A couple of months ago, in restaurant marketing meetings all around the country, frantic VP’s and Directors of Marketing peeps shouted this: “GIFT CARDS! GIFT CARDS!”

That’s all they had to say and The Machine lurched into motion. Once a year (and only once a year!) the dysfunctional restaurant family of Operations, Accounting, Marketing, and Training bond together in a united front, focused on separating you from as much of your money as possible. The weapon of choice? The gift card.

A big boost in revenue combined with a generally busy season makes for wonderful presents under the Profit and Loss tree come the end of the quarter. And, seeing as most companies use a calendar year for their financials, gift cards function as a beautiful bow on a box of year end results.

With the economy bruised, biffed and bandaged, I’m afraid the push for us to buy gift cards will be even more forceful this year. Why? What is it that makes these things cocaine candy for the hospitality industry?

Redemption. Or rather, lack of redemption.

Each company runs its own set of numbers, but in general, somewhere between ten and twenty percent of gift cards purchased never see the inside of that restaurant. They’re lost in dresser drawers, in between car consoles, or simply forgotten.

If I buy a twenty-five dollar gift card, give it to you and it finds the Bermuda Triangle, the cost to that restaurant is…let me do the math here…six, carry the one, times four…well, the cost is zero. Since you didn’t redeem it, the XYZ Taco Tower simply put my twenty five bucks (minus printing costs – covered more and more by some other company looking to utilize the front of those gift cards as advertising) in its pocket.

That’s why you see offers of, “buy fifty dollars worth of gift cards, and get a ten dollar gift card free.” There’s just too much money floating around to not give you back a little taste. Pun intended.

Here’s what I’m telling you: make your best deal when you buy them. I can only speak of restaurants, but every general manager out there is under the gun to SELL GIFT CARDS and most are involved in a contest of sorts. Restaurant managers do NOT like to lose, so, turn the tables a bit. If the offer is ‘buy fifty, get ten free,’ counter offer with ‘how about twenty free?’

Or take a different tact. All managers have a supply of complimentary cards for appetizers, free meals, drinks, etc, when your dining experience is less than marvelous – ask about throwing those in the deal instead of, or in addition to, free gift cards. You may find a manager more inclined to work a deal with you if you buy the gift cards at face value but take ‘comp cards’ instead of the additional ten dollar gift card.

So make your best deal and help all have a great holiday season…especially the high maintenance marketing folks.

When most of us think of a garden, we probably look in our backyard or the neighbor’s yard and see that nice, six by ten patch of lettuce, carrots, and bell peppers. My in-law’s garden in Tennessee is about a quarter acre and these two spry, nearly eighty-year-olds bang it out year after year.

This year their garden displayed these highlights:

Corn – We’ll sit down to dinner (that’s lunch to my Yankee friends and family) and Dad-in-law will say, “Hmmm, Mom; is this the old corn?” He means is it the corn picked yesterday around four, as opposed to ten this morning.

Tomatoes – They taste like tomatoes; let me try to describe the…well here, just scratch right HERE – Neighborsgo has just upgraded your account and you now have Sniffgo capabilities. The aroma, the taste, the yum!

Onions – though it’s a cliché, you truly can eat ‘em like an apple. They taste like onions, certainly, but I’ve had more than one meal in Tennessee consisting of these onions, those tomatoes and corn bread.

They do cucumbers that we pick and then pickle, squash that Dad fries better than anyone I’ve ever worked with, potatoes – both red and white, and it’s all complimented by the apples, peaches, pears and pecans from the fall.

So why is the title of this entry ‘Frozen Veggies?’ Couple reasons.

Because we can get most produce year round, a lot of folks (unless they grew up on a farm) in my generation and younger don’t understand the idea of seasonality.

On any given day, someone picks a green rock, washes it off, gases it up and tosses it on a truck, a boat, or a train (and maybe all three!) and ships it to my grocery store. When it gets there, it’s a lovely shade of pinkish redish and they stick it under a sign that says, “Tomatoes.” Cut one up and you have some vitamin A, C, and K along with a bit of potassium to put on your salad. It is what it is, you know?

