra worked 70-hour weeks — animating an empowering kids show was a real nightmare, it turned out — so they stole time together when they could. Mostly, they spent Sundays together, since Ruth was working Saturday nights again, the exact thing selling out was supposed to fix, but Alexa’s kept expanding and taking her chefs to open in Venice and Inglewood and Glassell Park and then she was stuck expediting again. Alexa’s was technically a New American restaurant, built around exclusive deals with farmers and Whole Foods’ zero-waste pledge (if a bunch of bruised peaches went from Whole Foods to Alexa’s house jam, everybody except the cooks who had to scramble to make jam was happy). The menu was shaped by algorithms that analyzed purchases and searches, or that’s what corporate claimed; Ruth would never have put Huli Huli chicken and a brown butter pasta on the same menu, but she had dutifully developed the recipes and watched them sell out night after night.

They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering.

Ruth kept putting off taking Sierra out for old-school Italian all the way across town. Instead, on Sundays they’d spend most of the day in bed, ordering in Sweetgreen if they couldn’t remember the last time they had vegetables, or Domino’s if they didn’t need to feel virtuous (mostly, they didn’t). Occasionally, they’d walk down to York or head to Figueroa for brunch. At the Houston’s in a historic former hotel, they always split the spinach artichoke dip, and at the Taco Bell Cantina that opened in one of the many former Mexican restaurants that used to line the neighborhood, they drank shitty bright blue frozen cocktails under a local graffiti artist’s mural that was preserved alongside the Taco Bell logo. Ruth hadn’t gone out this much since moving to Los Angeles, and it felt gross, sometimes, eating nothing but chain food. They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering. But it’s not like there was very much else, not anymore.

Late one Sunday morning while Sierra was listing off the usual brunch and delivery options, Ruth tried to express this to her, but all that came out was, “The thing is all these places kind of suck?”

Sierra stared at her phone. “I will not let you slander Domino’s in bed.” One of the characters on her show was obsessed with greasy pizza, and she had personally designed the cheese pull.

“Don’t you miss eating at mom and pops?”

“Taco Bell and the Garden are mom and pops. They’re all franchises.”

“We should make actual memories together.”

“Sharing breadsticks at the Garden is a real memory!”

Ruth took out her phone and started scrolling through Instagram. She found the image of pork belly drenched in a glossy red sauce she’d been thinking of and showed it to Sierra, saying they should try something authentic. So they put on pants and drove to Alhambra and went to this new Hunan restaurant every food person Ruth followed on Instagram was hyping up. When they opened their menus, Sierra let out a snort and pointed to the cute illustrated map of the restaurant’s 50 locations across China.

After that, Ruth’s thrashing about chain restaurants became a thing, mostly a cute joke. Sierra regaled her friends about her obsessive chef girlfriend dragging her to an old-school burger stand literally surrounded by a luxury apartment building (Shake Shack was taking over the lease) and a 7/11 secretly serving Sri Lankan food and a backyard barbacoa set-up, all of them requiring at least an hour in traffic, maybe more. Ironically, this kind of restaurant tourism wasn’t a thing Ruth had had time for when she had her own restaurant, but now that she had gone corporate, sometimes there was such a thing as a slow week, so she could check out other people’s restaurants. Actually, Sierra would continue, the barbacoa stand they’d spent all Sunday seeking out had been glorious, but it was also so sad — the city had raided it the next week. The cooks at Alexa’s told Ruth the city was raiding street vendors all over the city, not just on commercial strips, now that the big chains were lobbying the city to clean up “unsafe” competition.

For Sierra’s birthday, Ruth surprised her with tickets to a secret pop-up supper club high up in Montecito Heights, hosted on a terraced patio overlooking the hazy towers of downtown. It was run by two white, queer chefs, an impossibly attractive tattooed couple, who were maybe 10 or 15 years younger than Ruth; in New York she would have known them, but out here she was so disconnected. There was a land acknowledgment and prompt to send money to a local mutual aid fund, and then 15 small courses of pepino melons over glass noodles, blistered purple okra with popped buckwheat, and hot-smoked salmon collars with a yuzu-miso glaze, broken up by two “palate cleanser” courses: a Spam sando and tiny Magnum ice cream bars. The food wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was seasonal and playful, and Ruth had only a few quibbles over technique: The house sourdough was overproofed, and the popped buckwheat did nothing for the okra.

“So what’d you think?” Ruth said on the ride home.

“Great view,” Sierra said. “That whole house was insane.”

“I really loved the corn pudding, but I’m not so sure about that buckwheat on okra.”

“There were a lot of really pretentious courses, and then, like, tiny ice cream? I wish there’d been more stuff like the bread and butter.”

“Oh, I thought it was overproofed,” Ruth said, but Sierra wasn’t even listening.

“Maybe you’d hate your job less if you did pop-ups like this, too,” Sierra said.

“Who says I hate my job?”

“Ruth, you work for the biggest corporation in the world and you hate chain food.”

