So Amanda is about to graduate and she was putting together her resume and I had this idea to create a cute recipe about herself that she could include with her resume.  I ended up writing it last weekend and thought I would share it with all of you. Enjoy.

 

Exclusive Recipe

For

The Next Leader in Your Kitchen

(From Scratch)

 

Ingredients:

One Ball of Energy

One Southern Family (with soul food and other heritage)

Ten Years Overseas (distilling ethnic food and culture)

Six Years of Server Experience

One Year Management Experience at a Startup Restaurant

Two Years Bakery and Coffee Shop Experience

Full Course of Culinary Education

One Organic Externship

 

Directions:

Step 1:                   Marinade newly formed ball of energy in deep southern heritage for several years.  Remove and position under hot Middle Eastern sun.  Changing nations every few years, for 10 years to develop culture as tastes diversify.  This process yields one spirit, saturated with passion and enthusiasm.  Save a few ounces of each for later use.

 

Step2                    Return resulting spirit into the American melting pot and sauté in college course work.  Continuously stir in the two years of front of house restaurant work.  When the concoction bubbles with a natural understanding of the industry, place into new restaurant as assistant manager.  Increase heat.  Notice the leadership abilities rise to the top.  Skim pot and place leadership skills aside for later use.  We now have the essence of a restaurateur: enthusiastic, passionate, and ambitious with some experience.

 

Step 3:                  Place a seed in the pot, remove from direct heat and allow our essence to settle near kin.  Allow seed to grow while essence is cast in a mold of family bakery and coffee shop duties.  After nine months of solidifying remove developed seed and watch essence transform into a nurturer and provider.

 

Step 4:                  Shortly afterwards, reinvigorate essence by breaking from the mold and placing into culinary school.  Bake with other chef hopefuls for one year under intense heat.  Baste with advanced food industry ideas and cooking concepts.  Note the showy display as previous preparations bring our concoction to the top of the rotisserie.

 

Step 5:                  Place the resulting hardened culinarian into the bath of an organic kitchen for its externship and allow absorption of another course of new ideas and techniques.  Remove and save the sprig of creativity that has subsequently grown from the culinarian.

Step 6:                                                                              Dress the resulting product with accouterments saved in prior steps.  Pour a portion of leadership to taste over the top, strategically place the sprig of creativity and sprinkle with passion and enthusiasm.  Hire on the spot and place in a leadership position in your kitchen.

I just got back from a trip to Mississippi with two coworkers of mine, Chad Childs and Luis Martinez.  It was a company sponsored trip to transport donated relief items and money to victims of Hurricane Katrina.  These people where in my wifes family.  It was an increadably successful trip as well as bringing a U-haul trailer full of goods we listened to everyones story and at times lended a shoulder to cry on.  We also put in a couple days of sweat equity, completely gutting the bottom story of Amanda's Aunt Nancy's home in Diamondhead, MS.  She had about 6' of flood water thus ruining everything downstairs and rendering mold on the drywall.  I would like to publicly thank Miller Einhouse Rymer and Boyd for their amazing contributions to this cause.  My family and I are eternally gratefull for everything they have done, they have allowed me to do and the compassion that they showed through this great deed.  I will be posting pictures from this trip as soon as they become availiable.

I think the municipal offering of WiFi is a great idea.  It is true that many people cannot afford monthly internet service and in theory this could bridge the gap and afford people in lower income brackets access to information and service.  But in reality if you cannot afford the service you probably cannot afford the hardware to enjoy the free service either.  I also worry about the possible negative effects it may generate.  Plenty of studies have shown the cancerous effect of living close to power lines and radiation from cell phones.  How many wireless transmissions can we implement before the amount of ambient radioactivity levels in the spaces we inhabit become toxic and what levels of radiation should we accept.  Another concern would be the loss of user participation.  I recently heard a story of a coffee shop trying to recapture customer interaction by limiting the times WiFi is offered.  What was happening is people would come in droves to use the WiFi but the culture of the place was lost.  Much like cell phone users are partially transported to another place on the other end of the phone internet users will be completely submerged in an electronic world.  I envision today’s public places with all their impromptu interactions and passing glances will quickly become places packed with people but virtually devoid of any real human interaction.  I can see people meeting other people and looking for dates online while they are sitting next to someone just as interesting/attractive but never looking up to notice.  Not long ago it was much easier to interact with people but now with every other person listening to an iPod, on a cell phone or completely walled off in a car people are disconnected with others and the world around them.  This is just the next step for us as a race to become completely self obsorbed in ourselves in a futile attempt to…well…I don’t know what it is that we are trying to achieve with all our technological wizardry.  Perhaps some sort of nirvana, but I doubt any of these things truly make any of us any happier than we where without them.

I have just recently started this blog, please look around, if you have landed here of all the places on the world wide web then I am sure there are at least a couple of links that would be of interest to you.  I have created this space primarily to share pictures and info with family and friends but also to have a convenient home page for myself that will contain all of the links that I use on a day to day basis.  As I don't have a digital camera, I haven't posted many pictures yet, this of course will change with time.  If you have any comments or suggestions please post them.  I hope you come back and check out any updates or changes that I will be making.