Thing is, if you can’t have produce right out of your garden, or a fabulous mother-in-law who cans a whole bunch of the summer bounty for you, I am here to tell you frozen veggies work well.

The best thing about frozen produce is this: most are picked, cleaned, cut, bagged and frozen as quickly as possible. The idea of ‘close to the field’ has some application and you end up with both convenience and a bit more freshness.

My freezer contains bags of frozen pepper and onions most of the time – this may be the most useful bag of produce I use. Also have carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, a noodle and vegetable mixture, edamame, beans of all kinds, and breakfast potatoes.

There are some limits to use – they tend to become a bit mushy if you’re not careful how you bring them back to life – but they are nutrition packed, pretty tasty and they save time as well. And anything that helps get more fruit and veggies in our meals is a really great thing.

T. E. FLON ; Petitioner

 vs.

Kevin John Phillips

            In the matter of non stick pan abuse

Davis Williams, Esq, on behalf of T.E. Flon: “Mr. Phillips, may I please remind you that you are still under oath?”

Phillips: “Understood.”

“Let’s go back to the date in question, June 15, 2004; the day you bought yet another set of dollar store non-stick pans.”

Phillips makes the hurry up motion with his right hand. He knows what’s coming.

“Is it true you looked for the cheapest pans you could find in order to save money?”

Tilting his head back in exasperation, the defendant utters a monotone, “Yeeees.”

“Is it also true when you first returned to your home, you immediately…”

“Look,” Phillips interrupts,” I’ll save us all some time, okay?”

The attorney looks at the judge, who nods in the affirmative; Phillips continues.

“I used to get whatever junk I could for non stick pans because they never lasted. No sense in paying good money for something if I’m just tossing it in three or four months. Once they start to lose their non sticky action, we’d use that spray stuff. Plus, being a hard core restaurant guy, I only know how to cook at one temperature – nuclear. I will admit I used metal utensils in these pans, and I put them in the dishwasher too.”

The court crowd erupts in a three part harmony gasp. Mothers cover their children’s ears. In the back of the court, a dark-haired Latin woman freshens her lip gloss.

Judge: “Order! Order in this court.”

Phillips smiles and begins, “I’ll have a…” but a quick look from the judge kills that noise.

Finally, the defendant leans forward in the witness stand and begins speaking with sincerity.

“What I want to say is I’ve learned a whole bunch of things. Let me outline it for you:

1. I only buy non stick pans with a nickel or aluminum base/disc. This allows for even heating and long life. They cost more but I simply keep an eye out for the perfect storm of a 30% coupon, a sale at The Store, and watch when it coincides with a time when I actually have some money.

2. Non stick pans never go in the dishwasher. Ev-ah.

3. Cooking spray never touches the cooking surface of my nonstickies. I know now it eats at it the coating.

4. I never cook above a medium temperature…medium high at the max…when using these pans.

5. And the four step process to clean them (really any hot pan) goes like this:

a. Once I’m done cooking, I take the pan over to the sink and introduce a SMALL amount of water; this is to begin the cooling process. If I glug, glug, glug nine gallons of tap water in a hot, hot pan, I’ll begin the warping process.

b. I’ll swish that water around until all that bubbling action chills out, and then add more water.

c. Grabbing a dish rag, I’ll wipe the pan clean of any residue and then wash it with some warm water and soup.

d. Finally, I’ll dry it and put in back where it goes.

“Mr. Phillips, do you expect this court to believe after years of using and abusing all your non stick pans that now you’ve seen the light and are flying right? Surely you jest!”

Phillips reaches into his sport court (and now you know this is imaginary…me in a sport coat!!), pulls out a red, ten inch non stick brand name pan.

“Check this out, dawg!”

The pan gleams and all can see the cooking surface is smooth as a baby’s bottom. If it was non stick coated, that is.  

Phillips smiles and nods at the prosecutor.

“Got nothin’ to say, right? I didn’t think so. Oh, and if you hadn't guessed, don’t call me Shirley.”