“I hate chains because they swept in and took up everyone’s leases after COVID and now no one can open a restaurant.”

“I guess this means you don’t want to go to McDonald’s right now.”

“Why don’t we try to find a taco truck?” But even along Figueroa, which used to be lined with trucks, their bright signs scrolling BIRRIA MULITAS ASADA in the night, no one was out. The Garden was still open, though; Ruth sat in the car as Sierra ran in to get breadsticks.

That week at work, Ruth’s job was to find a use for this new buttermilk the company had sourced. It was genuinely fermented buttermilk, and good quality; it was perfect for biscuits, and if she could find a recipe that worked at scale, Alexa’s could change this dairy farmer’s life. By the end of the week, she had a biscuit she thought worked, and she gave it to the pastry cooks to test for the next night’s service. She even texted Sierra to tell her to swing by early for dinner, the first time she’d invited her to work. Ruth grifted some company time making a fresh batch of the biscuits herself to bring down for Sierra; when she got to the kitchen, she saw the cooks unwrapping a huge frozen pallet of premade biscuits to lob in the oven, next to the batch the pastry cooks had left to rise.

“What the hell is this?”

“We’re A/B testing, apparently,” Alonzo, the new chef, said with a roll of his eyes. “Kyle said these really taste homemade.”

Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself.

Kyle was the efficiency officer sent down from Seattle to oversee what he called Alexa’s “workflow.” He’d already been asking a lot of questions about why there were pastry chefs working here when most desserts could be bought frozen, as if the whole point of Alexa’s hadn’t been to offer a premium restaurant experience.

Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself. Sierra was sitting at the wine bar drinking ginger ale; Ruth tried not to watch her too intently as she munched on first the packaged biscuit, and then Ruth’s.

“Which do you like better?” Ruth said.

“Is this a test?”

“Either you can tell me or let the cameras assessing your expressions take a guess.”

“Wait, are you serious?”

“The cameras are a staff rumor.” But they all wore fitness trackers that monitored the tone of their voices as they spoke to each other and to guests, and produced a rating on “harmony” and “service” at the end of shift. No one shouted in the kitchen. But the servers had learned that only the most obsequious tone of voice got them good customer interaction ratings.

Sierra broke off a piece of both biscuits and chewed thoughtfully. “To be honest, I wish you guys had breadsticks.” She said it with a little flirty smile, trying to deploy it as an inside joke.

“Clearly biscuits aren’t worth the trouble,” Ruth said, and took the basket back.

“So this was a test.”

“One of these is a recipe I’ve spent all week on, from a batch I made myself, for you. The other came frozen out of a box. If my own girlfriend can’t tell that my version is better, then there’s probably not much hope for me here.”

“Babe, I don’t even like biscuits that much —”

“When you get your check, be sure to leave your feedback about breadsticks.”

Sierra asked her to sit down; Ruth made excuses about having to work back in the kitchen, and then hid, taking up space and messing up people’s flow. Kyle would not have approved; the step tracker was probably wondering who was standing stock still during a busy service. At one point, she tried scrolling Instagram to distract herself, and there was a message from one of the pop-up chefs, asking if Ruth could get them a job at Alexa’s until they finished rounding up all their investors, you know? They were sure they’d find a space soon.

“You’ve never cooked for me before,” Sierra said on the car ride home. “Maybe if I’d had your cooking, I would have recognized it.”

“You don’t seem to care much about food, so I don’t see the point.”

“What the fuck, Ruth. I care about you.”

“I mean, the cooking doesn’t make me who I am, right? We used to have to remind each other of that all the time. That we’re more than a job.”

“I work for this huge company and make something I care about. Why can’t you try to too?”

They had the conversation they always had, about how Ruth should start a secret pop-up, and Sierra would do all the branding and promotion, and then she’d get rich investors and live her dream again. The next week, Ruth got her pay docked for rudeness, probably from when she’d snapped at Sierra about the biscuits. On Sunday, they went out to the Garden, and Ruth ate breadsticks until her mouth tasted of nothing but salt.

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Ruth just wanted to eat somewhere — anywhere — that wasn’t a chain

“So we both work for Amazon,” Ruth said. “What are the odds?”

“Honestly, this isn’t the first time this happened on a date,” Sierra said. “Though you’re the first chef I’ve gone out with. And I brought you to a competitor!”

“I was so pumped when this place opened in the neighborhood.”

“It’s not really my style?”

“Then on the next date, take me somewhere with better breadsticks.” She laughed, and Ruth decided she liked her.

They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering.

Sierra stared at her phone. “I will not let you slander Domino’s in bed.” One of the characters on her show was obsessed with greasy pizza, and she had personally designed the cheese pull.

“Don’t you miss eating at mom and pops?”

“Taco Bell and the Garden are mom and pops. They’re all franchises.”

“We should make actual memories together.”

“Sharing breadsticks at the Garden is a real memory!”

“So what’d you think?” Ruth said on the ride home.

