02July - NYT article on chilling reds
.
Well, I fully agree. I fell in love with chilled Beaujolais sometime last year and have since tried it with a number of other reds. I like our Malbec, in particular. As it's not as big as most it takes quite well to a lower temperature. And there's a wonderful Carneros Pinot from X Winery (I had to buy as much as I could afford, which only turned out to be 6 bottles, but just in time as it sold out shortly thereafter) that needs to be a little cooler than most before it goes from soft and good to graceful and great.

Plus, I think this article has convinced me to start more sentences with "Brothers and Sisters,"

Reds on Ice? It's not Heresy

01July - Prince Charles' car runs on wine
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This just in from CNN.com:

"LONDON, England (CNN) -- Britain's Prince Charles has converted his 38-year-old Aston Martin to run on biofuel made from surplus wine, his office revealed Tuesday.

Prince Charles with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, on a visit to a

whiskey distillery in Northern Ireland last month.

The car was a 21st birthday present from Queen Elizabeth, and the prince has converted it to run on 100 percent bioethanol as a way to reduce his carbon emissions, his office, Clarence House, said.

The prince has also converted his other cars -- several Jaguars, an Audi and a Range Rover -- to run on 100 percent biodiesel fuel made from used cooking oil, his office added.

Details of the prince's biofuel use were made public Monday in his household's 2008 Annual Review, which details the prince's income and activities over the past year.

The report says Charles and his household reduced their carbon footprint by 18 percent last year after switching to green electricity supplies and reducing their travel-related emissions.

Charles, 59, has a strong interest in environmental issues and rural affairs. He is active in environmental charities, and his food company, Duchy Originals, uses ingredients produced at his organic farm in Cornwall, southwestern England.

The biofuels are converted and provided by Green Fuels Limited, a British company that previously provided biodiesel to power the royal train, Clarence House said.

The wine used for the bioethanol comes from current vintage that remains after English wine producers reach the EU limit for annual wine production, a spokesman for Green Fuels said.

The prince uses wine from a vineyard close to his Highgrove Estate, the spokesman said."

Ha!

01July- Arranging things
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I was having coffee and some kind of delicious, crumbly cookie thing my mother made and enjoying the fact that today is my first day off when two things struck me: One, the text message from Alex that makes me think I need to be at the restaurant at nine to start working on the kitchen floor and, two, it's Tuesday.
I'm missing out on my normal Tuesday.

Tuesday mornings have their fun side. It's the day when I've got some wine reps coming, which usually yields some interesting wine or beer and/or chit chat. Alex and I have lunch, during which we like to watch something relevant and educational like Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (BBC version, which we both prefer to the American) and then we discuss how we can apply any lessons illustrated.

And it's the first day of the week when I re-stock and inventory the beer and wine. I rather enjoy that. It puts me in the same sort of comforted mood as alphabetizing (or categorizing in some way) my books or records or wine at home. When I was younger it was the National Geographic collection that grew disheveled and I'd spend hours sorting them chronologically. When I was younger still (and I'm amused to see Leigh's God son do this) I liked to arrange my toy cars. One day by color. One day by style. One day by preference.
I enjoy order. Not in every theatre of my life (which is clear by the disheveled state of my car which, I hope, would compel a would-be burglar to walk by it under the assumption that a fellow criminal had already thoroughly tossed the vehicle's contents) but in many.
Given enough free time and inclination I'm sure I could over-analyze that and maybe break it down to some need for control or fear of the unknown or a brain tumor that gets irritated when some part of the brain that responds to asymmetry gets going.

But why do that to myself? I'm just going to enjoy the simple comfort of arranging things.

The library at the Biltmore House.



If you're one of the many people who has lots more money than I do,
the good people at Valentini's can make you this.


99cent, Andreas Gursky
naturally, I'm a fan of Gursky. I like how he can take chaos
and bring order to it through perspective. Click on the image to make it much bigger

30June-We'll be closed all week and reopen July8th
.

We're supposed to re-do the kitchen floor and there are other projects around the store we'd like to tackle. We'll see how that goes.

I plan to live like a real person: dinner at 8. Bed by 10.

House work. Yard work. With any luck I can stretch that last paycheck out the whole week.

I might get the brushes and canvases out. Do a little painting.

Maybe go out into country. Get into some bar fights.

You know. Relax.

Rue, Maurice de Vlaminck
I like Vlaminck. I like his quiet streets.

29June- Paparazzi! Those are some good shots...
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so just before our time off we've had two bits of attention from the media.
First, we've had a gentleman from a well-regarded food blog visit us for the last several weeks. He's in town for a computer-related reason and he's been impressed enough with us to post the following post on us.

www.offthebroiler.wordpress.com article on us

not too shabby.

Second, Mr Aiken from the Free Times wanted to include us in the upcoming "25 best of something or other". Despite flounder not being in the season we like it to be in, he wanted to showcase our 3-Flavored Flounder. As delicious as this dish is, we don't have it in until Alex sees that the lady flounders have rid themselves of their stock of eggs that fill their flat, flounder bellies despite how unpalatable that is to a diner. So if you saw the article and decided that the only dish that will satisfy you is the flounder, please call us to see if it's available.