The judge bangs his gavel on the…on the…thing you bang a gavel on, and bellows, “Case dismissed!”

Selma Hayek, resplendent in a pale yellow sun dress, rises from her seat and walks slowly up the aisle…

At the heart of the every kitchen lives the tools needed to do the heavy lifting; taking ingredients from raw to ready-to-cook. The three in the title of this blog are among the most used.

Food processor? You have an extremely dependable one; your hand and a sharp knife. I know three or four pulses in those super duper electric machines and you turn carrots into a puff of orange mist, but I think they’re more trouble than they’re worth.

Most average restaurants use the hand-knife processor but very busy places may use this monster called a Robot Coupe (Ro-bo coo). You could do nuclear fusion in these babies and they cost just what you think they might. For me, life without a food processor rolls into the fifth year and we aren’t starving yet.

Know what a stick blender is? One of the TV food boys calls it a boat motor and that’s a pretty good description. The one you and I buy aren’t restaurant grade; commercial stick blenders could bust up concrete if you so desired.

The home version is really useful and I snagged my first one at a Black Friday 5 AM Wally World deal some years ago. I think it was three bucks and the thing lasted six years! Amazing little performer until, that is, someone tried to mix tile grout or something with it.

*tosses a sidelong glance just to see if anyone clears their throat or avoids the glance*

Not actually sure what happened but one night I was whipping up pudding and the Chinese parts simply joined together and said, “No mas.” (After six years in Texas, everyone learns to habla a little, you know?) Two days later I bought another one for the ridiculous price of eight bucks. I keep it under lock and key with a laser force fields around it. 

Stick blenders are my choice as opposed to pulling out a big old blender. We’ve gone through four hundred, sixty two big old blenders since 1983, and gave up on them until last year. The missus bought a nicer one; so far, so good, but it needs a new exhaust or something because it is L-O-U-D. If you live within five miles of The Mound and find yourself saying, “What is that noise?” now and then, know that it’s her blender.

What you need to get, however, is a high quality stand mixer. I don’t do brand advertising but when it comes to something this expensive, I’ll actually pay good money for one of those kinds that Aids your kitchen. No small feat for this Pushing Beyond 50 guy to pay big money for something. President Washington blinks when he comes out of my pocket, but when he and the rest of the dead presidents and statesmen saw the warm glow around me as I stroked the side of the mixer box, they knew they had no choice but to move into their new home. The Store’s cash register.

The mixer was on sale, we had Store Bucks, a 30% off coupon and we knew the words to Puff the Magic Dragon (the Humble Pie version!) enabling us to save half a million dollars on this thing. Ended up around $200 and it’d have no problem mixing tile grout. It’d have no problem crushing stone to make the tile.

This mixer is a workhorse in your kitchen and can do just about anything. At times the bowls are a little deep for me and can leave some ingredients unmixed but then, that’s what a spatula is for, isn’t it?

An added bonus with these top flight stand mixers are the attachments. Ooo, ahh, attachments. We tried a slicer dicer thing. Hated it. Just bought a pasta roller and though there’s effort involved, the payoff is worth it.

You can buy sausage stuffers, ice cream makers, citrus juicers, and vegetable strainers, but the one you need to get is the meat grinder. You’ll be in karma heaven if you buy some organic ingredients and grind up beef (or any other meat) yourself. More on grinding your own burger meat at:  Grinding Your Own Burger        

Add it all up and you’ll come to this conclusion. Take your ‘manual’ food processor, add a value priced stick blender and a top o’ the line stand mixer to your kitchen, and you’ll have all the chopping, grinding, blending, and concrete mixing power you’ll need.

A few years back I toured the IBP meat packing plant somewhere in middle America. A unique experience to say the least, filled with slightly sarcastic clichés and gallows humor if only to ease the nervousness one feels when they first see an eviscerated 1200-pound animal dangling from a hook. (Hey there, vegetarians, how’s it hanging today? Oh gosh, that was a pun wasn’t it?)