“Great view,” Sierra said. “That whole house was insane.”

“I really loved the corn pudding, but I’m not so sure about that buckwheat on okra.”

“There were a lot of really pretentious courses, and then, like, tiny ice cream? I wish there’d been more stuff like the bread and butter.”

“Oh, I thought it was overproofed,” Ruth said, but Sierra wasn’t even listening.

“Maybe you’d hate your job less if you did pop-ups like this, too,” Sierra said.

“Who says I hate my job?”

“Ruth, you work for the biggest corporation in the world and you hate chain food.”

“I hate chains because they swept in and took up everyone’s leases after COVID and now no one can open a restaurant.”

“I guess this means you don’t want to go to McDonald’s right now.”

“What the hell is this?”

“We’re A/B testing, apparently,” Alonzo, the new chef, said with a roll of his eyes. “Kyle said these really taste homemade.”

Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself.

“Which do you like better?” Ruth said.

“Is this a test?”

“Either you can tell me or let the cameras assessing your expressions take a guess.”

“Wait, are you serious?”

Sierra broke off a piece of both biscuits and chewed thoughtfully. “To be honest, I wish you guys had breadsticks.” She said it with a little flirty smile, trying to deploy it as an inside joke.

“Clearly biscuits aren’t worth the trouble,” Ruth said, and took the basket back.

“So this was a test.”

��One of these is a recipe I’ve spent all week on, from a batch I made myself, for you. The other came frozen out of a box. If my own girlfriend can’t tell that my version is better, then there’s probably not much hope for me here.”

“Babe, I don’t even like biscuits that much —”

“When you get your check, be sure to leave your feedback about breadsticks.”

“You’ve never cooked for me before,” Sierra said on the car ride home. “Maybe if I’d had your cooking, I would have recognized it.”

“You don’t seem to care much about food, so I don’t see the point.”

“What the fuck, Ruth. I care about you.”

“I mean, the cooking doesn’t make me who I am, right? We used to have to remind each other of that all the time. That we’re more than a job.”

“I work for this huge company and make something I care about. Why can’t you try to too?”

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#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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adubg2olf · 6 years ago

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Oils, health care and foods

Long blog that gets into conventional medicine’s relative short history, mainstream approach to health and how many industries (health, food, medicine, science etc) have taken advantage of public’s lack of knowledge or feeling overwhelmed with vast amounts of information. So break this stuff up in parts if too long. But it is useful and true!

I’m just trying to get people caught up a little with western/conventional medicine trend(s). To make better decisions for self. Think of rest of this info as snippets into today’s healthcare system before you start dealing with insurance companies. Or don’t read rest of this info and just do authentic essential oils and exercise and we will all be fine.

Damage theories are basically theories of how we die, get ill or bring on our own health issues. Conventional and western medicine sparse disease down to parts or molecules so free radicals lie at the heart of most of our ailments. I’ll try to bring more detail to this in other writings but think of it as more cultural and today than over all time and space.

(Free radical, cross linking, radiation, DNA repair, oxidative stress, immune, membrane, waste accumulation, calorie, etc.) Free radicals are Molecules with unpaired electrons in outer shell. Gerschman in late 50's identified for first time. Championed ever since by biochemist Denham Harman of University of Nebraska.

This fits neatly with the approach of chemistry and conventional medicine over the last 100 years with advent of periodic table envisioned by Dmitri Mendeleev. Cool story by the way how he came up with this chemical/mathematical table which is based in periodic consistencies.

Going a little further back 250 years or so there is a gentleman considered to be father of chemistry, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. He was summarized his or that of chemistry in the following at the time "Nothing is lost, Nothing is created. Everything is transformed." Hence two laws that have significant strength in science community- Conservation of Matter and Energy. Both go something like Lavoisier's Law. Matter can neither be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only be transformed, also known as "The first law of thermodynamics." These laws lead to Einstein's (E=mc2) to restate matter and energy are equivalent.

This is stated to demonstrate power of science and it's community of respected law. As well as outreaching affect in our medicine and the approach to health over relatively short period of human and plant interactions. Sometimes, especially here in the United States, we like to think nothing existed before us or human innovation and invention will cure all our problems. We also tend to ignore facts of history to suit our needs. Like the fact that we were all eating and benefitting from plants for many thousands of years before commercial and conventional sources of food, nutrition and medicine started marketing ‘better and cheaper foods’.

Human and societal laws can be strong and even believed in the human psyche. Yet that doesn't change natural laws like we eat living entities like plants and animals for our substance, survival and well being. We have again been doing this since human existence. Our bodies have adapted certain mechanisms and systems of function based on our interactions with these real foods, the primary (metabolites) sources of energies like protein, fat and carbohydrates. These big molecules many of us have heard of or follow to some extent for nutritional guidance. There are other molecules or subsets of energy from chemistry standpoint that we have been utilizing in these foods, particularly plants and these smaller molecules have names like functional group, secondary metabolites and can be further classified through chemistry and biology circles.