Here's a picture of freelance photographer, John, snapping pictures.

i think he looks like he's saying "ha HA! Gotcha!"

29June- running things...it ain't all gravy.
.

So here's the thing. For whatever valid reasons, and they were valid reasons, we've had to downsize an employee. This doesn't happen much here at Baan Sawan but we found it unavoidable and now here I am, at home: waiting on vegetables to roast, wild rice to cook, tuna to sear and red wine to cauterize the wounds.

We tend to concentrate on the person who's lost their job, as well we should. They've put themselves on the line and found themselves, for all intents and purposes, rejected. This is not an easy place to be.

Fact of the matter is, contrary to the opinions of the servers, I have a bit of a heart. This is not where I wanted to be either and these are the feelings I wanted to avoid. The other end of the rope isn't always the most comfortable place to be and the remnants of genuine emotion the last twelve years of restaurantin' has allowed me to keep are still challenged when bad news goes to good people.

But business is business. Otherwise we'd pay more than we can afford, we'd hire everyone we liked and we'd give away our food, wine, and time.

Responsibility is a bit of an odd thing. The more we have of it, sometimes the freer we become. Yet, in many ways, the more beholden we are to policy, to expectation, and to business. Within the construct of the restaurant I rose through the ranks. I began as a server with a personal, financial stake in the project. A share holder, if you will. Time passed until I took control of more responsibility partially because I was family but mostly because I was the only person who gave enough of a damn to do so. And that was because it's family. Gumption goes a long way and there came a point when I had enough of it to volunteer for more responsiblity.

So here I am, with beverages to decide upon, servers to hire and schedule fairly, deliveries on which to wait and put away, menus to print and collate, a dining room on which to keep an eye, and fires to put out. Much of the rest can be spread around but these are most of the things for which I'm responsible. This leaves me with two free hours before work (between 7.30am and 9.30am), two hours in the afternoon (2.30pm-4.30pm) and then whatever I'm left with after work (usually 11pm until I go to sleep around 12.30.)

My time to myself is so valuable. Cooking calms me. Reading. Practicing piano. Just being around Leigh is like an emotional salve. But she's out of town this weekend and my cooking is done.

I like a quiet evening when I don't have to leave someone in tears because I've had to downsize them. Yet here I am. Post just that.

All I can think of is the swollen and scratchy-eyed night that awaits the fallen, perhaps cursing us and/or themselves. Maybe they're unable to sleep, their minds buzzing with where they might apply next. Maybe, as their breath hitches, they wish they'd never met us and put themselves through the trials our unique brand of managing demanded.
...
I almost wanted to the response to me to be hostile. Hostility is an emotion I can handle. But the response was quiet. And hurt. And it left me with a pit in my stomach that aches when I remember the deed.

But I remind myself that nobody was ever foolish enough to say that this would be easy.

I don't know the name of this piece but it's by Vilhem Hammershoi.
I love the atmospheres he creates. Its loneliness, reality, and starkness appeal to me right now.

27June- Baan Sawan Floor Plan

In order to illustrate how small a restaurant we are and how tricky seating large parties can be, I've put together this almost-exactly-to scale layout of Baan Sawan.

So, our default floor plan is this:


And the following shows how many we can comfortably squeeze in, under the very best of circumstances:

27June- So that’s what 30year old Burgundy tastes like
.
I went down to Charleston on Tuesday for a tasting of Domaine Leroy Burgundies, white and red. I love and hate tasting wine somewhere different, whether it be in town or out. I love feeling that I’ve traveled but I don’t care for the actual driving (I wouldn’t normally drive down a tight alley at 70mph. Driving between semi-trucks is like that except the walls have minds of their own.) and the feeling that I’m out of place is accentuated by established groups of colleagues and my own shyness.

Anyway, I drove down and had lunch at Café Paradiso (two chili dogs, since I’m so budget-minded lately - I even borrowed Leigh’s Prius to save on gas) then found my way to Social, a wine bar that opened up about a year and a half ago. It’s a nice looking bar with one of those wine-pressure-spigot systems that keeps things fresh.

Lined up along the bar, very inconspicuously, were the eight bottles for which I’d driven nearly two hours to taste. The white wines were a ‘99 St. Aubin 1er Cru, a ‘98 Bourgogne Blanc and a ‘97 Meursault 1er Cru Les Charmes. Of these the one that struck me most was the ‘97 Meursault. It had lovely, dried floral notes to the nose, a firm mouth-feel and a nice, clean, minerally finish.
The red wines were a Bourgogne Rouge, a Cote de Beaune Villages and a Monthelie (all from 2000), a ‘93 Saint Aubin, and a ‘78 Beaune. Of the 2000’s I particularly enjoyed the Cote de Beaune Villages. It had a nice, perfumey, earthy nose and a really silky mouth-feel. The Saint Aubin was quite nice with lots more earth and strawberry to the nose and a bright, silky and focused feel. I’ve had one other St. Aubin (at a quarter the cost) and I could taste the quality jump. The Domaine Leroy was much richer without being bigger, if that makes sense. The flavors were more defined and focused. Good stuff.
And, of course, the biggest draw for me was the ‘78 Beaune. Right away, as it poured, you could see its age. It poured an almost transparent, beautiful rust color. When I brought it up to my nose I was amazed out how young it smelled. It had a wild, rich, earthy nose and a similarly youthful vibrancy to the flavors. Some sour cherry in there and a great, long finish. Given how present it was I have to wonder what it was like when it was bottled. Undrinkable? One hears that bandied about: This is undrinkable for a few more years. But for this to be so bright now, it had to come down from something.