Anyway, when Q&A time rolled around, I asked how they handled their knives, kept them sharp, that sort of thing. I learned they have, basically, two sets for the whole plant and they rotate knives each day. While one set is in use, the other goes to the sharpener. Key to the whole process was this: at each station on the line, every person made no more than a couple cuts and then went right to their sharpening steel. Sharpening steel?

Literally, it’s a piece of steel and you should try to get one at least as long as the longest knife you have or will ever own. For more on the whole sharpening process as well as all things knife, click on this link:

http://neighborsgo.com/stories/32733

In the last ten years I was a professional Food Weenie, I only cut my finger three times. All on green bell peppers, all when I stupidly cut them shiny side up, and each time the knife desperately needed steeling that I was too lazy to do. A dull knife bounces, especially when you cut quickly, and the result is equal portions of delayed pain and “you idiot” comments to yourself. Grrr.

I’ll share with you the five knives I use consistently.

• An eight inch chef knife
• A no-brand eight inch chef knife
• A boning knife
• A small, four inch sorta paring knife
• A serrated knife

Why two chef knives? One gets the tar beat out of it – hacks through chicken bones, frozen meat, tough outer skins of various vegetables. Cost me twelve bucks but it’s well built, balanced and though it won’t last forever, it’s been good so far. The other one…with the German name…is a bit pricier and gets more love and sweet talk than a woman gets on the second date. It only cuts ze zings eit vants to, ven it vants to. I’ve written poems to it, but we won’t bore you with those right now. Suffice to say you can carve the face of the Virgin Mary on an onion with Herr Bladeenstein. It’s the best.

A boning knife is six to eight inches long with a very thin blade. Idea of it is to be something so flexible it can contort and fit right in between skin and meat, or take thin layers of tough skin-like material called silver skin off some proteins. Invaluable tool, and the one most interlopers in my kitchen grab to cut carrots and other things it’s not meant to cut, sending me into convolutions.

The small paring knife is the most useful of them all and simply put, I use it for everything and anything.

The serrated knife works on soft bread and some meaty bones.

Knives with wooden handles? Ew. Drop those in some hot water and you could make soup…lovely breeding ground for bacteria.

Knives that never need sharpening and come with a lifetime warranty? I’m not really sure because they scare the heck out of me. It doesn’t make sense that a knife never needs sharpening, so that means they are from THE DEVIL! And I don’t use ‘em.

I hope at some point to get some video up (don’t hold your breath!) to show cutting techniques, etc, but for now I’ll tell you the biggest reason you cut your fingers with a knife – the knife is dull. Keep your knives sharp.

After working in very high volume kitchens with the very best equipment, ingredients, and people, I’ve kinda built my kitchen around that experience. For the next little bit, I’d like to share the 50 things I’ll always have in my kitchen.

Here we go, in no particular order.

1. Salt and Pepper(s) - Kosher/Coarse grain salt and whole black peppercorns in a grinder.

Sea salt? Overrated. Now, if you have a strong need for a certain salt flavor, then play with sea salts. Depending on where they come from they’ll have distinct nuances, but for what most of us cook day to day? Waste of money.

I use Kosher because the coarse grind just works better in most ways but I also have table salt for the, um, table and some spice blends

Next to the stove there is a Pinch Jar for salt. A Pinch jar is a random container from your kitchen filled with salt. It’s usually glass and there's no lid, so when you knock it over in a cooking frenzy (and you WILL knock it over) it shatters all over the place, making the kitchen an exciting place to be.

Hey you know what salt does?

Best way I used to describe it to aspiring cooks/chefs was like this: salt pokes the taste buds on your tongue and in your mouth and they open a little wider then they would if you didn’t salt the stuff. You may have heard, “Salt makes things taste more like themselves.” That’s because you allow yourself to taste more of the thing.

Is salt bad for you? No. Is too much salt bad for you? Most certainly.

Here’s the thing – and for disclaimer purposes I’ll add this is a very unscientific and decidedly non-medical opinion – if we only ate what came out of our gardens (the produce growing in it and the animals grazing on it) and salted that to taste, I’m thinking there’d be little to no problem with salt. It’s the old, “limit processed foods,” thing. (So much for the PSA.)