When I first came across the term secondary metabolites awhile back I got confused on the classification and vast terminologies shared by chemistry and biology circles. To make it more understandable in science circles you tend to make it more confusing in essence or simple life terms. In science a secondary metabolite might be defined as energy from food or substance that can not be further broken down in elemental form but is utilized by our bodies on a molecular basis for maintenance and interaction with outside world.

I might be screwing it up for you even more? From a historical perspective we today are eating a lot of boxed, labeled, not natural foods which as little as 100 years ago had not entered any human. Ailments and disease can actually easily be traced back to these new substances or disconnect from nature. There is more to what I want to achieve by educating more but before that I would like to mention the study of chemistry and electrical exchanges between atoms, involving only their shells of electrons and is not directly concerned with activities involving their nuclei. Hopefully you remember a little bit of what was mentioned earlier in regards to free radicals and agents of damage or disease.

Those laws and policies of looking at disease or malfunctions and ailments of body through chemistry and what shows up in pharmacy, hospital or on our grocery shelves can dictate how we nourish, heal and maintain our bodies whether we are thinking about it or not. Much like how we don't sit around calculating, feeling or sensing how activities directly affect our bodies. Most of us don't eat a meal and sit there for next 4-10 hours thinking the food through digestion, absorption and finally elimination. But these factors are relevant to our health, wellbeing and survival.

Powerful oxidizing agents resulting in normal reactions involving cellular respiration. Oxygen being most prevalent free radical found in body. When not kept in check by antioxidants all kinds of degenerative problems arise- cancer, atherosclerosis, cataracts, Alzheimer's, immune deficiency, neurological disorders, and osteoarthritis.

Hard and dried up, brittle, un-oil like

Cell membrane is made of oil - phospholipid mostly, protein sites and cholesterol

Damaging cells via hardening membranes, damaging cell membrane proteins, destroying DNA and DNA mutations, lipid peroxidation, white blood cells (immune cells), hardening nuclear membranes and lysosomes (intracellular particles that contain digestive enzymes)

Molecular trash!

Cross linking fusing DNA and protein molecules becoming stiff and lacking function.

From stress, normal cellular activity, psychological and physical stress, and environmental factors- food, chemicals, pesticides, toxic waste etc.

First line of defense protective enzymatic activity and antioxidants

Free radicals contained by being trapped or isolated by not seeking out neighboring cells then metabolized and turned into harmless paired oxygen or simply water (liver function). Dietary (nonenzyme compounds) produce similar effect. Essential oil activity basically trillions of H-C-O being introduced to body to provide this function.

Cells start the self destroying process if this continues more energy is burned/needed for important activities. Self repair energy and clean up is being sacrificed along with energy to keep free radical at bay and disease sets in from molecular level outward to existing cell structure of area (heart, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, dementia, weakened immune system...

Systemic study- respiratory, immune, lymph, skin, nervous etc.

Phytonutrients

Phytochemical and functional food components associated with prevention and treatment of many leading causes of death- cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

Phytochemical are actively used by pharmaceutical companies in many of their products.

The field is slow to develop and will take a long time to scientifically prove because companies are reluctant to finance clinical trials and testing that is required by FDA approval, as of 1999 nearly $200 million was needed to properly study, perform and tabulate necessary procedures and guidelines to prove a substance can go on market. This seems foolish when trying to prove plants are good for you. And since you can't get a patent for food or plants, companies are reluctant. You would then have to create a synthetic component of a phytochemical, which seems silly when you already have it in a food.

As well as the prevalent nature of study and research wanting to find the one component (reductionary nature) to sell and PR or market. There isn't money in PR for natural food or word of mouth good products. This profit hunger is seen in advertising for McDonald's and all those companies that go great lengths to advertise ‘natural’, when nothing that is labeled with word natural actually means natural. Read any label on food, drink or essential oil product and the more they try to convince you it is natural the more sure you can be it is not!

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alifurt · 7 years ago

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Michigan - Week 3

Our third week started with us hemming and hawing about taking Vivian in to urgent care. She had been going to the bathroom every 30 minutes (quite literally) for a day by now and even though she said it didn't hurt or wasn't uncomfortable, I wanted to make sure it didn't get worse than the disruption of frequent bathroom breaks. So Wednesday afternoon when my mom got home from work we decided to finally go in to have her looked at and she ended up diagnosed with a UTI of which did indeed require medicine to remedy the issue. My mom stayed with Conner and Claire in the waiting room that was prepared with toys and snacks (if anyone ever needs a nice urgent care in Commerce, the one on Union Lake Road sort of across from Kroger is great) while Vivian and I went in to talk to the NP. Afterwards we went home and got ready to go have dinner with Jesse, Adam and Odin at their house. Claire stayed home with my parents while I took the big kids over to eat and play. It was nice to get together and we got to celebrate Jesse’s birthday a little while the kids played and I didn't have to be distracted by little Claire which was so nice since the big kids played so well together.