This is the sort of stuff I find interesting.

23june- new "where the hell is...matt" video
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New to me, at least. If you haven't seen this, or the preceding ones, take four and a half-minutes out of your life to watch this one, at least.
It fills me with a melange of emotions, none of which upset me. I walked away from the video with the sense that it was, in its way, beautiful and filled with hope. It seems as though he's gotten the whole world (or representatives from over 42 countries, at least) to get behind an idea. The next time that happens will probably be some sort of attack from outer space. It's a toss-up between extra-terrestrials and an asteroid. Ooh. Maybe a comet.

Here's a link to the "About Matt" portion of his website: About Matt


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

21June-Self-indulgent post on what's wrong with some people
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While this is only marginally restaurant, food, and or beverage related (in that it happened in Publix), it's irritating and illuminating and if one person reads this and sees a flicker of this in themselves and changes for the better then this digression would be worth it. And I'm aware of how many "ands" are in that sentence.

So I'm in line behind a family in the express lane. This seemingly textbook family consisted of a mother, father, a boy of about 8 and a girl of about 11. They'd gotten one of those hybrid buggy/stroller things and, as I stood behind the father, I observed him unload the buggy onto the conveyer belt and then nonchalantly push the buggy/stroller back out into the store, parallel to the sale shelf. I watched with furrowed brow and wondered if I should do or say something when his daughter asks him if they should take the cart back up to the front. The father tells her not to worry about it and not too much later an elderly employee finds and walks off with it.

Why? Oh, oh, why? Not only is there the issue of how he just jettisoned his cart but the more pressing and depressing issue is that of his poor daughter, a youth still absorbing and learning the finer points of morality and ethics, who seems to know the right thing to do but whose instincts are being smothered by a dense and selfish father.
I wonder, from time to time, about how a sense of entitlement seems to be spreading through the land. A tributary of this is the attitude of "not my problem." And that day in the grocery store it seems as though I saw how it could be planted and fostered. Here is this flower struggling to grow up right but the vine of her father's sense of "not my problem" is choking her and I'm so afraid that she'll grow up to be the kind of healthy, strong young woman striding carefree in her work-out clothes ahead of the elderly grocery employee pushing and unloading her groceries while she's on her cell phone.
Grocery stores, it seems, are a good place to observe the spectrum of humanity. I suppose the possession of a buggy is like a car: we feel as though we have a bit of our own property and, therefore, become more comfortable and let more of our personality show. This misconception of being separated from polite society is most easily seen in cars when a driver, despite being behind clear glass, feels isolated enough to pick their nose at a stop sign.
So it seems in grocery stores I see so many people walk by, and even over, dropped packages of fuselli, toppled display stands, and fallen oranges. Their reasoning, I can only guess, is that some one else will pick it up. Picking that up is not their job.

Now, if I saw somebody having a heart attack I wouldn't race over, crack their chest open, find the blocked artery and restore blood flow to the heart. Not my job. No reperfusion expert am I, but I sure as hell know how to pick up a display stand that's fallen over into the aisle. I can make things tidy and help fulfill the purpose of that display. I can save the person whose job it might be to right said stand the trouble with no more effort than what I would spend in picking up and deciding against buying that jar of Kalamata olives, since I just remembered I still have some left.
Why can we be so selfish? How can we so easily forget that the world consists of more than just ourselves and that the person whom we might inconvenience today may well have an opportunity to inconvenience us in the future? Trite as it may be, we're all in this together.

I'm no saint. I'll admit that to annotate your probably thinking it.
But I try to make the world a better place. At this point I must wonder if I'm really helping at all. Though I might pick up the Starbucks cup lolling on the curb a mere yard from a garbage can, return the buggy at the grocery store from its place of desertion in the middle of a handicap spot or whatever, I feel like I'm treating symptoms and not the actual problem. And I'm sure, in some ways of which I'm oblivious because I have some ugly, arrogant tendencies, I contribute to the problem.

I could have talked to this man at the Publix. I could've pointed out what a bad example he was being for his daughter. I could've gotten into a check-out aisle brawl and gone home with shredded tabloid in my hair and cut knuckles. I could've made a difference but I chose not to.

Not my job, I suppose.

I saw, and corrected, this at the Target on Garners Ferry
It could theoretically have drifted there, but I don't think it did.