One up from salt is Monosodium Glutamate. Yeah, yeah, it’s evil and all that. Bah.

What MSG does is this: if salt opens your taste buds a bit wider, MSG jams a two by four in ‘em. Think of full throttle and you’ll get what MSG does. Remember Accent? Little bottle of two by fours. Works well but if you get too dependant on it, I think you kinda limit your creativity.

I have two pepper grinders – one by the stove and one on the table – and I have that pre-ground pepper in the tin. I make my own spice blends and it’d take all day to grind up what I normally need for a batch of Kevin’s Southwest Seasoning, so the ground black pepper is perfect.

We also have white pepper for a couple things but for sausage gravy there is no substitute. Yum. Cayenne pepper for seasoning blends and most hot food items, while crushed red pepper flakes (CRP) goes on pizza and other sauces.

Next up; sharp knives.

Know what? I’m getting burned out…how about you?

How a person gets to that point varies. FW found - from first hand experience from those thirty years in restaurants – that most folks spiral when they solve problems by tossing more time at it. In the restaurant biz, we used to work 55 to 60 hours a week, six days a week, as a rule of thumb. More than that when problems came up. If you do that for too long, this starts to happen:  

Frustration – with life, a boss, or a circumstance, none of which we control.

Boredom – with a part of our job we don’t like; some don’t like the repetitiveness, and others thrive on crisis and when crisisesises run out, they create some to keep the crisis junkie jones feed.

Fear – Pushing 50’s went through tough economic times like this nearly thirty years ago. Frickin’ scary.

In any case, stuff is dumping on our heads and we feel hog-tied. That leads to anger and that robs energy, and no energy yields burn out.  

We live in a PERFORM NOW world, but physiologically it can’t always be for these mortal bodies. We Red Bull it, exercise it, maximize it, and push it for peak performance with no rest.

In general, our grandparents worked a few hours before sun up to sun down; the rest was for rest. Our parents worked when their boss said and then worked hard to make leisure and family time important and meaningful. We work as much as possible, and feel guilty when we sit for a spell.

What to do if you find yourself burned out or heading towards it? Consider the following eleven things Food Weenie’s learned from experience, from really smart folks, and from waving his hand, dismissing the logic, and just pouring more hours on the problem – burning him out even more:

Drink water. Like a fish. Chances are you’re not drinking enough, and little by little your body starts to under perform. Part of the reason you feel like buttocks is because your body and mind are trying to get your attention. Drink water until you put your kidneys in danger, and give ‘em something else to worry about!

Go to bed early tonight – 96 year old great granddad early. Amazingly, you’ll fall asleep sooner than you think and wake up with a sleep hangover. That’s a pleasant problem to have. Do it again tomorrow night. Don’t worry, your Twitter will still tweet, your important 2 AM emails won’t expire, and the Universe will simply have to run on autopilot from 8 PM until you get up at 6:15 AM.

Make a list of the several hundred people who are currently making your life miserable. Begin with the first person on the list, and write them as nasty a letter or email as your religion allows. And then…you guessed it…dump all the letters and emails. In the case of email, make SURE you get rid of it completely.  (Note: always put a smiley face on the end of your emails. That way if you accidently hit send, Tom gets the rather naughty but giggly sounding, “Hi, I hope to soon poke your eyes out in front of your puppy, and then do his, J” as opposed to the Saw 17 version it would be without the smile.

Find a close friend or acquaintance who knows what a baby you’ve been lately (you haven’t really been a baby but you feel that way), and say, “Hey man, I gotta vent,” and then let it all come out like the projectile vomit of a seven year old at the amusement park after a nacho lunch. 

Make a list of three…two…even one thing you look forward to tomorrow. A certain TV show or a baseball game, fifteen minutes to stop at a BMW dealership to test drive a car you’ll never, ever buy, an evening with your albums, and I ain’t talking about photo albums, a game with your kid….even what you’ll make for breakfast. Think about how cool that thing’s gonna be as you get ready for bed and you’ll find yourself snuggling in a bit and maybe even asleep before you know it. Then, ENJOY the tar out of that thing the next day. Whatever it is, do it slowly.