[Despite the situation, Viv was happy as a clam - probably because I promised she could have some of the fruit snacks that the waiting room was stocked with]

[Conner, Odin, Viv with Jax photobombing in the back]

Thursday we were home most of the day with my cousin Beauman who came over to spend the day! They played video games inside and swam and just had an all around great time as they always do with Beau! After a fun day, I left the kids with my parents to get treated to a facial at Robin's salon, About Face, then I had dinner and drinks with Robin and my cousin Jen. It was a wonderful (and much needed) night off from the kids and it was nice to get to spend extra time with my cousin and Robin.

youtube

[Lovely ladies - me, Jen, Robin]

[Out to dinner]

Friday morning my parents were off work so we took advantage of the beautiful day by going to the zoo. When the kids woke up we got going quickly so we could have breakfast on our way at the Original Pancake House. Unfortunately the medicine Vivian was on created a new symptom and much of breakfast was spent in the restroom. We considered not going to the zoo but the kids really wanted to - despite Vivian's issue - so we got some pull ups as an emergency precaution. The Detroit Zoo was awesome. Everyone agreed that the penguin exhibit was the clear favorite as you start off looking at them from ground level and the full glass wall makes the kids feel like they are right there with them - Claire loved that when a penguin came right up to her. Then you walk down some stairs and go into a tunnel under their swimming area and they zip all around you underwater. We all enjoyed sitting and watching the penguins zoom around. There was a similar underwater exhibit for the Arctic with seals but the penguins were a little more fun. The second favorite was the butterfly exhibit and it made me excited to check out Woodland Park Zoo's (our zoo in Seattle) new butterfly enclosure too! After a fun morning and early afternoon at the zoo we loaded into the car to go to Busha's place to join her for an ice cream social.

[Conner doing a dance with a penguin friend]

[Claire loved watching the penguins]

[Amazed at the penguins zooming around them]

[The view from below]

[The butterflies loved my shirt]

[Me and my gang]

[Pops and Claire making their way]

[Foggy shooters]

[Claire kissing the snake]

[All tuckered out after a fun zoo adventure]

[Ice cream with a very happy Busha]

[Vivian and Conner were ready to wheel Busha away!]

On Saturday morning we woke up, got ready and went straight to breakfast at McDonald's to meet up with with my girlfriends, Erica and her little girl Jordan, Alex and Amanda. It was nice as the kids could play while we all caught up a bit with minimal interruptions. My mom and Erica's mom, Marie, walked up midway into the visit as well which was nice as the kids were all excited for them to have arrived. Nothing better than a chill morning of no pressure breakfast and play!

[McD’s meetup!]

After a couple hours at McD's, my crew had to pack up shop to meet my dad at his company picnic. We were immediately greeted with goody bags for the kids filled with tons of stuff that the kids were so excited about! Vivian's was different than Conner and Claire's as they had some younger things in them which I got really excited about - new sippy cups and wipes (we were almost running out so that was perfect timing!!!). The picnic was amazing for young families as there was a bounce house, clown who did face painting and balloon animals and the much anticipated turtle races. My dad had been talking up the turtle races all week and boy was the excitement to a peak and boy did it pan out - the kids loved it! They got so into the race (which was simply putting turtles in a bucket and uncovering them at the same time to see who crawled out of the circle fastest. The kids were given number cards randomly and they got prizes if their numbered turtle won (no surprise, the races continued until everyone was a winner). Before the races, they also got to name the turtles, which Vivian was very proud of. It was a great event and I am so glad that we were able to be there to celebrate all the accomplishments of my dad's company and meet some of the very nice people he has the pleasure of working with and some of which who have shared in the joy of my children as they've come into the world. After a long day at the party for lunch and even dinner, we were all pooped out and had a low key night. If I recall correctly, I think this was one of the nights that Conner fell asleep in the car and I transferred him to bed immediately thinking it would be a super easy night (for once!) but instead he woke up an hour later in a fit of tears and took another hour to calm back to sleep.

[Conner discussing his sparkly dinosaur tattoo]

[Viv modeling her sparkly rainbow and stars face paint accompanied by her new stuffed turtle]

[The girls giving the turtles a pre-race pep talk and picking favorites]

[The race begins!]

[Oh and did I forget to mention these happy kids happened to be the winners of the candy count - because we needed candy like a hole in the head!]

[My mom and Conner in the photobooth]

[Things were interesting....]

[Heyyyyyyy! (Conner with his sucker.... forever)]

Sunday was a nice, low key day after all the excitement of the party Saturday. The kids swam with Sienna (a neighbor girl who was over often when she heard or saw the kids out in the yard or lake) and then the highlight of the day was a sunset flight in Pop's airplane. Conner and Viv had been looking forward to flying in my dad's plane since arriving in Michigan. In fact as we were landing - not even on the ground in the commercial jet - Conner was giddy and even said "I'm so excited! We can go in Pop's plane now!" My dad let Conner sit in the front to be his co-pilot and even fly the plane. Conner's piloting skills were a little wobbly but we were lucky he preferred to have the plane climb rather than nosedive and Conner absolutely hated when we did some negative G forces saying "I do NOT want to do that again, please do NOT do that!" while Vivian begged to have her tummy jump again. Of course the rule is everyone has to be on-board with the roller coaster feeling so we had a tame rest of the flight other than the steep turns as we zipped around my grandparents house, aunt and uncle's house and my parent's house of course too!