Find a quote that just makes you say, “Yeah…yeah; that’s what I’m talking about.” Put it up on your mirror, on your cell phone display, on your computer screen, on a piece of paper you look at throughout the day. Share it with folks. Talk about it; ask them about their favorite quote.

Take that list of things you look forward to doing, and tweak it slightly by looking forward to doing something for someone else. 

Sit down for ten minutes at some crowded place and just look at all the different people. Amazing, isn’t it? How different we all are. But be on the look out for folks that seem to be having a good time. Soak it up. Give it out.

Call that close friend or acquaintance back and thank them for letting you vent on them. Ask them how it’s going.

Schedule time at work, if possible, to allow yourself to go exactly where you want to go (a particular department, store, visiting with a particular vendor, client, customer, co-worker, training seminar with some training weenie, etc), and do exactly what you want to do in your work (within reason, of course) for a day and a half. Go work with your favorite person and immerse yourself in the work. FW guarantees you’ll walk away with a renewed sense of value, and you may even get your creative juices flowing. 

Finally, along with everything else - if you’re so built - consider tweaking your prayers. Chances are good the Nielsen’s from last night’s offerings to the Almighty are great numbers, contained fairly intense content, and measured brutal in their honesty (all of which He loves, btw). FW finds in times like these his tendency is to suggest a bit too much to the Alpha and Omega; over the years he’s learned that burn out time 'tis a great time to fashion prayers that simply say, “Good evening; I’m here,” and then sit and listen.

Think of ten more things to add to this list while you go about your work. You’ll find yourself pulling out of the burned out feeling, and more into the let’s get stuff done feeling. Getting burned out is nothing to feel guilty about, it just happens is all. Keep an eye out for it, attack it with these little habits and you’ll find time in these big valleys shorter and easy to handle.

Seafood lover? Good food lover?  You should visit David’s Seafood Grill in Cedar Hill as soon as possible. His website will tell you all about him, the menu, the prices and all the things you’d want to know, but as a young cook once told me about the great cook standing next to him, “Dude, that man can fry up some groceries.” So can David.

It’s pretty hard to make really bad food.  I’ll challenge you to create a big pot of something awful and if you give me enough fat and my choice of two spices, chances are I can make it edible. Not hard to do. Brilliant food, however, takes some doing. Here, let me put on my Food Weenie hat for a second…

Your taste buds handle things salty, sour, sweet, savory and, this being Texas, you have to know where heat and the right amount of heat comes in. There’s supposedly another “sensation” called something Japanese, but it’s odd how it came to the culinary forefront right about the time they introduced MSG to us. More on that some other time.

You want to really enjoy a meal? Give your ‘buds a workout! Have something salty, sweet, and sour and then savory. Potato skins and a margarita with sugar on the rim. Now you’re mouth is ready to go; your taste buds have had their work out and the savory part will taste that much better. Really…try it. Or, visit with someone like David who can do it all in a spoonful of food.

All painters have access to the same colors; some just use them better then others. Same thing with food. When it’s done like David and his staff do it, the results are stunning. I know someone is a rock star fryer of groceries when, in that spoonful of lobster bisque, I can taste every single thing in the recipe in the right order and in the right proportion. When they go to the trouble of brining the best possible rolls in from NOLA for my shrimp Po’ Boy, well…you’ll see.

Take your time with each mouthful when you eat at David’s.  Don’t take too long, though…he’s got to turn tables…but savor each spoonful because there is SO much going on. We all rush through meals, you know? Go slow here because you’ll learn something.

Not everyone can do what David does with food, but you’ll experience these great sensations with each and every mouthful at David’s Seafood Grill.

David’s Seafood Grill

350 E. FM 1382

Cedar Hill, TX75104

972.293.0005

Store is located in the Cedar Hill Plaza, at the Southeast corner of US 67…south side of FM 1382.

http://www.davidsseafoodgrill.com