[Swimming with Sienna]

[Almost ready for takeoff!]

[Conner was sooo excited to get to fly - while I was nervous he’d take over during takeoff!]

[Viv asking for more ups and downs]

[Me and my girl]

[Beautiful Union Lake Sunset]

Monday was my mom's day off so we went to Marshbank Park to play on the playground for a bit before running over to Costco to pick up a few things. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening on the lake.

[Claire’s first time in a little sprout ponytail]

[Cool dude Conner loved the roller slide]

[So did Viv!]

[Atop the hill at Marshbank Park - such an ordinary moment that looked so heavenly I couldn’t resist incorporating Zachary <3]

[An evening dip in the middle of the lake with M.E. and Pops after work]

[Look I was there too!]

My mom had her office day for work on Tuesday so we were able to use the car and even encouraged to get out of the house so she could stay home to work in peace. It was nice to get out and do some errands. We stopped in at Target and Buy Buy Baby to look at car seats for Viv as she has hit her weight capacity (we learned this at her appointment for the UTI). After browsing we stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings for some lunch before heading home to nap. After nap Jesse and Odin came over and we went swimming for fun and to relieve her pregnant body from the super hot and humid day we were having (we initially planned a walk but figured the lake was better suited). Three doors down, Lucy's grandson, Dominic, was swimming so we all swam together and the kids were able to play on all their fun lake toys - kid sized kayaks, paddle boards and a giant floaty island. This was the beginning of a fun friendship for the kids as Dom enjoyed playing with them and it was so convenient that we pretty much ran into each other each night on the lake cooling down after long hot days.

Week three had come to an end and we were pretty much in the swing of lake life by now - although still not bedtime.

#michigan #travel #swimming #zoo

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years ago

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Ruth just wanted to eat somewhere — anywhere — that wasn’t a chain Their vibe had been great on the app, but for their first date, the girl suggested the Garden, and Ruth almost ghosted. It was the newest location, the one on York Boulevard that got spray-painted with anti-gentrification graffiti saying things like, “GO BACK 2 UR SUBURB” a couple weeks back; after cleaning it off, the Garden had made a big show of installing a community fridge. Honestly, Ruth wouldn’t have agreed to go if she couldn’t have walked there from her house. On a Saturday night, York was busy, the outdoor parklet tables overflowing at Torchy’s Tacos and Shake Shack and True Food Kitchen; people with laptops were still hunched in the Go Get ’Em Tiger, and tired-looking parents hauled growlers of beer from the Golden Road pub, maybe with a six-pack of Bud under their arm. The Garden was the street’s newest addition, its glass exterior covered in long green vines, looking disconcertingly hip and inviting next to the local chain Thai Town, huddled in a former barbershop. The girl, Sierra, was waiting inside, perusing the menu projected on the wall in old-school Italian-joint cursive. She was shorter than Ruth had expected, and the ponytail peeking out from her trucker hat was bright pink. She greeted Ruth with a huge smile, and Ruth tried to act normal; meeting someone after messaging back and forth always felt so unbearable, even worse if they were actually cute. Sierra was cute. They bantered back and forth about whether the cauliflower parm would be good or a disaster, and agreed they could not not get mozzarella sticks. After ordering at the counter, they sat down and a runner immediately brought out a basket of warm breadsticks, the only reminder of the chain that had spawned the Garden. The breadsticks were the best thing, soft and salty and comforting. Ruth’s cauliflower parm was soggy on the bottom, and Sierra’s vegan alfredo was like slurping nutritional yeast. Their messaging over the app had been playful and cheekily uninformative; now Sierra explained she was a storyboard artist on a kids cartoon about girl superheroes, airing on Prime. Ruth used to lead with her now-defunct Instagram ice cream business, or even her old restaurant in New York, the one that closed. But the endless grind of first dates had sanded down her pride, so she stuck to honesty: She was a corporate chef at Alexa’s. “So we both work for Amazon,” Ruth said. “What are the odds?” “Honestly, this isn’t the first time this happened on a date,” Sierra said. “Though you’re the first chef I’ve gone out with. And I brought you to a competitor!” The Garden was not a competitor; Alexa’s did full table service, with good wines and produce pulled from the Whole Foods pipeline. Every dish was made by a person, at some point, from scratch. Ruth didn’t like how tightly she clung to this. “I appreciate Olive Garden’s way with breadsticks.” “I was so pumped when this place opened in the neighborhood.” “It’s not really my style?” “Then on the next date, take me somewhere with better breadsticks.” She laughed, and Ruth decided she liked her. Sierra came back to Ruth’s fixer-upper bungalow she’d run out of money to fixer-up, and they made out for a while. It was pleasantly awkward; neither quite knew why they liked the other yet, but what they stumbled onto was promising. Sierra said she’d be back for breakfast the next morning, a move Ruth honestly kind of appreciated because she’d worked a surprise double shift Friday and needed sleep. The next morning, Sierra let herself in with a bag of glossy chocolate Dunkin Donuts and sweet, milky coffee. Ruth asked if this was technically a second date, and Sierra slid her hands up Ruth’s loose T-shirt. The ice melted in the coffee by the time they got to it, but Ruth was glad for the doughnuts, even if they were a little stale. Both she and Sierra worked 70-hour weeks — animating an empowering kids show was a real nightmare, it turned out — so they stole time together when they could. Mostly, they spent Sundays together, since Ruth was working Saturday nights again, the exact thing selling out was supposed to fix, but Alexa’s kept expanding and taking her chefs to open in Venice and Inglewood and Glassell Park and then she was stuck expediting again. Alexa’s was technically a New American restaurant, built around exclusive deals with farmers and Whole Foods’ zero-waste pledge (if a bunch of bruised peaches went from Whole Foods to Alexa’s house jam, everybody except the cooks who had to scramble to make jam was happy). The menu was shaped by algorithms that analyzed purchases and searches, or that’s what corporate claimed; Ruth would never have put Huli Huli chicken and a brown butter pasta on the same menu, but she had dutifully developed the recipes and watched them sell out night after night. They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering. Ruth kept putting off taking Sierra out for old-school Italian all the way across town. Instead, on Sundays they’d spend most of the day in bed, ordering in Sweetgreen if they couldn’t remember the last time they had vegetables, or Domino’s if they didn’t need to feel virtuous (mostly, they didn’t). Occasionally, they’d walk down to York or head to Figueroa for brunch. At the Houston’s in a historic former hotel, they always split the spinach artichoke dip, and at the Taco Bell Cantina that opened in one of the many former Mexican restaurants that used to line the neighborhood, they drank shitty bright blue frozen cocktails under a local graffiti artist’s mural that was preserved alongside the Taco Bell logo. Ruth hadn’t gone out this much since moving to Los Angeles, and it felt gross, sometimes, eating nothing but chain food. They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering. But it’s not like there was very much else, not anymore. Late one Sunday morning while Sierra was listing off the usual brunch and delivery options, Ruth tried to express this to her, but all that came out was, “The thing is all these places kind of suck?” Sierra stared at her phone. “I will not let you slander Domino’s in bed.” One of the characters on her show was obsessed with greasy pizza, and she had personally designed the cheese pull. “Don’t you miss eating at mom and pops?” “Taco Bell and the Garden are mom and pops. They’re all franchises.” “We should make actual memories together.” “Sharing breadsticks at the Garden is a real memory!” Ruth took out her phone and started scrolling through Instagram. She found the image of pork belly drenched in a glossy red sauce she’d been thinking of and showed it to Sierra, saying they should try something authentic. So they put on pants and drove to Alhambra and went to this new Hunan restaurant every food person Ruth followed on Instagram was hyping up. When they opened their menus, Sierra let out a snort and pointed to the cute illustrated map of the restaurant’s 50 locations across China. After that, Ruth’s thrashing about chain restaurants became a thing, mostly a cute joke. Sierra regaled her friends about her obsessive chef girlfriend dragging her to an old-school burger stand literally surrounded by a luxury apartment building (Shake Shack was taking over the lease) and a 7/11 secretly serving Sri Lankan food and a backyard barbacoa set-up, all of them requiring at least an hour in traffic, maybe more. Ironically, this kind of restaurant tourism wasn’t a thing Ruth had had time for when she had her own restaurant, but now that she had gone corporate, sometimes there was such a thing as a slow week, so she could check out other people’s restaurants. Actually, Sierra would continue, the barbacoa stand they’d spent all Sunday seeking out had been glorious, but it was also so sad — the city had raided it the next week. The cooks at Alexa’s told Ruth the city was raiding street vendors all over the city, not just on commercial strips, now that the big chains were lobbying the city to clean up “unsafe” competition. For Sierra’s birthday, Ruth surprised her with tickets to a secret pop-up supper club high up in Montecito Heights, hosted on a terraced patio overlooking the hazy towers of downtown. It was run by two white, queer chefs, an impossibly attractive tattooed couple, who were maybe 10 or 15 years younger than Ruth; in New York she would have known them, but out here she was so disconnected. There was a land acknowledgment and prompt to send money to a local mutual aid fund, and then 15 small courses of pepino melons over glass noodles, blistered purple okra with popped buckwheat, and hot-smoked salmon collars with a yuzu-miso glaze, broken up by two “palate cleanser” courses: a Spam sando and tiny Magnum ice cream bars. The food wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was seasonal and playful, and Ruth had only a few quibbles over technique: The house sourdough was overproofed, and the popped buckwheat did nothing for the okra. “So what’d you think?” Ruth said on the ride home. “Great view,” Sierra said. “That whole house was insane.” “I really loved the corn pudding, but I’m not so sure about that buckwheat on okra.” “There were a lot of really pretentious courses, and then, like, tiny ice cream? I wish there’d been more stuff like the bread and butter.” “Oh, I thought it was overproofed,” Ruth said, but Sierra wasn’t even listening. “Maybe you’d hate your job less if you did pop-ups like this, too,” Sierra said. “Who says I hate my job?” “Ruth, you work for the biggest corporation in the world and you hate chain food.” “I hate chains because they swept in and took up everyone’s leases after COVID and now no one can open a restaurant.” “I guess this means you don’t want to go to McDonald’s right now.” “Why don’t we try to find a taco truck?” But even along Figueroa, which used to be lined with trucks, their bright signs scrolling BIRRIA MULITAS ASADA in the night, no one was out. The Garden was still open, though; Ruth sat in the car as Sierra ran in to get breadsticks. That week at work, Ruth’s job was to find a use for this new buttermilk the company had sourced. It was genuinely fermented buttermilk, and good quality; it was perfect for biscuits, and if she could find a recipe that worked at scale, Alexa’s could change this dairy farmer’s life. By the end of the week, she had a biscuit she thought worked, and she gave it to the pastry cooks to test for the next night’s service. She even texted Sierra to tell her to swing by early for dinner, the first time she’d invited her to work. Ruth grifted some company time making a fresh batch of the biscuits herself to bring down for Sierra; when she got to the kitchen, she saw the cooks unwrapping a huge frozen pallet of premade biscuits to lob in the oven, next to the batch the pastry cooks had left to rise. “What the hell is this?” “We’re A/B testing, apparently,” Alonzo, the new chef, said with a roll of his eyes. “Kyle said these really taste homemade.” Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself. Kyle was the efficiency officer sent down from Seattle to oversee what he called Alexa’s “workflow.” He’d already been asking a lot of questions about why there were pastry chefs working here when most desserts could be bought frozen, as if the whole point of Alexa’s hadn’t been to offer a premium restaurant experience. Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself. Sierra was sitting at the wine bar drinking ginger ale; Ruth tried not to watch her too intently as she munched on first the packaged biscuit, and then Ruth’s. “Which do you like better?” Ruth said. “Is this a test?” “Either you can tell me or let the cameras assessing your expressions take a guess.” “Wait, are you serious?” “The cameras are a staff rumor.” But they all wore fitness trackers that monitored the tone of their voices as they spoke to each other and to guests, and produced a rating on “harmony” and “service” at the end of shift. No one shouted in the kitchen. But the servers had learned that only the most obsequious tone of voice got them good customer interaction ratings. Sierra broke off a piece of both biscuits and chewed thoughtfully. “To be honest, I wish you guys had breadsticks.” She said it with a little flirty smile, trying to deploy it as an inside joke. “Clearly biscuits aren’t worth the trouble,” Ruth said, and took the basket back. “So this was a test.” “One of these is a recipe I’ve spent all week on, from a batch I made myself, for you. The other came frozen out of a box. If my own girlfriend can’t tell that my version is better, then there’s probably not much hope for me here.” “Babe, I don’t even like biscuits that much —” “When you get your check, be sure to leave your feedback about breadsticks.” Sierra asked her to sit down; Ruth made excuses about having to work back in the kitchen, and then hid, taking up space and messing up people’s flow. Kyle would not have approved; the step tracker was probably wondering who was standing stock still during a busy service. At one point, she tried scrolling Instagram to distract herself, and there was a message from one of the pop-up chefs, asking if Ruth could get them a job at Alexa’s until they finished rounding up all their investors, you know? They were sure they’d find a space soon. “You’ve never cooked for me before,” Sierra said on the car ride home. “Maybe if I’d had your cooking, I would have recognized it.” “You don’t seem to care much about food, so I don’t see the point.” “What the fuck, Ruth. I care about you.” “I mean, the cooking doesn’t make me who I am, right? We used to have to remind each other of that all the time. That we’re more than a job.” “I work for this huge company and make something I care about. Why can’t you try to too?” They had the conversation they always had, about how Ruth should start a secret pop-up, and Sierra would do all the branding and promotion, and then she’d get rich investors and live her dream again. The next week, Ruth got her pay docked for rudeness, probably from when she’d snapped at Sierra about the biscuits. On Sunday, they went out to the Garden, and Ruth ate breadsticks until her mouth tasted of nothing but salt. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/34UCH3U

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/09/what-if-nothing-but-chain-restaurants.html

#EasyFoodNetwork #ComfortFoodRecipes #EasyRecipes #GoodFood #BestComfortFoodRecipes #TastyFoodv

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